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That surprised me, as my understanding in Committee was that the Minister gave assurances on a number of occasions that the Government support the Bill, despite voting against it on Second Reading, and would not attempt to water it down. Will the Minister tell us whether his opposition to new clause 6 or the Government amendments are an attempt, even a minor one, to water down the Bill? Many people in my local community and many hon. Members would be worried if that was the Government’s intention. Many representations have been made to me locally about how important the Bill is. Much of the correspondence that I receive relates to things that are important to the local community rather than international or national events. I hope that the Minister will not attempt to water down the Bill, which is important for the future of local government and the
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maintenance of participation in local government and on parish councils. It is important to make sure that everybody in our local communities feels that they are part of what is being decided in their local areas.

Mr. Greg Knight: With new clause 6, we are also debating Government amendment No. 22. Can my hon. Friend think of any reason why the Government would want to delay implementation for 18 months?

Philip Davies: My right hon. Friend is as eagle-eyed as ever. His contributions are always valuable, because he notices things that other hon. Members miss. The honest answer is that I do not know the Government’s motivation in tabling that amendment. I have no doubt that the Minister will seek to tell the House exactly why amendments Nos. 22 to 25 are so important. I hope that he will reassure the House that their purpose is not to water down or delay the Bill.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, I think that new clause 6 goes to the heart of the debate. It is essential for local democracy, local participation in democracy and people’s faith in the political system that we respond to what people want locally, and I therefore support new clause 6. If the Minister is not prepared to support new clause 6, I hope that he will think again and reflect on how important it is to our local communities.

Anne Main: I support the Bill because local people feel impotent and frustrated. Most of us accept that impotence is frustrating, but it concentrates the mind wonderfully at a local level—I look to hon. Members to support that statement.

Local people say, “What is the point in voting when we have so little say over changes in our community?” They feel that so much has been directed at them from on high, and if we can repatriate that feeling of control over the shaping of local communities, they would be a lot happier because they would be much more engaged. People who are involved in local communities, charities and directing good works turn up regularly to events, but they have so little say. If people turn up and present their view, they feel that it is ignored. That situation cannot continue, which is why I welcome the Bill. New clause 6 would provide some clout at a local level.

People are heartily sick of being dumped on. In my community, we have problems with road noise. People were promised whisper-quiet tarmac, but four or five years down the line, the promise was dumped and nobody heard anything more about it. If the local council had been able to say, “Here is the money. It will be used for that,” repatriating control to a local level would possibly have meant that my constituents in Bricket Wood would not be complaining like mad about the state of the roads and road noise.

We should consider environmental sustainability and not just tack it on as a word in front of everything that we do. I want to give the Minister an example of the frustration that local people feel. People feel that they have no control over planning at a local level, because alterations to planning law mean that what the Government say must be implemented. I am sure that this example is not an isolated incident and that similar events have occurred in other constituencies. Only three weeks ago, planning permission was granted for a
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block of 12 flats with one parking space, which is simply for disabled parking, so that block of flats has no parking spaces. That supposedly makes the block sustainable within planning policy statement 6, which states that parking does not have to be provided in a sustainable location. Local people had their say, but they could not effect a change. If they had been given the control to put in extra transport or extra facilities, they might have accepted that the block was sustainable, but they feel that they have been given more clutter on local roads.

The situation cannot continue. I am very concerned about environmental sustainability. I participated in an Adjournment debate on housing totals for Hertfordshire—the Minister was not present—where I pointed out that sustainable communities should be environmentally sustainable. Local people feel that they have much to contribute and that they have been ignored. The Government have not conducted any environmental capacity studies on the Hertfordshire housing totals that have been imposed on us. Anecdotally, local people feel that they can tell the Government much about the state of the M25 and the roads around our area. They can tell the Government what we need to deliver those housing totals, should we have to deliver them. It is worrying that we are given those things to deliver but have little say about how we will deliver them and the impact on our communities. If the Bill means that we will have some say, some control and a way of shaping our community and not just delivering what the Government want us to deliver, then it will be all to the good.

Like many hon. Members, I have some concerns about whether there will be failures under the Bill. However, it is the nature of our belief, as Conservatives, that it is no good saying to people, “Yes, you can have choice. Yes, you can shape your place. Yes, you can determine your community. However, if we think that you are doing it wrongly, we will quickly whip those powers off you and tell you what is best.” Many of my hon. Friends and I do not subscribe to the nanny state, and I know from my postbag that many of the public do not, too.

People do not have a political motive when they write to me and say, “We are sick of being dumped on. We are sick of being told what we have to do.” The fallout is that people do not vote and do not attend council meetings. I have been a parish councillor and a district councillor. I remember packed parish meetings, where people debated small things happening in a village. Those people cared about that place and had a sense of place and community that meant that they genuinely cared. Such people would not spend money irresponsibly, and if a parish council or district council were to do that, the council would, as other hon. Members have said, be booted out. The best way to establish accountability and to relieve impotence and frustration is for people to go up to their local councillor and say, “This is what I value in my community.”

Lynda Waltho: I accept what the hon. Lady has said about parish issues and constituency issues. On employment, however, Government targets and Government policy have meant the virtual eradication of long-term youth unemployment in Stourbridge. The
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targets in the Jobcentre Plus and new deal policies made that happen in my constituency. I am worried that such Government mechanisms, which are fed by Government policy, would be dismantled, in which case Stourbridge might become an unemployment blackspot.

Anne Main: I accept the hon. Lady’s concern, but I have a higher opinion of my local area. We have very low unemployment in St. Albans, but it would be foolish maliciously to break up something that works for the good of the community. Surely this is about our taking the best practices from other areas, examining them and implementing them in our own areas. We should value what we have got that is good, but we should not be told how to do things, which is what we want to move away from.

Lynda Waltho: I am not suggesting that such action would be malicious. I am just going on my constituents’ experience of Dudley council. The thought of Dudley council being in charge of anything to do with employment would fill my constituents with horror.

Anne Main: The hon. Lady obviously knows her council better than mine. My council is not Conservative run, and I am talking about councils generally. I believe that most councils, of whatever political hue, genuinely want what is best for their local area. I am not being at all political about this; I have no wish to know about the politics of the hon. Lady’s local council.

11 am

I accept that there are some bad councils—we have all experienced them—and some duff councillors. I hate to say it, but we all have duff councillors on our councils, and that is because they have so little power. What would encourage anyone to work in a local council as a councillor—

Mr. Greg Knight: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend. According to the press today, the National Audit Office is saying that hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses are at risk of flooding due to the fact that the Environment Agency has failed to maintain proper flood defences. At the same time, the Met Office is saying that parts of Yorkshire and the midlands could be at the risk of flooding this very weekend. Have you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, received notice from the Environment Secretary that he intends to come here today to make a statement on this very important matter? Should not he come to the Dispatch Box to tell us what he is going to do about the incompetence of the Environment Agency and what action he is going to take to prevent many hundreds of thousands of people from facing the misery of having their homes flooded?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have no knowledge of the matters that the right hon. Gentleman raises, certainly not the most immediate news that he has given to the House. The points that he has made are on the record.
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They are not a matter for the Chair, but no doubt those on the Treasury Bench will have heard them and will convey them to the appropriate quarter.

Anne Main: We all have councillors of various abilities on our councils. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, we struggle in some areas to get people to stand as councillors. Many people ask us what is the point of being a councillor when they have so little control over what happens in their local area. The Bill would mean that people with business acumen and all sorts of strengths would start to be more engaged in their local council because they could start really to shape the community in which they live. That would be a good consequence.

Philip Davies: I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend says. Would she go slightly further and say that the other benefit of the new clause and the Bill would be to increase accountability? When my constituents have a complaint that I take up with the local authority, it often says that there is nothing that it can do about the matter because it is prescribed by the Government. When I then write to Ministers, they say that it is nothing to do with them and for the local authority to determine. We often find that there is no local accountability whatsoever. If the powers were clearly handed to a particular local authority or function, there would be increased accountability as well as increased participation.

Anne Main: My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Councils often recite the argument that they are officer led, not member led. The officers recommend that they should do something, and so, sheep-like, they all go ahead and do it. We hear that particularly often in relation to planning. That is frustrating. We should have member-led councils elected by, responsive to, and directly accountable to the people whom they serve.

Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the recent innovations that has been to the advantage of local accountability has been the formation of parish and town plans? That has allowed a wider group of people to get involved in deciding what is wrong in local communities, not just the usual suspects who get involved in parish politics, such as the wife of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley in a “Vicar of Dibley”-like scenario. [ Interruption . ] I was not disparaging my hon. Friend’s wife at all, but suggesting that sometimes the framework of parish councils means that more people need to get to grips with what are the problems in the community and finding solutions to them.

Anne Main rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady may of course respond to that intervention in her own way, but I am anxious that we should not develop this argument too far; we are after all discussing new clause 6.

Anne Main: I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

As somebody who has been involved in two parish plans, I suppose that I must be “Vicar of Dibley” mark 2. My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. When I was involved in parish plans, we asked local people
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questions and tried to formulate a draw-down mechanism to ensure that funding went to what they wanted. In the case of the Colney Heath parish plan, we knew that there was a dearth of play equipment because we had talked to local people and that is how they wanted the funding to be spent. New clause 6 is a bigger version of that. It would ensure that people were asked what they wanted and prioritise funding to go to those particular projects. Bringing back that deal of control and giving people a say and an input would be all to the good and has my full support.

Mr. Hollobone: I support new clause 6. I should like to draw to the Minister’s attention a possible early application of the Bill were it to pass into law. In the borough of Kettering, we have a particular problem with parking in the town centre. For many years, that has been the responsibility of the local police. The local police do many wonderful things in catching criminals and bringing them to justice, but it is fair to say that they have not had a terribly strong record on parking enforcement. Indeed, if I tell the Minister that Kettering currently enjoys the services of just one traffic warden who is now largely funded by Kettering borough council, as opposed to the police, perhaps he will realise the extent of our problem. This extends to the whole issue of the decriminalisation of on-street parking enforcement.

For years, throughout the country, local police forces have been given the responsibility for enforcing on-street car parking. They have not been doing it properly, and local councils have taken up powers to undertake those procedures themselves. However, I am not aware that in Northamptonshire the moneys that the local police were meant to be spending on parking enforcement have in any sense been transferred to the local authorities that have taken on those responsibilities. In Northamptonshire, the county council has now taken responsibility for on-street parking enforcement for most of the district areas in the county—but not, I am happy to say, in Kettering. I serve as a borough councillor in Kettering, and we are going to try to hold our ground. In our view, on-street parking enforcement would best be done by the borough council, which is fully aware of the needs of local people, local sensitivities and the particular issues that arise. Northamptonshire county council has many good qualities, but I am afraid that being aware of the particular local sensitivities of people in Kettering with regard to traffic issues is not one of them.

Kettering borough council does have responsibility for off-street car parking and raises a considerable amount of local revenue from that. In our view, it would make sense to put on-street parking enforcement together with off-street parking enforcement and run an incredibly efficient town centre parking enforcement operation. That would be to the benefit of residents and shoppers in the town because it would help to create a new vibrancy in the town centre, which is plagued by many different parking difficulties. If the Bill becomes law, there could well be an early application from Kettering borough council, having consulted the local police and the county council, to take over on-street parking enforcement in Kettering borough. If that were the case, as the local MP I would want to draw that to the attention of the Secretary of State and urge him or her to approve that application.


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At the moment, the mechanism whereby Kettering borough council can advance its cause is not clear to me. It is locked in a dispute with the county council that will be difficult to resolve, despite the fact that on many issues, at a local level, there is a lot of good will between the two local authorities. That is best evidenced by the recent discussions locally about the Government’s intention to try to bounce the people of Northamptonshire into a unified local authority, which I am pleased to say local councillors at borough, district and county levels, after much debate and discussion, universally agreed to reject in favour of enhanced local co-operation at three levels of local government—the county council, the district and borough councils, and the parish councils.

I believe that the enhanced local government network initiative in Northamptonshire will be one of the leading lights in the country for the way in which local authorities deliver their services effectively to local people. A good example is the customer service centre at Kettering borough council in the middle of the town. A local resident who goes to the customer service centre is not immediately aware of which local authority runs that centre, which is a joint initiative between the county council, Kettering borough council and other local agencies. That well run centre aims to ensure that the local resident who turns up asking for a local service gets what he or she wants in the quickest possible time. There is no particular pride in ownership—all the local councils agree that that resident should be served as quickly and helpfully as possible.

I use the opportunity of the debate to flag up to the Minister for Local Government that I hope that he accepts the new clause and that the Bill becomes law. If the Bill does become law, I hope that an early application will come his way from Kettering borough council to try to resolve the local parking problems.

Mr. Woolas: I congratulate the sponsors of the Bill and especially the promoter. The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) again spoke eloquently about his Bill. He has shown great skill and gone out of his way to be consensual. I shall comment on the hon. Member for the independent republic of Shipley (Philip Davies) shortly. I thank the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) and my hon. Friends who served on the Committee.

The Committee was unusual for the hon. Members who served on it and for me as the Minister who responded on behalf of the Government. I sat on the Front Bench with my fantastically loyal Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), whom I also thank, and without a member of the Whips Office to look after me and keep me on the straight and narrow. I now welcome the presence of the Whips, who bring certainty and provide gentle reminders of when one is straying beyond Government policy.

The experience was also unusual for another reason. I appreciate that it is not normal to mention civil servants and I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will not mind my paying tribute to them. It is difficult for Government officials, who worked extraordinarily hard for me, my team and the Committee, to work outside Government policy. When dealing with a private
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Member’s Bill, one inevitably has to adapt policy to meet objectives sometimes by the hour during the course of deliberations. There has been no lack of willingness to help the Minister. Officials have gone through the proper procedures of Cabinet Government to get Government clearance and rightly abided by the advice of parliamentary counsel, which is independent. Ministers are obliged to act on the advice of parliamentary counsel. If that were not the case, we would politicise the law and make bad law.

I am now delighted to report to the House that I have Government clearance and parliamentary counsel advice to support the Bill. It is the Government’s policy that it should reach the statute book. I give those assurances not only to hon. Members who served on the Committee, but to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), who is not in his place, but who is promoting the next Bill that we will discuss. I wanted to stress to him that it is Government policy to support the measure that we are considering.

I ask hon. Members not to accept new clause 6 but to adopt new clauses 1 and 2 instead. I can give the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) the assurance that he needs and has requested. Our advice is that we can achieve the intention of new clause 6 on function, money and a proper process following the spending report and other matters better through new clauses 1 and 2 than through new clause 6. The problem is not, therefore, one of principle.

11.15 am

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD): I support the principles of new clause 6, but could the Minister comment on the applicability of the new clause—and, indeed, the whole Bill—to Wales? Although it states that it is an England and Wales measures, a Library research paper on the Committee stage states:


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