 House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Sustainable Communities Bill |
Sustainable Communities Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Committee
Clerk
†
attended the Committee
Public Bill CommitteeWednesday 2 May 2007[John Bercow in the Chair]Sustainable Communities Bill10
am
That remaining
proceedings on the Bill be taken in the following order: Clauses 4 to
8; Clauses 2 and 3; Clauses 9 to13; the Schedule; new Clauses;
new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the
Bill.
Good morning,
Mr. Bercow. It is good to see you in the Chair this morning.
The underlying rationale behind the motion is that the Committee
thought it would be more logical to take clauses 4 and 5 in sequence
because one flows from the
other.
Question put
and agreed
to.
The
Chairman:
We come now to clause 4 standpart with
which it will be convenient to consider Government new clause 1.
Members of the Committee will note that starred amendments Nos. 30 and
31 have not been selected. I have not selected starred
amendments (a) and (b) to new clause 1. Decisions on new clauses will
come after we have dealt with all the clauses in line with the order of
consideration motion that the Committee has just
agreed.
To assist the
Committee, I am perfectly willing to allow a modest degree of latitude
this morning in permitting references to amendments that have not been
selected, but that is offered on the understanding that, if and when
they are selected for decision, I do not anticipate permitting further
debate on
them.
Clause 4Local
communities
allocation
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Minister for Local Government (Mr. Phil
Woolas):
Thank you, Mr. Bercow, for your
explanation. It was helpful both in making it clear to us
whatis happening and in facilitating a sensible debate.
Members of the Committee may have been as confused as I was about such
matters. Procedurally, this is new territory.
New clause 1 will replace
clause 4. It is the first new clause, rather than a new clause 1. It
is, in fact, a new clause 4, and we all know what happens when that
issue is raised. For the record, I propose on behalf of the Government
to provide a process under a new clause 4, which I hope the Committee
will welcome. I say at the outset that the Government are not doing
that reluctantly; they want local spending
reports.
Mr.
Woolas:
I am absolutely sure because Iam speaking
for the Government with collective agreement. We see such a proposal as
facilitating the local area agreement process outlined in the Local
Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, which is currently
before the House. It is a useful addition to those
powers.
I want to
outline how we see the local spending reports working and their
purpose. The new clause goes further than the Bill’s original
wording and is more satisfactory to all concerned. I shall explain why.
The local spending report would cover all public expenditure in each
local authority area in so far as it is possible to define it. It could
cover both current and future spending. The decision about how
regularly the report should be produced—whether yearly or
three-yearly in line with current spending review periods, or less
often—is not defined, but its purpose is to inform decisions. I
imagine that producing a report yearly may be the most convenient way
forward, even if the decisions about the allocation of the spending are
made over a longer
period.
A central part
of the Government’s policy towards local government financing,
for which there is strong support across the councils, as represented
by theLocal Government Association, is that multi-year
settlements—three-year settlements—are
very desirable, bringing predictability of finances and therefore
better decision making, and scope for efficiencies. I envisage local
spending reports being produced to inform those three-year spending
periods. Local area agreements cover three-year periods, with the next
round running from 2008 to 2011, but that does not necessarily tie the
local spending reports to three years, and it may be that one would
want to produce figures annually for each of the agencies and
authorities
mentioned.
Julia
Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD): The Minister is
explaining clearly how the process will tie in with and support the
local area agreements process. Does he agree that it is important that
every authority involved in the process is included also in producing
the spending allocation aspect of the
report?
Mr.
Woolas:
Yes, because it would help to support the process.
The new clause has a greater scope than the original Bill. Rightly, I
think, it includes a duty to consult interested parties and
authorities, so that the process is not one that is imposed from
Whitehall. I shall define the authorities that are covered in due
course.
The new clause
specifies also that the costs of producing the report must be limited.
Hon. Members may recall from the Second Reading debate the Government
saying that we were fearful of setting up too bureaucratic a process,
and we think that the proposed process would avoid that by limiting
costs.
There must be
flexibility in the scope, approachand timing of the reports.
Three members of the Committee represent two-tier areas, I believe, and
in the case of such areas a report might focus, for
example, on proposed expenditure within a county area, within a county
and district area, or just within a district
area.
The
fundamental point of the reports would obviously be to aid transparency
and accountability, but I believe that they would also have the
beneficial effect of prompting serious debate in local areas, as I
believe the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood accepts. As people and
parties argued about the allocation of taxpayers’ money in their
areas, two fundamental questions would arise. The first is, “Why
is our area not getting more than others?”, and the second is,
“Why can we not decide locally that more money should be spent
in different ways at local level?” It is entirely desirable that
the expenditure of taxpayer’s money should be held to account in
that
way.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
From his departmental experience, the Minister
must be aware of the processes and financing that underlie
regeneration, including the single regeneration budget. Most such
schemes involved some analysis of public expenditure in the relevant
districts, and in certain cases the result was that there was less
expenditure by local and regional government, because the SRB, or
whatever it happened to be called at the time, took over. Are there
lessons to be learned from that to the effect that there should be
better analysis of total expenditure in
communities?
Mr.
Woolas:
I think that two lessons can be learned from that
experience. Cambridge university produced an evaluation of the single
regeneration budget and concluded, quite rightly, that if regeneration
moneyis spent within a silo divorced from other public
expenditure in the area, there will be unintended and undesirable
consequences and that public expenditure will not achieve maximum
effectiveness. A single regeneration budget, for example, that replaces
a row of derelict shops with flats and houses but does not take into
account the availability of school places in the area does not help to
bring about a sustainable community. However, if the different public
agencies in the area pool money and share objectives, there is a
greater chance of achieving sustainability.
My hon. Friend gave the example
of the SRB. One may also use the example of the housing market renewal
fund or a new deal for communities. The organisations that deliver
those budgets must in future share targets with local government and
central Government agencies in that locality so that they work towards
the same desirable goals. There are any number of examples. Under the
performance regime that is being put in place, there will be 35
mandatory targets. If one of those was reducing deaths by fire, all the
agencies, including those spending the single regeneration budget,
would be required to have that target in mind. They would be under a
statutory obligation to show in the regeneration plans howthey
were helping to meet that target. That would include—in this
particular example—improving fire safety, sprinklers and other
safety devices, and looking at the impact of the regeneration plan on
the fire authorities’ risk assessment plan. That again would
make the community more sustainable. I am wary of introducing a
Stalinist five-year plan that involves producing a certain number of
tractor tyres.
Mr.
Woolas:
Yes, we are more ambitious. We have three-year
plans, not five-year plans. Ultimately the five-year plans were not
sustainable. They lasted 60-something years. I am going to stop the
analogy here.
As we
put down the building blocks of the Bill, we are drawing up a process
by which we can define expenditure as
local.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
The Minister must be aware of the problems
as well as the benefits of the regeneration schemes. As one who has
observed such schemes locally, I think that one of the negatives is
that local authorities can, if they are in a bad mood, use regeneration
as an excuse to reduce expenditure in a particular area. They can
essentially siphon off central Government money into local services
when they should be maintaining expenditure and using central
Government money as an add-on to improve the community. I realise that
the subject is complex, but the Minister must be aware of the
problem.
Mr.
Woolas:
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. That
is one of the other lessons of the evaluation of single regeneration
budgets. It is always the case that ring-fenced budgets have a knock-on
effect on non-ring-fenced current expenditure on other areas by local
authorities. The benefits or otherwise of ring-fencing is one of the
key arguments in local government finance. Ministers often believe that
by ring-fencing a budget, they are ensuring that their objectives will
be met. Of course, an unintended consequence is that non-ring-fenced
budgets get diverted away from the area that the ring-fenced budget is
aimed at. A ring-fenced budget for child care, for example, could cause
departments for children and education in local authorities to divert
money away from child care and into primary or secondary education.
There are those unintended consequences. The Bill, supplemented by the
local government Bill and the new regime, will square those
circles at the only level at which they can be squared—the local
level. I believe fundamentally that we cannot join up government just
at the national level; we can do so better locally. The local spending
report is a key information tool to allow local authorities, other
local agencies and the public to do so, as are the mandatory targets in
local area
agreements.
10.15
am
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The Minister is right to say that access to
information will be key to decision making and transparency. Will he
comment on a couple of authorities or funding streams of public money
that I believe might not be covered? Clause 80 of the local government
Bill sets out the bodies that will co-operate in the setting of local
area agreements. The list is fairly comprehensive, but I would
appreciate clarification on the position of two sets of
bodies.
Strategic
health authorities do not appear to be on the list, but they will
obviously have some influence on local spending. I raise the second
issue because of a constituency perspective. Cornwall has
benefitedfrom objective 1, which is European funding.
Although
it is matched by Government money through the Government office for the
south-west—in future, after the next programme convergence, it
will be matched through the regional development agency—there is
no scope for transparency about European money. Is there any way that
it can be included so that there is such
transparency?
Mr.
Woolas:
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and
the answers are yes and yes. Her point is important, and indeed it was
partly lobbying by Cornwall county council about the level at which
decisions on the allocation of objective 1 are taken that led me to
conclude that the process set out was desirable. There is one other
Member from the region here, but for the benefit of others I shall say
that objective 1 money was allocated by the European Union because of
the deprivation indices in Cornwall, which is the poorest part of our
country. The ratio of house prices to wages is the highest there, but
people often misunderstand it to be a rich, leafy area. It is very
leafy, but it is rich only in
parts.
The
Chairman:
Order. I hope that the Minister of State will
resist the temptation to dilate on the minutiae of the formula, because
although it might be titillating to the Committee it is not immediately
relevant to whether clause 4 should stand part of the
Bill.
It is central
to the regional economic strategy that areas’ economies should
be sustainable. At the moment the level at which the decision is taken
to allocate money is regional and, although that makes sense in helping
the regional strategy to hang together, it does not necessarily follow
that decisions taken at county level necessarily supplement the
regional decisions. We must find a better way to do
it.
The local spending
reports will identify moneys spent by all agencies in the hon.
Lady’s area. New clause 1(4) states that the area concerned may
be
“one or more local
authority areas”,
and
proposed subsection (3) states that the authorities may be a principal
council, a Government Department
or
“any other person
exercising public functions.”
The word “may” is used not
in the permissive but inthe legalistic sense; in practice
those bodies will be included.
The bodies mentioned by the
hon. Lady which will have a statutory duty to co-operate include
strategic health authorities, but the local spending reports will
include all public agencies as defined in proposed subsection (3), not
just those covered by that statutory duty. In that sense, the local
spending report is much wider than the measures in the local government
Bill, and the sums included in the local spending report are much
larger than those that are pooled or aligned through the local area
agreement. I believe that that is what the hon. Member for
Ruislip-Northwood wants to see, and I support him in that
regard.
Clive
Efford:
Will the Minister clarify something?I am
not a lawyer, and I find that an advantage sometimes.
[
Interruption.
] A barrack-room boy, perhaps, but
only when I was in my cab.
The Minister may recall that,
during the first sitting of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the
Member for Holborn and St. Pancras talked about the importance of plain
English in drafting our Bills. If “may” means
“shall”, why do we not use “shall”? I
wonder if the Minister could explain
that.
Mr.
Woolas:
I remember that intervention by my right hon.
Friend, when he called for plain English. If members of the Committee
recall, I said then that one reason why I was looking forward to the
change of Prime Minister and the leader of our party is that it will
enable us to tell jokes at lawyers’ expense without fear of
punishment from the Whips Office. [
Laughter.
]
Before hon. Members laugh too much, the same is also true of public
school attendance, but that is a different conversation.
I am quite prepared to accept
that, in proposed subsection (1), the word “shall” should
appear, rather than the word “may”, because the intention
is that the Secretary of State “shall” produce the
report, not that the Secretary of State “may” produce the
report. If she—or, at some future point, he—turns up to
work and decides, on a whim, not to produce the report, that would not
be acceptable. The intention is that the reports will be
published.
Regarding
proposed subsection (4), I would caution that we should not go too far
in rejecting legal advice, because, of course, the measure has to be
tested in the courts. As it is the lawyers and judges who control the
courts, we do not want to push our luck too far. The intention is that
the area concerned—the list gives some of the different types of
area, or authority—“may” make the request, and
that provides some flexibility. As I said before, one may want to do
that at district level, even in some cases at town council level, and
not at principal local authority level.
The purpose is to achieve a
report that identifieshow much money will be spent in each
area by the authorities—local authorities and the other agencies
that I have mentioned—and, if they do not spend the money
themselves, to identify who does. The clause originally distinguished
between funding for primarily national or for local authorities. The
proposed amendment would put in a different and more useful
distinction. Much expenditure could be legitimately said to be neither
primarily national nor local, and we consider it to be more powerful to
identify the totality of funding that may be spent in an area, so that
there is a common base from which to work. That exercise would be based
largely on existing information, even information that may be currently
available. Although I have nothing against either profession, I do not
wish to set up a new process that enriches accountants, let alone
lawyers.
Mr.
Woolas:
We do not propose to create a new power to require
additional information to be provided by partner authorities beyond the
information that is currently being produced. One of the complaints
that councils make about the alleged—sometimes
real—over-centralisation and bureaucracy comes about not as a
result of the requirement to meet targets, but as a result of the
requirement to provide information. Information is necessary to draw
comparisons, but requesting information for the sake of it, or for a
new process, can be overly burdensome. I am not seekinga power
to require councils to provide any other information beyond the
information they already provide.
The aim of the task would be to
quantify expenditure that can be easily identified as relating
toa particular area and to understand the amount of money for
which local partners and communities are responsible. As well as
providing information for transparency and accountability, the purpose
will be to help local authorities, their partner agencies and their
residents better to plan expenditure by enabling them to identify what
money they have to help them to meet their local objectives. The
proposal will give local authorities and their partners substantially
more power than would the Bill. I hope that it is seen in that helpful
context.
The Bill
distinguishes between national and local money, which would give local
authorities alone the right to reallocate to local matters funding that
had already been allocated by Departments or agencies. As I said, that
would have been unworkable and would have created conflicts, whereas
the statutory duty to co-operate in the local government Bill is
designed to improve partnership working. Under that Bill, the scope of
the new local area agreement is vastly enlarged. We will introduce a
duty on named partners to co-operate in setting the local area
agreement targets. That process will be debated during consideration of
clause 5 of this Bill. We will also introduce a duty to involve local
people in the preparation of community strategies, or sustainable
community strategies as they will be renamed and reshaped when this
Bill reaches the statute book.
We have made it clear that the
amount of the available funding that should be used to support delivery
of local and national priorities will be determined locally. We would
like to ensure that the financial information that is available to
partners is as good as possible. That is what the new clause is
intended to achieve.
I
should like to make a final point in speaking to the new clause in this
stand part debate, as you have helpfully allowed me to do,
Mr. Bercow. We must ensure that we do not set up a
bureaucratic process that undermines the purpose of the Bill, which is
to achieve sustainable communities. Any potential new costs need to be
kept to an absolute minimum. I am conscious that the Committee will
want the Government to adhere to the new burdens principle, which was
introduced by my predecessor as the Minister for Local Government, my
right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr.
Raynsford). The principle requires the Government to provide extra
recurrent funding if they place a new burden onthe local
authority. That policy is taken seriously in
the Government, and I do not want to create new burdens, because of the
possible bureaucratic and cost
implications.
Any new
powers should be broad enough not to bind the Secretary of State into a
prescriptive process; they should help in the development of the
sustainable community strategy in each local authority area which we
are all trying to achieve. The powers must be limited by ensuring that
any proposed mechanism to apportion public expenditure to local
authority areas is not onerous.
10.30
am
I shall give an
example that came out of the consultation across Government, as the
Committee may be interested to learn about it. I apologise for the time
that I took to produce the amendments to the Bill. One of the reasons
why it takes time—I hope thatmy right hon. Friend the
Member for Holborn andSt. Pancras will back me up on
this—is that one has to consult across Government. One of the
issues that that threw up was that figures for legal aid expenditure
incurred by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and spending on
provision of court services, are not currently provided at local
authority level, as there is no business case for doing so. The same is
true for expenditure of other agencies. Part of the expenditure of the
Highways Agency is not allocated locally, although part
is.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Concerns have been expressed to me by
lawyers in Cornwall that the changes to legal aid will significantly
affect the ability to provide legal aid in the county. On that basis,
if there are concerns thatit results in patchy provision,
might it be importantto have that kind of information at a
regional or sub-regional level to ensure that there is fair access to
those services for
all?
Mr.
Woolas:
That is a reasonable point. I believe that the
figures are available at county level, but not always at principal
authority level. That raises an important point. A case comes to mind
of an individual who was receiving up to £2,000 of legal aid to
fight an order to evict him from his house. The eviction was being
pursued by a local authority on the basis that £2,000 was owed
in back-rent. The case was made that it would be easier to use the
£2,000 from legal services and give it to the council to pay off
the rent, and the objective of all, apart from the lawyers, who, of
course, profited from the process, would have been met. That is a good
example of why it is desirable for agencies to co-operate, and to have
a duty to co-operate, and find solutions to problems that are not
overly bureaucratic. I am simply pointing out that I do not want to
createa process that requires agencies to engage in an
accounting exercise that is not useful for their business.
I mentioned the
Highways Agency. The cost of a motorway running through a local
authority area would not be a matter that a local authority would want
to concern itself with, but the amount of expenditure on maintenance of
trunk roads would be a key bit of information that could be useful in a
local spending report.
I hope that I have convinced
the Committee that the Government are not simply proposing this new
clause
to deflect something that they do not like. On the
contrary, we believe that this is a helpful process for developing
local area agreement. The new clause is drawn up quite flexibly, and
gives scope to the Secretary of State and her successors to produce
information that is most helpful to local areas. I reassure the
Committee that, if it desires when we get to the relevant point, I am
more than happy to accept the proposal to amend proposed subsection
(1), line 2, to replace the word “may” with the word
“shall”.
Mr.
David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I thank my hon. Friend
for giving way just as he gets to his peroration. May I clarify how he
intends to accept that? Will the amendment be re-tabled on Report, or
is there some other mechanism by which this could take place by
osmosis?
Mr.
Woolas:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that,
for two reasons. One is that I had forgotten to mention it, and the
second is that my officials were glaring at me to mention it. The
caveat, which is only sensible, is that when the Committee has finished
its deliberations, I wish parliamentary counsel to consider the Bill
and advise on any unintended mistakes or contradictory consequences.
The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne is looking suspicious. I am
simply saying that it is desirable, and it is always the case, that
Governments do that with a Bill that has been considered by Parliament
and changed. I am being open and, I hope, helpful to the
Committeein improving the Bill. It is desirable to give
theend product of the Committee’s deliberations to
parliamentary counsel. I am sure that the Bill’s backers would
want to do so,
too.
With
that caveat, and with the guidance of the Chair, the opportunity may be
given to take the amendment so we can change the new clause in
Committee.
Mr.
Woolas:
No, it is a deliberate, conscious decision. I am
giving a commitment that the change is up to the Committee, not me, and
I am happy to accept it. You indicated in your opening remarks,
Mr. Bercow, that there will be such a possibility for
us.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
I just want to be clear that I understand how
the process will work and that, if the amendment is agreed to, the Bill
as a whole will be considered to see whether there are any internal
contradictions. Will it be that way around, rather than the Committee
rejecting the amendment and seeing if it can be incorporated
later?
Mr.
Woolas:
Yes, that is correct. I think that that would give
the Committee the reassurance that it seeks. It would be wrong of me
not to do so. I hope that I have explained the purposes of the new
clause.
Mr.
Woolas:
Yes, it does. It is not accepted reluctantly, but
accepted as something that is
desirable.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
I thank the Minister for that plain and clear
assurance and for his pleasure in endorsing this
proposal.
Mr.
Woolas:
For the benefit of clarity, the hon. Lady
wanted to make another intervention. I will give way to her, then I
really will shut
up.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The Minister has made it clear that he is
prepared to accept changing “may” to
“shall” in proposed subsection (1) of the new clause. He
has also made it clear that it is important that “may”
remains in proposed subsection (4), and we agree on that. However, I
still do not understand whether he is prepared to accept changing
“may” to “shall” in proposed subsection
(3). Would not that be appropriate in the merry month of
May?
Mr.
Woolas:
It is not desirable for any Bill defining an
authority to use such language. We do not want to restrict which
agencies are included. We want the definition to be as broad as
possible, so that new agencies, for example, would be covered by the
existing definitions. I should like the local spending report to
identify all public expenditure within the area. I hope that that
explanation is accepted in the spirit in which it is intended. It is
not unusual to use “may”. Seeingyou in the
Chair, Mr. Bercow, I am reminded of a 45-minute debate in a
Committee about whether “may” was the appropriate word to
use and, if my memory serves me, you accepted that it
was.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
There are many areas wherenew clause
1 is an improvement on clause 4. There is agreement that a bottom-up
approach is needed, and the new clause helps to re-enforce
it.
Flexibility in
the timing of the production of the reports is also important.
Fundamentally, we need transparency, which would benefit not only local
authorities but the public, who are ultimately the consumers of
services on which the money is spent. However, the proposal needs
amending, and key words such as “may” are important.
Although I am pleased that the Minister has accepted the first
amendment—(a)—which changes “may” to
“shall” in proposed subsection (1) of the new clause, it
is also important to change proposed subsection (3), because if there
is to be a spending plan that covers all public spendingin the
area, it must include every agency with responsibility for public
spending.
Proposed
subsection (3)
states—
“The
authorities may be—
(a) a
principal council;
(b) a
government department;
(c) any
other person exercising public
functions.”
It has to be
all of them; it cannot be just one or two. I am concerned that if the
new clause remains as drafted, there will be the option of looking at
it on a limited
basis and not producing a spending plan of all public spending. That was
the tenor of the discussions between the main supporters of the Bill
and the Minister, and I therefore hope that he will reconsider the
proposal. We are very grateful to him; we do not question his good
faith, but unless proposed subsection (3) is changed, the meaning of
the Bill will be significantly
undermined.
The
amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood makes it
clear that there should be a requirement for transparency—that
it should not just be a possibility. It is useful, too, because it sets
out all the agencies that engage in local area agreements
asset out in clause 80 of the local government Bill. I
appreciate that the Minister said that his new clause was drawn even
more widely than that to encompass all public spending and I am
reassured that it will include the things that I raised with him in an
intervention—not only other authorities, such as strategic
health authorities, but public money that is being spent via the
European Union. I give one cheer because I am pleased that there is
some movement on the language in the proposal, but we feel very
strongly that it must include all public spending, and unless the
wording of proposed subsection (3) is changed, that will not be
achieved.
On the
spending issue, the Minister said that it should be clear that this
must not just be an accounting exercise. As I said, an understanding of
levels of spending not only informs priorities but helps to inform the
effectiveness of the delivery of services. Something that immediately
springs to mind, as I have done some work on it, is the delivery of the
warm front initiative, which is aimed at helping people out of fuel
poverty. We know what fuel poverty is on a locallevel, but it
is not possible to get information onhow assistance through
the warm front scheme isbeing delivered by local authorities.
There are no subcontractors able to deliver the warm front scheme in
Cornwall, and that has a significant impact on the number of people who
can be assisted.
In
that case, knowing what public money is being spent on the warm front
scheme would be a massive help in understanding whether that Government
policy was being effectively delivered locally. It is not
justan accounting exercise and a matter of identifying
priorities; it is critical to understanding the
effectiveness of the local delivery of Government policies. I hope that
the Minister will take note of those points.
We are pleased that there will
be movement on proposed subsection (1), which is our key concern, but
movement on proposed subsection (3) will be crucial, too. The new
clause and the Bill will be significantly diluted if that is not taken
on
board.
10.45
am
I commend the Minister. We are
making real progress. I simply want to ask two questions. First,
because of my tardiness, I want to get the order of the
clauses clear in my mind. Will he state clearly where he understands new
clause 1 will go, notwithstanding that in the wash-up period before
Report there is always the chance to look at reordering the clauses to
ensure that their sequence and language are as clear as
possible?
Secondly,
on the issue of “shall” or “may”,
parliamentary lexicography is very interesting, but this really means
something. At the end of the day we have to make it clear to principal
local authorities what they should discuss local spending plans with
other bodies. I hope that the Minister will tell us how we inform those
different bodies that they need to ensure that their spending is part
of the plan. I presume that some secondary legislation will spell out
exactly what the framework of the local spending plans will be, or that
we will have at the very least a code of practice so that there is
consistency across this great nation, and every area knows how
everything that is being put in the pot is provided and we do not get
the inconsistency that the hon. Lady described.
The warm front initiative is a
good example. I do a lot of work with home improvement agencies, and
even within Gloucestershire it is interesting how different the
spending patterns can be. That can be to do with localism, but it also
can be down to the fact that nobody has sat down and tried to
co-ordinate those spending activities, which could ultimately lead to
greater efficiency. I hope that the Minister will say something about
that.
The
Chairman:
Before any other hon. Member rises to speak, and
certainly long before the Minister seeks to respond to the hon.
Gentleman’s observations,it might help if I explain
that if members of the Committee wish to support new clause 1 they
would first be obliged to reject clause 4 and the proposition that it
should stand part of the Bill. Furthermore, in terms of the order in
which new clauses are taken, of which new clause 1 clearly is an
example, it is perhaps as well to remind the Committee that that order
is a matter for the Member in charge of the Bill, but it is not a
matter with which Members need to preoccupy themselves in the course of
today’s
proceedings.
Clive
Efford:
I, too, shall be brief. I commend the Minister for
his approach, for engaging in the debate and picking up the spirit of
the Committee.
On the
issue of “may” and “shall”, the thing that
concerns me is that the legislation is drafted by lawyers, who have
always operated like a cartel. If we wrote legislation in plain
language we would put ourselves out of a job because no one would have
to come to us to interpret it. The concern about “may” is
about what is not included, and that is the little bit that comes after
it, which is “delete as applicable, may or may not.” By
implication, the word “may” must also mean “may
not”, which is what troubles me. If we mean
“shall”, we should use that word. I cannot see that there
will be a legal interpretation that says that “shall”
does not do what it says on the tin, so it should be
included.
My other
point is about transparency—local people understanding how
things happen and what people are doing in their local communities. If
people think that things are not happening, perhaps making information
available to them could explain why. Alternatively,
people could be armed with questions to ask the people who are
responsible so that they can explain what is going on. Providers of
health, transport and other services in a local community all affect
the vibrancy and life of that community, and people need to be well
informed about them and to have some understanding.
In a former
manifestation, I was responsible for issues relating to health and
social services in my local authority area. All the public services
annually provided a report to the local community: the police provided
crime and expenditure statistics, and the health service provided a
health report or review including statistics on things such as
incidents of heart disease, strokes and so on in different sections of
the community. The services spent a great deal of money to produce
glossy documents, and I suggested that we should all get together and
produce just the one document and to make it a civic event—it
could happen over either a week or a day—at which all the public
services come together.
I thought that we should
produce not only a report, but a directory with contact details that
told people to whom or to where they should go for information. That
way, people would have information not only on how services had been
provided and performance, but on contact details to keep next to their
telephone. If people wanted to contact someone about their bins not
being emptied, or the local health service or police—we now have
safer neighbourhoods teams in every community—they would have a
document that told them about their first point of contact and other
information.
The idea
was to make the services’ reporting to the local community into
a major public event. The Bill offers a way towards that: it will bring
together the service providers in a community by saying that they must
be part of an area agreement. Where there is an area agreement, there
will be a report on how people have performed against it, and that
information will be well publicised in the local community.
We have made a lot of progress
this morning and on that basis the Minister should be commended. I look
forward to being able to support the steps that we have taken towards
achieving a Bill that will bring about sustainable
communities.
Mr.
Hurd:
I add my voice to those who congratulated the
Minister on setting a constructive tone in the debate. The Minister
will be aware that there was some disappointment with Government new
clause 1 when it was tabled, but he has prevented a lot of criticism
with his tone.
The
Minister is well aware of the importance of clause 4. The Bill is about
giving people real influence over how their communities are developed.
As we discussed in the debate on the Floor of the House, in this day
and age, power equals money—the Bill is about giving people real
influence over how money is spent in their area. The vision is that a
great spotlight will be thrown on to all the nooks, crannies and
corners of public expenditure so that the communities that we represent
can for the first time get a clear picture of how much
taxpayers’ money is being spent in their area, and what it is
being spent on.
In this day and age, it is
extraordinary how difficult it is to access that money—we do not
know the scale of it, but it feels enormous. We used the example of
Kent because it is one of a very few counties that has been able to
access meaningful data. In round numbers, there is approximately
£8 billion of taxpayers’ money swilling around Kent, of
which £2.5 billion is visible and accountable under direct local
government control. We do not know about the rest. However, the county
council has done some analysis that provides a powerful picture of how
money is directed in a local way. The vision of this Bill is that every
community should have access to such information. It is potentially an
enormously powerful tool.
As the Minister knows, with
transparency comes greater accountability, and with accountability, as
has been touched on by various contributors to the debate, we can
reasonably expect greater efficiency. There will be great pressure on
the system to be more efficient and to account for every penny that is
spent. One aspect of the decline in the sustainability of communities
is that people withdraw from the process because they feel that they
have no influence. They think, “If we have no say, what is the
point of getting involved?” The hope of the Bill’s
sponsors is that once we can show them the money and give them the
sense that they can influence how it is spent, we will trigger a new
sense of civic participation and engagement.
That is the virtuous circle
that we are trying to create. First, however, we need to define what
the money is. That is what the clause is about. The virtuous circle
that I described was under threat because of one word, the word
“may”. On the whole, I like May—it is the best
month of the year. It is the month in which I was born; it is, as we
can see outside, associated with beautiful weather; it is a month of
great potential. In fact, I like the word so much that I named one of
my daughters Katie Mae. However, history has taught me that Katie may
and she may not. Just as that applies to my daughter, so it may apply
to any Minister or Secretary of State.
I add my voice to those who
have expressed the view that here “may” is not good
enough. That has nothing to do with this Minister, who was unkindly
compared to a slippery bar of soap. I try not to think too hard about
the Minister in the bathroom, but when I do I see him as an absorbent
sponge, picking up the wit and wisdom of this Committee. This point,
however, is nothing to do with the
Minister.
Mr.
Hurd:
Or even new clause 4, Mr. Bercow, but it
is to do with the word “may”. An interesting piece of
research that has been prepared for me reinforces those concerns about
the word “may”. It is called “Lostin
Translation—The Abandonment of Ministerial Assurances.”
The claims of abandoned assurancesthat it happens to list date
back to 1997, but I am sure that a more objective exercise could be
undertakenthat covers a longer period, spanning several
Administrations.
The point is
that people—certainly this Committee—will not take
ministerial statements on trust. We need something more robust in the
framework of the Bill. We cannot
allow good intentions to be lost in translation. I do not know whether
the Minister is familiar with the movie of that name. It is one of my
favourites, and contains long sections in which Bill Murray is
wandering around a hotel in Tokyo with a baffled look on his face. I
hope that when, as seems inevitable, the movie of the Sustainable
Communities Bill is made, the director will not choose to dedicate
large sections of that film to images of the Minister wandering the
corridors of his Department, asking, “Why is it that whenever I
say something, it gets lost in translation when it comes to the clauses
put before the Committee?” That is what appears to have happened
in the case of this new clause.
I congratulate the Minister on
his flexibility in relation to subsection (1) of the new clause, but I
would also reinforce the message of the hon. Member for Falmouth and
Camborne on subsection (3). You kindly, Mr. Bercow, gave me
some leeway to refer to my amendment. I do so only in order to draw to
the Minister’s attention what we are trying to achieve, which is
to make it extremely clear who should be party to the new
agreement.
11
am
I recognise
that the Government’s new clause contains a seed of something
that may actually be more ambitious than even the Bill’s
sponsors contemplated, and I congratulate the Government on their
ambition. However, that ambition is qualified by the word
“may”. As currently drafted, the new clause incorporates
too much flexibility for my taste, and I sense for the
Committee’s taste as well, in that a potentially less
enlightened Secretary of State than the current one, who might even be
of a different political colour and might not like the Bill, could
remove from the process key Departments or agencies that should not
escape the spotlight.
The amendment that I tabled
sets out a list of institutions that are parties to local area
agreements which is drawn from pages 54 and 55 of the local Government
Bill. That is a logical source given that the Government have said that
they see the Bill as an extension of local government legislation and
as a mechanism for strengthening local area agreements. I put it to the
Minister that to seek to be more explicit in this Bill in defining the
agencies and Departments that it covers is consistent with everything
that he has said. I understand that the Government want to take broad
powers and retain as much flexibility as possible, not least because
they need to consult the people likely to be affected, and the
Committee is sensitive to that, but subsection (4) of the new clause is
too loose and we need a stronger commitment, which we can achieve by
reinserting the word
“shall”.
The
Chairman:
Order. Further to my earlier remarks, I should
like to clarify fully the order in which new clauses will be dealt
with. In accordance with the order of consideration motion moved by the
hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood, new clauses will be dealt with after
all the clauses and the schedule have been disposed of. The place where
any additional new clauses will actually appear is a matter for the
hon.
Member in charge of the Bill. I hope that that adequately answers the
point made by the hon. Member for
Stroud.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
I want to take the opportunity to thank the
Minister for helping us this morning. He need not look so puzzled; I am
thanking him because without a requirement on expenditure levels the
whole concept of local sustainability and local involvement in decision
making becomes impossible. I speak as one whose first involvement in
the issue began in the mid-1970s, when I was the chair of an area
renewal programme in Haringey which was funded at that time by the Home
Office. Our intention was to try to ensure that local services focused
more on the needs ofwhat was essentially a poor, diverse,
working-class community. With a lot of pressure, it was possible to
make the local authority define its levels of expenditure, but it was
extremely difficult to make any other public service do anything of the
kind or indeed participate in any meaningful
way.
We have moved on
a lot now that there is urban renewal and regeneration and so
on—whatever the programmes happen to be called at different
times. However, my observation from a number of regeneration schemes in
my constituency is that, without the necessary diversity of
information, there is a tendency among local authority officials to use
them as a subsidy for other services. The Minister rightly points out
that the Government intend always to ring-fence expenditure, because
they would want the money to be spent specifically in, to take examples
from my area, Finsbury Park, Archway or Mildmay. That is fine, and I
agree with it. However, the local authority might then move in, and
officials with their beady eyes might spot the expenditure, quietly and
subtly reducing spending in various departments on the basis that the
single regeneration budget or whatever will pick it up.
I am sure that other hon.
Members have seen that process happen in their own communities, so the
progress that we have made today is
important.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is not
just an issue of local councils reducing funding using ring-fenced
funding from central Government? As with European funding, it is
critical to ensure that that funding is additional. The key issue of
additionality must be identified clearly in the
process.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
Absolutely. It is always difficult for central
Government and the European Commission to allocate expenditure and hope
that it is spent efficiently, not just used as a subsidy by the
relevant local authorities. The process is never easy. Efficiency can
be achieved only by having a high degree of local accountability, which
is where the Bill comes in. My experience of the good side is that a
lot of local accountability comes about. Local authorities want to get
involved as do other local services, and it can be a therapeutic and
good process. Indeed, it can break down many community barriers because
people have to come together to debate this and major
local planning issues.
On the negative side, the
language and process used can be so arcane, obtuse and obscure that the
local community, having started with high hopes of a regeneration
scheme and watched it develop, then see it gradually melt away. All who
are left are the anoraks, the nerds and the business interests who get
together and carve the whole thing up. The local population then feels
completely excluded from the whole process. We cannot prescribe
everything from here, but if the Committee agrees that wording
essentially requiring publication of all levels of expenditure in a
community is carried, it will at least mean that the raw information is
there. Those of us who represent diverse communities—I suppose
that everyone does in some ways—often find that the less able a
community in lobbying for its interests, the less money it
receives.
I shall cite
one more example of my Haringey experience. Those who are familiar with
the boroughof Haringey will know that it extends from
Highgateto Tottenham. When I was chair of the planning
committee, it rapidly became apparent that the
planning committee spent most of its time discussing conservation issues
with a small number of people in Highgate. Those people spoke really
well; they were brilliant advocates for Highgate village, whereas the
people at Tottenham did not have such tribunes and the ability to
access the power structures. The only way to succeed is to take the
power of decision making, particularly on planning issues, to a much
more local area and allow the information to be provided. The voices
can then be heard. Anything less than that leads to the articulate and
the powerful gaining control, and the less articulate and the less
powerful losing out. If the Bill achieves what I hope it is intended to
do, which is to empower local communities that often feel completely
remote from decision making, particularly about major planning issues,
we will have done a good job. We have made some excellent progress this
morning, and I thank the Minister for
that.
Question put
and
negatived.
Clause
4 disagreed
to.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr.
Hurd.]
Adjourned
accordingly at nine minutes past Eleven o’clock till Wednesday 9
May at Ten
o’clock.
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