Clause
3
Representations
by principal councils in connection with the action
plan
2.15
pm
Mr.
Drew:
I beg to move amendment No. 32, in
clause 3, page 3, line 11, leave
out ‘on a plan under section 2(3)(b)’ and insert
‘under section
2(5)’.
The
Chairman:
With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 33, in
clause 3, page 3, line 21, leave
out ‘of residents under 25 years old.’ and
insert
‘through panels
set up in accordance with subsection (1A) of residents, employers and
employees in the council’s area and in particular
of—
(i) young people in the
area;
(ii) persons from ethnic
minorities;
(iii) tenants in
social housing;
(iv) persons
living on lower incomes;
(v)
persons with disabilities;
(vi)
persons living in deprived areas;
and
(vii) persons over 60 years
of age.
An area is deprived for
the purposes of sub-paragraph (vii) if the official male adult
unemployment rate exceeds 10 per cent., or if more than 20 per cent. of
households have net incomes below £15,000 per
year.
(1A) For the purposes of this Act, a principal
council shall, so far as is practicable, arrange for one or more panels
to be established in its area representing persons who live in its area
or who work or employ workers in its area and any such panel shall, so
far as is practicable
include—
(a)
representatives of the categories of persons specified in subsection
(1)(d)(i) to (viii), and
(b)
representatives of such persons or bodies as the council considers
appropriate being persons or bodies of any nature who exercise
functions or are engaged in activities in relation to the
sustainability of local communities in the council’s area;
and
(c) an equal number of male
and female members.
For the
purposes of this subsection a member of a panelmay represent
more than one of the categories specified in subsection
(1)(d).’.
No.
34, in
clause 3, page 3, line 25, leave
out from ‘council’ to end of line 42 and
insert—
‘(3) A principal
council shall cooperate with any panel set up in its area under
subsection (1A) in making recommendations under section
2(5).’.
Mr.
Drew:
Following the progress that we have just
made—or, at least, I think we have made—I shall speed up.
I am delighted to move the amendment on behalf of the hon. Member for
Ruislip-Northwood, who is the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for
Falmouth and Camborne and myself. These discussions are quite important
because they relate to the kernel of the Bill, which about the duty to
co-operate. Without the duty appearing in clause 2, clause 3 would be
somewhat
meaningless.
These
amendments were tabled for a number of reasons. The most obvious is
that, on Second Reading, a considerable amount of time was spent on the
criticisms, quite justified in some respects, that the clause was
exclusive rather than inclusive. I listened to those criticisms,
particularly those of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon
(Mr. Dismore) who said that there was a view that the Bill
is unlikely to include those outside the usual suspects and that it was
vital for this to be a meaningful piece of legislation. He suggested
that we reached out to groups that were not necessarily part of the
normal process to try to engage them in what we undertook to be a
sustainable community.
Amendment No. 33 is the most
important in the group and it spells out clearly what should be in the
Bill to make it more inclusive. The hope is that the amendment will be
favoured by all of the Committee, and particularly by the Minister.
That is why the duty to co-operate is so important. We are not just
talking about who should co-operate with the selector, but about the
nature of the process on which they are co-operating. I am pleased to
lay that point out. There are those who will say that that does not
need to be in the Bill; that we have had that debate under clause 2.
However, if we are to make the legislation explicit and make it clear
that we want to engage in a bottom-up process, we need to clarify who
we want to engage with. I hope that that is very clear. Clearly,
amendments Nos. 32 and 34 are consequential on that, and I
hope that they will not take much time. I certainly am not going to
give them much time.
I just want to say a few things
about clause 3 as it stands, and why it is so important that it stands
part of the Bill. More particularly, however, I want to say why
we are toughening up the clause to ensure that we are explicit about who
should be co-operated and engaged with, and the process by which that
should take place. In a sense, that parallels what is going on with the
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. Much has been
made of clause 108 of that Bill and I am eternally grateful to those
who have prepared the papers to help us to understand exactly what we
are doing. All I would say is that next time, can we have bigger sheets
of paper? We could get even more to read on to one page. I think that we are clear that
we are trying to run this private Member’s Bill in parallel with
the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, which is
still passing through the House. It was good to get an explanation of
where the provision fits in regard to clause 108 of that Bill. Although
we see the two Bills as complementary, we want to give this Bill real
teeth. There are elements of clause 108 that we would like to
strengthen. The clause is still discretionary and, given our previous
discussions on the duty to co-operate, we understand that it is
something that will, rather than might,
happen.
There are
specific reasons why we are outlining the groups to be included in the
Bill. We consider that they are appropriate to be engaged with,
although it is not an exclusive list. Members of the Committee will
also have received a paper from the National Council for Voluntary
Organisations, which wants to make sure that the panels
include
“representatives
of such persons or bodies as the council considers appropriate being
persons or bodies of any nature who exercise functions or are engaged
in activities in relation to the sustainability of local communities in
the council’s
area”.
The NCVO wants a
two-way process of co-operation. The voluntary sector wishes that form
of words to appear in the clause to make it clear that a two-way
process will take place and to strengthen the provision.
Children’s
trusts are a good example and, by their very nature, are about local
decisions based on local needs. It was good that the voluntary sector
examined how it would genuinely engage with the statutory sector on how
children’s trusts could evolve and make sure that they were
doing the things that the locality would want them to do. Such action
would succeed only if it occurred on the basis of
co-operation.
Some
appropriate current research has been undertaken by the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation on the contribution of local high streets to sustainable
communities, and social interactions in urban, public places. In my
community of Stonehouse in the constituency of Stroud where I have been
a town councillor for 21 years—I do it for real—we are
looking at the idea of shared spaces, re-designing how traffic flows
through the town and, more particularly, how we engage with the open
spaces beyond. I can think of no better example of how to make that
community more sustainable than if the local authority hierarchy
engaged in such matters gave the planning process some teeth. Clearly,
nothing matters more to a local community than the space at its centre
and how that is protected, improved and, dare I say, enhanced over
time. In trying to strengthen clause 3, we want to make it clear who is
engaged, who is co-operating and who they are co-operating
with.
Julia
Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD): In the debate on
a previous clause, we discussed the mechanisms of operation between
local government and Departments. The clause, together with the
amendments, which I welcome as improvements to the clause, are about
how principal authorities actually work with their communities.
Ultimately, that is what the Bill is about: empowering local
authorities on the understanding that they in turn empower local
communities, so that the communities’ voices are heard. We
cannot have one without the other.
The hon. Member for Stroud was
right to mention the need to avoid hearing only from the usual suspects
who are already engaged in the existing processes. I think of the
engagement that I have witnessed in my constituency before the Bill was
taken up as a private Member’s Bill by the hon. Member for
Ruislip-Northwood. There was a campaign in support of the Bill. I admit
that among the hundreds of people at the meeting in my constituency,
and the hundreds who turned up to public meetings in constituencies all
around the country, the usual suspects were present. There were plenty
of familiar faces of people whom I encounter regularly at my surgeries
or those whose signatures appear regularly on petitions that are
brought to me. However, there were also people whom I had never seen
before.
Jeremy
Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): Could I ask the hon. Lady
not to use the term “usual suspects”? It is demeaning to
people who have spent a great deal of time campaigning on all kinds of
issues that would probably never have come to public attention had
those people not done their campaigning and had they not kept the flag
high.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid
point.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
I have been called a usual
suspect.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman was
provoked by a personal feeling. Of course, such people are to be
valued, because they engage constructively in processes in which
constructive engagement is often not easy and which require a certain
tenacity to ensure that voices are heard.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
I am speaking up for the usual
suspects.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The Bill is important because the meetings
have been attended not only by such people but by others who feel
incredibly isolated and frustrated by the current processes, and who do
not believe that there is any opportunity for their voices to be heard.
This morning, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall referred to
second homes. One of the main frustrations expressed in those meetings
was about that issue, which is highly significant in large parts of
Cornwall—there are villages in which 80 per cent. of properties
are second homes. At the moment, people might try to raise the issue
but there is no mechanism for that, nor for having it dealt with. The
Bill, together with the processes that are set out in
clauses 2 and 3, embody ways finally to overcome those difficulties.
That is why it is important.
I should like to speak more
widely on the basis of experiences from my area. In preparing for the
Bill, I visited the chief executive of my local authority and the urban
regeneration company to talk about the practicalities of the processes.
We discussed how much consultation was already being undertaken, the
limits and constraints, and the areas in which they wished to see
progress. The reality was that their ability to deliver actual
consultation and co-operation across the entire local authority area
was quite patchy. Delivery did not necessarily depend on the level of
deprivation, however. One of the wards in my constituency is among the
most deprived in the country. It has a concentration of deprivation
that does not exist in many other parts of Cornwall, because they do
not have the same population density. That has triggered a level of
investment that has resulted in some quite intensive community work.
That has meant that the organisations are able to engage in such
consultations and that there is a mechanism by which they can make
their voices heard.
In other
areas just outside the ward boundary, small villages such as Fourlanes,
or a large villages such as St. Day, do not have a
concentration of deprivation; rather, they have pockets of intense
deprivation that are exacerbated by their isolation from larger
population centres. In such areas, there was a lack of capacity to
deliver the consultations. When we were looking at how to roll out the
consultations, we saw that it was not a case of saying that there were
sectors of the population whose needs we were not currently serving,
although there was that kind of issue. The consultation roll-out was
not dependent on deprivation; it was also to do with geographical
location—areas with similar attributes were not getting the same
level of
representation.
2.30
pm
Amendment No.
33 would offer a clear sense of the bases that need to be covered when
consultations are undertaken. It is vital to ensure that vulnerable
groups get their voices heard. We must not forget that, in many
respects, that is not happening. We do not wish to make the situation
worse, which is not to say that the status quo is acceptable.
I am reminded of an occasion
last year when I went to speak to a forum of learning disabled people
in my constituency. They were lucky that they had a forum and the
opportunity to meet as a group and to talk to one another about the
issues they had encountered. However, they were being failed by the
processes and implications of other Government policies and were
finding it difficult to have their voices heard. A difficulty was that
one of the largest NHS dental practices in the area, which had 9,000
people on its books, had decided to go private as a result of the new
dental contract. Many of the group were registered with that practice.
The changes were compensated for by the setting up of another NHS
practice in a neighbouring town, but it was only possible to register
for that dentist on the telephone. Some of the group were not quick
enough off the mark and did not sit on the telephone to keep trying to
register. They were
falling off the NHS registration list, yet they were the very people
whom it was most important to keep on it.
There is a value in
identifying the more vulnerable groups of people, whose voices it is
important to hear. That will ensure not only that any policies put
forward using the mechanisms set up by the Bill take account of their
needs, but that their needs are not ignored, as sometimes happens at
the moment.
I recognise
the importance of parish plans and have had positive experiences of
those areas where they have been taken up. They will help to improve
the relationships between parish, district and county
councils.
Mr.
Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab): Obviously, it is important
that parish councils go out and make the plans. However, they would be
taken more seriously if parish councils were empowered by the Bill. I
hope that the Minister will take that on board. Devolving power will
ensure that people listen and take action.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
Often, people involved in the parish plan production process are
frustrated that their concerns are not taken seriously. Also, members
of the public who bother to engage wonder why they are again going
through a process when nothing happened the last time they did so.
Creating a sense of empowerment will make people more
important—it will make them feel that there is value in engaging
in the process.
I
want to underline the importance of the requirement to co-operate at
the community and principal authority levels, which is outlined in
amendment No. 33. Again, the amendment would be critical in ensuring
that people feel that their contributions are valued. That will be
valuable only if it is mirrored by a sense of duty to co-operate
between local authorities and the Secretary of State on the
recommendations that the authorities make. For that to be meaningful
and for those individuals who contribute to their local community to
feel valued, we need both parts of the
equation.
Clive
Efford (Eltham) (Lab): This is an important part of the
Bill, and I am sure that through the usual processes of the Committee,
the amendment will be taken back to one of those dark rooms and
discussed in further detail. Perhaps I can inform those discussions
with my brief speech.
It is important that we engage
with communities where we there is a great deal of disengagement. For
example, in my constituency—I am sure that this is true in the
constituencies of all other hon. Members, too—local authorities
and other service providers, even with the best will in the world, do
not seem to provide an even standard of service delivery across every
section of the community. One has to stand up and challenge those
service providers on behalf of those communities where a
disproportionate number of people are disengaged. The challenge to us
as elected representatives is to get in there and challenge those
perceptions and attitudes, which become ingrained not only in the
recipients of the services, but in the people who provide
them.
I have told
people, “If you want to challenge these problems, why not just
come out with me and walk
around the local community? I have identified some of the
problems—we will take the people responsible for the services
along with us, and we will discuss those problems on the spot and see
whether we can find solutions.” I have been doing that for
nearly the entire 10 years that I have been a Member of Parliament. The
key is that when we show that interest and determination to work
alongside the local community, people respond and show an interest in
those issues. The frontier created by people feeling that they cannot
change things, and that their time and effort does not make any
difference, starts to be rolled back. Sometimes it takes a bit of
effort and longer that we would like to get the desired outcome, but it
shows our determination to come back and represent those communities on
such issues and to ensure that change comes about. On the back of that, we have
set up a few local forums that engage with representatives of local
primary care trusts, the police, council housing officers and people
who provide youth services. They have made differences in their
communities. The Bill and this clause set out a statutory process
through which people can engage. Although I still have concerns that we
might not achieve that aim, the key point is that we have to be able to
prioritise those areas where disengagement from the process is most
acute.
The Government
and those who have drafted amendments have commented on the tyranny of
the politically articulate, who understand the processes and are able
to push themselves forwards. If we do not get this part of the Bill
right, such people will probably push themselves to the top of the
agenda and leave the communities that we want to drill down into and
engage with behind. I have had similar experiences to those outlined by
the hon. Lady. She was slightly unfairly challenged by my hon. Friend
the Member for Islington, North, who perhaps was too sensitive about
the term “usual suspect”. Perhaps that is because he has
been on the receiving end of that term more often than he would like in
his political career.
People who know the political
process come forward and engage with it, and they are first out of the
traps when such systems are set up. That is what we have to guard
against. If we are to make a difference and to engage with those parts
of the community that do not engage with the political process or the
local process of decision making, the Bill must ensure that those are
the parts of the community that we
touch.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that we
need to think about using as many different media as possible? Only
last night I was talking to a colleague who uses Facebook to keep in
touch with some of his younger constituents. He was approached via the
Facebook website by a constituent who had been having benefit problems
for a series of months. Had he not been available through that medium,
that person would never have come to him for help. It is important that
we use as many different media as possible to try to reach those groups
that are not used to using conventional channels of
communication.
Clive
Efford:
Absolutely. That point is self-evident and
requires no further comment. It is important that we use every possible
medium for staying in contact
with our local communities. That is true for everyone, whether they are
a service provider or an elected representative.
I have one other point to make.
In my experience of 12 years as a local councillor and 10 years as a
Member of Parliament, I have found that much of the frustration of
communities results from the fact that they do not understand how the
system works. They perceive the solutions to problems as being quite
easy to see. They cannot understand why the local authority or some
other body does not move swiftly to respond to that local need.
Engaging people and better informing them about issues in their local
community will have a double benefit in the sense that not only will
they get involved in providing services that are better attuned to the
needs of the local community, but they will be better informed about
the process and less likely to disengage and feel that things will not
change.
Identifying
resources and bringing about the changes or improvements that people
want will take some time because the money is not sitting on shelves
waiting to be spent on those things. By understanding the process, some
of the frustration that leads to disengagement might be challenged.
There is a great deal of good will and determination out there in all
communities if we provide the right mechanisms for engaging with
people, and that is what we will do if we get the clause
right.
Mr.
Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I understand the need
for the clause, but I am not entirely happy with it. I would not want
the Bill to become a charter for political correctness. I do not like
splitting communities up into different boxes. As far as I am
concerned, as the Member of Parliament for Kettering, everyone in my
constituency is equal. Whatever their background, income or
nationality, be they able bodied or disabled, I am interested in any
problems that they bring to my door. It makes me feel uneasy when we
start to split up a constituency into different categories of
people.
There is a
lot of anger and resentment about the spread of political correctness.
It is not that the Government or other agencies are not going down that
road for the right reasons—I am prepared to give them the
benefit of the doubt on that and say that they are doing it for genuine
reasons—but once we start to categorise and split up
constituents, we inevitably leave some constituents out of the
process.
I am looking
down the list, from (i) to (vii), and I understand why those groups are
there, but there is not an individual category for young mums with
children. I do not know why that is, but lots of young mums who are
bringing up children in the Kettering constituency might come to me and
say, “Philip, how come there isn’t going to be a separate
panel for us? It’s blooming hard being a young mum in Kettering,
bringing up two small children. How come there isn’t mention of
us in the Bill? Why isn’t there going to be a panel in Kettering
where all the young mums are invited to give their views?”
However, a careful reading of the whole clause shows that there is
provision to set up a panel to enable young mums to be consulted.
Specific groups are listed only as examples, but the problem with
listing groups in that way is that others will inevitably be excluded,
which causes anger and
resentment.
2.45
pm
The amendment
contains a definition of a deprived area. Kettering constituency is
very much middle England at its best—on all Government
measurements of deprivation, Kettering is almost always bang in the
middle. However, there are areas of in Kettering that I doubt would
score on those measures, but which are nevertheless deprived, and I
would be concerned if the Bill were to go through and there was not a
separate panel to deal with the concerns of people living
there.
New subsection
(1A)(c) stipulates that there should
be
“an equal number of
male and female
members”.
I can see why
that is included, but I could not give a hoot if the members of the
panel were all female or all male, as long as I was satisfied that they
were the best people to do the job. I want to flag up the concerns that
I feel the residents of Kettering would want me to raise. I understand
the reasons for the amendment, but it is unnecessarily prescriptive and
goes too far down the road of political
correctness.
Mr.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD): I shall simply agree
with what other hon. Members have said about the importance of the
amendment. It seeks to ensure that the effects of the Bill reach
everybody in the community, whether or not they are the usual
spokespeople. It may need redrafting slightly, particularly with regard
to the aspect to which the hon. Member for Kettering referred. Also,
the definition of deprivation refers to “sub-paragraph
(vii)”, which
concerns
“persons over 60
years of age”,
but should
read “sub-paragraph (vi)”. That is a minor point that we
can sort out
later.
I
should like to return to the issue of parish plans. Although, as the
hon. Member for Chorley rightly pointed out, they can raise
expectations without offering the delivery mechanism that we hope to
achieve through the Bill, they have been valuable in my constituency. I
shall talk about the parish of Kilkhampton, which is close to the
border with England, right at the top of my constituency. The chair of
the parish council, a gentleman by the name of Noel Mitchell, was
active in promoting the concept of a parish plan. He encouraged
everybody in the community to get involved and consider all aspects of
what was needed to achieve the priorities of its people in the coming
years. He was active not only in his own parish; he felt so strongly
about how successful the concept had been that he sold it to
neighbouring parishes that had not decided voluntarily to go through
the parish plan process. I pay tribute to the work that he has
done.
Last year, I
had the opportunity to go to the nearby parish of Marhamchurch, also in
north-east Cornwall, which was launching the process leading to its
parish plan. The usual spokespeople were there, but there was a good
mix of people who were new to the parish and those who had lived there
for some time. There were pictures of the village in the past, so
people who, like the hon. Member for Stroud, had been involved in the
local community for a great many years, were able to look back on some
of the achievements and events in the parish and on how things used to
be, which created a nice backdrop.
The
Chairman:
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman apply himself to
the subject of the
debate?
Mr.
Rogerson:
Absolutely, Mr. Cummings.
That ultimately led to a
positive feeling that the parish plan process could deliver something
for that community. However, we will eventually come to the point where
people say, “Now that we have the plan, how are we to deliver
it?” That is why the clause is vital and I am glad to see that
the proposed amendments have left that aspect of it untouched, by
keeping the parish plan process at its heart. So much valuable work has
been done, and what we will achieve by amending the clause is the means
to ensure that the plans that have been developed can be put into
practice.
Mr.
Hurd:
We have had an excellent trot around the track of
clause 3. I hope that the Minister has got the message from the debate
about how important the clause is. The hon. Member for
Falmouth and Camborne put it very well when she said that the Bill is
trying to give local communities a genuine sense of empowerment. To
break through the inertia that we know is out there—it was very
well described by the hon. Member for Eltham—we must send a
strong signal through the Bill that something is going to change. In
that context, as we discussed during our debate on clause 2, simply
sending out a signal that there is a duty to consult just will not
do.
We see the
clause as the final piece in the chain of duty of co-operation that
cascades down from the Secretary of State. Without it, I do not think
that our constituents, who we want to feel have a genuine opportunity
to influence decisions about their community, will believe that
anything has really changed. The clause cannot just be about
establishing a duty to consult. I know that we all have experience from
our own constituencies, but in my experience the terms “public
consultation” and “sham” have become absolutely
interwoven; there is simply no credibility or faith in the process of
public consultation. We have to do something different, and we have to
signal that we are doing something different in the Bill.
The amendments, to which the
hon. Member for Stroud spoke, go further than the original clause in
being specific about the kinds of groups that need to be involved in
this new concept of citizens panels, with which local authorities
should have a duty to co-operate.
The point that the hon.
Gentleman made forcefully, which was reflected in the debate on the
Floor of the House principally in the comments of the hon. Member for
Hendon, is that we intend to unleash a new process of popular
democracy, in which the view that local people know best holds sway and
people feel that they have a genuine opportunity to influence both how
money is spent in their area and the national action plan for
sustainable communities.
That is some order, given the
inertia that is out there. However, it is a process that, if
successful, will create plenty of noise. It will create vigorous local
debate—it will be democracy with sharp elbows. As the hon.
Member for Eltham said, it will be an opportunity for the politically
articulate, so we have to ensure that
those with a quieter voice are heard. That is the simple explanation for
the extended list that we propose to include in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for
Kettering made an extremely valid case, and I very much respect his
points and the way in which he made them, because he showed that he was
sensitive to what those who tabled the amendment are trying to achieve.
However, he also made the valid point that there is a risk of going too
far down the route of political correctness, and simply segmenting our
constituencies and communities into groups of vested interests and
lobbies. That is not our intention; that is not the world that we want
to live in. Nevertheless, I think that he understood—and he
articulated that he understood—the point of the amendment, which
is to signal that, in the midst of this noisy and vigorous democracy,
we must ensure that, during the process of consultation, the quiet
minority voice that might otherwise get drowned out is heard.
There is
significant support for that view. If the Minister is short of a poster
or two to cover some wall space in his office or at home, I can offer
him plenty of material. I am looking at a large poster full of
endorsements for our approach from various organisations: the
Association of Chief Police Officers, the Police Federation, the Police
Superintendents Association of England and Wales, the Commission for
Racial Equality, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Chinese in Britain
Forum and the UK Coalition Against Poverty. I could go on. There is a
list of about 20 or 25 organisations that recognise that point and
fully support the principles of the Bill. In the process of noisy and
vigorous debate, which we should welcome, we need to protect the
minority voice. I hope that my hon. Friend the. Member for Kettering
has absorbed that
point.
As for the
Government’s position, we will be all ears when the Minister
responds to the debate. I mentioned that, in an earlier debate, the
hon. Member for Chorley likened him to a slippery bar of soap, which
was unfair, as he has proved since then to be sponge-like in his
qualities. I hope that he proves that again this afternoon.
The
Government’s position as I understand it is, “We
don’t need this clause, because we’re covering it under
clause 108 of the local government Bill.” That argument is
difficult to sustain. That is not to criticise clause 108, which serves
its purpose in the context in which it was written. It is a minimum,
across-the-board requirement to involve communities, but it is
discretionary, and it is quite right that it should be, because it is
clearly not appropriate for local councils to consult on
everything.
Mr.
Hollobone:
I should like to bring my hon. Friend back to
the issue of deprivation. As it stands, amendment No. 33 contains an
absolute
definition:
“An
area is deprived...if the official male adult unemployment rate
exceeds 10 per cent., or if more than 20 per cent. of households have
net incomes below £15,000 per
year.”
It strikes me
that, as we are talking about sustainable communities—people
living next door to each other—relative deprivation, not
absolute deprivation, is what we are after. I do not think that any of
the deprived areas in Kettering would qualify, although I might be
wrong, but it must be officially recognised that those communities are
deprived relative to neighbouring areas. I put that point to my hon.
Friend.
Mr.
Hurd:
It is a good point well made, as I have learned to
expect from my hon. Friend. I share his view, because I represent a
constituency not unlike his in profile. Some of our communities
probably would not fit that description but have the right to describe
certain wards as genuinely deprived, and they appear as such in
national statistics. My point is that the amendment is an honest
attempt to flag up a real issue, and I do not think that any of the
three Members who put their names to it would claim that it is perfect.
When it comes to deprivation, it is always a challenge to know where to
draw the line and how to define it. I think that my hon. Friend
understands the point that I have been trying to make. The amendment is
open to improvement. I just wanted the Minister to be clear about the
reasons for the
amendments.
Mr.
Hoyle:
The problem to which the hon. Member for Kettering
was alluding is that a macro level is being used when we ought to be
considering a micro level. Ten per cent. is quite a high unemployment
rate. I would be hard pressed to think of any Member’s
ward—I can think of one—in which unemployment is 10 per
cent. these days.
Mr.
Hurd:
I have a lot of sympathy with that view. For the
Bill to enter the business of macro definitions is uncomfortable
territory, because the whole principle of it is that we want to trust
local authorities to get it right. Our purpose is to try to build into
the system a means for local authorities to define who should sit on
the citizens panels. The Committee has made a good point about the need
to revisit the definition of
deprivation.
3
pm
The
Government’s argument is that clause 108 of the Local Government
and Public Involvement in Health Bill is sufficient to cover this
point. I understand why official advice is that we should try to
minimise duplication across legislation. However, although clause 108
is valid in its context, it is inadequate in the context of this Bill,
which needs to send out a strong signal that something has changed.
Clause 108 is about setting a minimum standard across the board. We are
talking about standards in a specific context, where local authorities
have exercised their right—not a duty—to participate in
the process. The view of the Bill’s sponsors is that, where a
council exercises that right, the Bill should help them frame how to
conduct the consultation, because the minimum standard set in clause
108 is not enough. We do not want this to be an exercise involving one
public meeting in a town hall or a set of questionnaires sent out. We
really want to send out the message that this is a genuine process of
local engagement. In that context, clause 108 is not
enough.
Mr.
Woolas:
I shall respond to the points that have been made
in, I hope, a constructive manner. I do not seek to persuade the
Committee to disagree with the amendment—I suspect that I would
be unsuccessful, however eloquent I were—but to point out the
direction that I shall take in taking away questions from this debate
and trying to provide answers to the
Committee.
I should
like briefly to set out the Government’s attitude towards this
matter. I am grateful for the
comments that have been made about what is now clause 108 of the Local
Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. The Local Works
campaign sheet praises clause 108 and specifically
says: “That is
NOT to criticize clause
108”.
It regards clause
108 as a minimum and wants to strengthen it. As one of the people who
brought about that clause, I welcome that attempt to strengthen and
clarify it.
We debated
clause 108 in Committee at some length with the hon. Member for
North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), the Opposition spokesperson.
We were concerned not to put an over-burdensome duty on local
authorities to consult the public on managerial decisions. The example
discussed in the Committee was the purchase of photocopiers. Although
it is desirable that photocopiers should be purchased with sensitivity
in respect of environmental policies and should perhaps help local
companies, it is not something about which councils should be expected
to consult all the relevant bodies. I think that I described it as a
common-sense clause in a common-sense
Bill.
Mr.
Hoyle:
Will the Minister guarantee that common sense will
be
used?
Mr.
Woolas:
I give my hon. Friend my absolute guarantee that
common sense will be used—the Lancastrian version, he will be
pleased to know. I am not suggesting that the amendments and the clause
seek to dictate that there should be consultation over the purchase of
photocopiers—that is not their intention—but I should
like briefly to expand on our
attitude.
Language is
important. Consultation by statutory bodies is often done in arcane
jargon and language, and I accept that the Government are as guilty of
that as others. We have to use clear language. That point has been
made. The consultation processes have to go beyond the traditional
forms—circulars and so on, New technology helps, but one has to
be sensitive, for example, to the fact that numbers of people do not
read and write adequately. That is regrettable, but it is true. There
are many means of consultation.
All the evidence that we have
gathered, along with the LGA and the Improvement and Development Agency
and backed up by MORI—hon. Members might have seen its
presentations on these matters—shows that there is a direct
relationship between the success of consultations, by which I mean the
engendering of the attitude that people have been asked their opinions,
and the success of a council and its services.
Without making a partisan
point, I can say that there has, broadly, been an improvement in the
quality of public services and, at the same time in many areas, a
growth in residents’ dissatisfaction with those public services
and the institutions that provide them. The evidence shows that
councils that have both improved their services and closed the
dissatisfaction gap have successfully undertaken sustainable
consultation; they have engaged with their communities. It also shows
that there is a consultation divide. The people who
consider themselves to be well informed about public services are those
who tend to believe that the public services are better, and those who
believe that they are not well informed tend to believe all the things
that mean that those public services are bad. The intention of the
clause is, in strengthening clause 108 of the local government Bill, to
help that process. That is very important. The hon. Member for Kettering
made the point about relative wealth and relative expectations. That is
an extremely fair point. Definitions of deprivation often miss the
point that all boats rise with the tide. In defence of the hon.
Gentleman, the Government’s proposal for clause 108 is that we
should provide guidance for local councils and their partners as to how
they should implement it. Our position has always been that we would
not prescribe in statute the “how” of consultation; we
would simply prescribe the duty to involve, inform and consult. That is
a different statutory proposition from the duty on different public
sector agencies to co-operate. As I said in my opening remarks to the
Committee, it is the second of the twin pillars of the new statutory
framework.
The
Government’s intention is, if and when we receive Royal Assent
to the local government Bill, to draft for consultation the guidelines
to make clause 108 real. That has been the subject of much consultation
and discussion with the third sector. Informal discussions have already
begun with the LGA about what shape that should take. My undertaking to
the Committee, therefore, is to consider the clause, as amended by the
hon. Members for Ruislip-Northwood and for Falmouth and Camborne and my
hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, to see how I can mesh those
processes together. I want to avoid, as I know hon. Members do,
over-burdensome bureaucracies and over-costly procedures. I mentioned
£42 million before. That figure is causing the Committee some
amusement. Its estimation is not a science and it is a net new burden,
but it represents a policy that the Opposition have encouraged us to
adopt.
Mr.
Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con): I was not
going to raise the embarrassing question of the £42
million, but the Minister raises it anyway. I do not agree that its
estimation is not a science. There must now clearly be a fairly fully
developed “Sir Humphrey” science of how to achieve the
maximum possible figure that can be justified by any device when
confronting the apparent costs of doing something that we do not want
to do. That must be the counterpart of the equal science that has been
developed to show the minimum impact of a new regulation when the
Department wishes to bring about a new regulation, something that we
see often in regulatory impact assessments. The Minister is simply
lacking in scientific
awareness.
Mr.
Woolas:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope
that I never have to use those words against him—but, if I have
to, I
will.
Our
policy is one of covering the net new burdens of costs on councils. I
receive many letters from council treasurers explaining the extra costs
of the Government’s proposals, but I have yet to receive a
letter telling me of the net savings of the Government’s
proposals. It is not an exact science, but the point has been made. I
want to avoid over-bureaucracy and over-burdensome costs. The
hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood made a significant point when he said
that the fear of duplication makes it important that the clause is
strengthening clause
108. It is suggested
in subsection (1) that principal councils should submit recommendations
on a plan, as drawn up by what is now in clause 2. I want the current
statutory obligation to produce a community strategy, which all
councils now have to do along with their local development frameworks
and local area agreements, that makes the communities plan a
sustainable communities plan that takes on board the strength of the
Bill, especially in clause 1. I want it to look at the relationship
between the plan that is put forward under clause 3 and the sustainable
communities strategy, because there will be some coming
together.
It is
interesting to note that, under the Government’s guidance to
local authorities on the preparation of community strategies, paragraph
16 sets out the process of involvement and consultation. It
states:
“It
will be vital to ensure wide local ownership of the community planning
process, which should therefore be predominantly ‘bottom
up’ rather than ‘top
down’.”
It goes on
in a similar tone to that of the clause and the material that Local
Works has produced.
Jim
Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central) (Lab): I have a
great deal of sympathy with the Minister’s point. Amendment No.
33 can clearly be recast in a more simple way. The sort of documents to
which he referred, such as the community strategy and the local
development framework, are completely inaccessible. I do not mean that
they are physically inaccessible, but that they are inaccessible in a
much more profound way to most people in the
community.
In
Newcastle, we cannot make a complaint or make an objection to a plan by
telephone. We have to do it in writing. If I assist my constituents by
providing them with standard letters, that is dismissed as being a
pro-forma objection. Yet, in our community, how many people can
actually express themselves coherently, simply and robustly in a
letter?
Mr.
Woolas:
Of course, I agree with the powerful point made by
my hon. Friend. I hope that I did not suggest that the good people
of—I shall use my constituency to avoid offending
others—Oldham East and Saddleworth do not travel to Boundary
park to read the local development framework or the communities plan.
It is an important to achieve a culture where public services do indeed
pay great heed to the arguments that my hon. Friend is making. We
should not go too far in claiming the merits of the
Bill.
3.15
pm
Clause 3
relates to the process of putting together the recommendations for the
plan—the process that we have been describing. Although it is
true that the Bill has a public interest behind it—I welcome
that—we are kidding ourselves if we think that we can change the
culture by implementing such simple measures. This is a marathon, not a
sprint.
In amendment
No. 33, the establishment of panels to cover various groups is a good
idea. However, one needs to look at whether they duplicate existing
forums or structures. Let us take a youth panel as an example.
Is the panel to be a citizens’ panel drawn up of representative
people—representative in the way that a jury is? Is it to be an
existing representative body? Is it to include the youth MPs that many
areas have? In some areas, there are very high turnouts for the
selection of those MPs. Is it to include representatives from student
unions, who, some would say, are more resourceful and articulate than
other young people? I raise those points not to criticise clause 3, but
to say that we have a duty to think about how we would create those
panels. The Local
Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill contains an innovative
measure for LINKs organisations to set up panels to hear the comments
of patients and other people involved in health services, which is
similar to what is being proposed in the amendment. It would be wrong
of me to criticise the mechanism proposed here when the Bill promoted
by my Department in conjunction with the Department of Health proposed
a similar process for the health services. In that Bill, we said that
it would be possible to expand the idea of LINKs into other areas so
that we have that interface between participatory and representative
democracy. I am sure that we all agree that ultimately it is the
elected councillor who should be the arbitrator between the different
groups. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central is
frowning: I think that he accepts the point philosophically but perhaps
not always in
practice.
The hon.
Member for Kettering asked about other groups. If there are other
groups, is there a danger that one has to include all the panels and
all different types of individuals? I know that he has regular meetings
in his constituency with the parishes representing the villages in his
area. I believe that they are very well attended, and I commend the
process. Interestingly, clause 3(2)(a) states that the principal
council, when preparing recommendations, should have regard
to
“any parish plan
published by a parish or community council”.
I want to add to that definition to take
on board the new community councils, parish councils or any other name
that the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill allows.
I think that that helps to meet the hon. Gentleman’s
objections.
Mr.
Hurd:
On a point of clarification, it is not the intention
in the amendment to set up separate panels for each group. The list is
intended to offer guidance on the sort of groups that need to be
represented on panels, rather than to require that panels be set up for
each
group.
Mr.
Woolas:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. The ways in
which consultation can take place are varied. A suggestion was made in
the north-east that citizens’ panels should be used as part of
the overview and scrutiny process, which itself is an important part of
developing sustainability.
Hon. Members have made the
point that it is difficult to agree on the definition of deprived
areas. The authors of the amendment are trying to point out that it is
the less well-off areas that tend to be less involved in decision
making and so on, and I accept that point. The neighbourhood renewal
fund is based on a definition of deprivation at what is called the
“super output area”—a phrase that I have stopped
even trying to understand. Small sub-ward areas in some parts of my
constituency would meet the proposed definition, so I am tempted by it.
I suspect that in your constituency you would welcome that definition,
Mr. Cummings. If I may make a partisan point, the reason why
Opposition Members can say that there are very few places like that
nowadays is that today there is an adult male unemployment rate of less
than 10 per cent., which was not so 10 years ago. Having successfully made that
cheap shot for the purposes of “‘Tributes to Tony Blair
‘R Us’, Oldham Chronicle
, Part 3”,
which will be going out tomorrow, I will return to a consensual point.
I shall look at the definition and consider whether we could provide
some consistency, perhaps in relation to the neighbourhood renewal
area.
Several
proposals were made for strengtheningclause 108 of the Local
Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, but I would have
difficulty in putting such prescriptive measures into this Bill.
However, I accept that the Committee wants the clause to have some
teeth, to give it real bite. There is a paradox in saying, “On
the one hand we want to devolve, and on the other this is how you are
going to do it.” We need to strike a good balance that
encourages—indeed, insists on—genuine consultation,
strengthens the statutory provision in the current local government
Bill before the House and, most importantly, helps to change the
culture in public services on how information, consultation and
involvement should take place.
I am grateful to you for
allowing me to respond to the amendments and the clause, Mr.
Cummings. I hope that I have persuaded the Committee to give me some
leeway to examine how to take forward these worthy
objectives.
Mr.
Letwin:
I was not going to say anything about the
amendments, but the remarks of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne,
Central, and the Minister’s reference to the village plan made
me think that it was worth saying one thing. Given his constituency, I
do not know whether the Minister has been involved in the formulation
of a village plan, but those of us who have a lot of villages in their
constituency—there are 55 in my constituency and another 55 or
60 hamlets—are regularly involved in such work. Several times a
year I find myself sitting with constituents who are formulating a
village plan, so I know that there is all the difference in the world
between that process and how the plans that the hon. Gentleman
described are formulated. He and I will have had a similar experience
of those plans. When MPs go to a meeting where strategic plans are
being developed, they know all the people there because they are part
of a little local political elite, and there is nothing wrong with
that. They are fine
people.
Mr.
Hoyle:
The usual
suspects.
Mr.
Letwin:
Exactly. I am glad to say that in my constituency,
many of them are members of my party, and I know and love them dearly;
they are wonderful people. Even members of other
parties—
The
Chairman:
Order. Is this an
intervention?
Mr.
Letwin:
No, Mr. Cummings, it is a
speech.
They are the
usual suspects. What emerges from these meetings are often valuable,
useful documents but, exactly as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne, Central said, they are highly inaccessible to most of our
constituents. They are not written in language that most would
recognise, they are not about subjects that most are worried about
directly, although they may have an impact on their lives indirectly,
and people do not read them. I have never conducted a poll, but I bet
if I went round west Dorset I would not find more than a few dozen
people who had ever read these huge documents. If they did read them,
and tried to influence them, they would hit exactly the obstacles that
the hon. Gentleman
described.
The village
plan is completely different. Normally the meetings take place in
someone’s front room, dining room or sitting room, or perhaps in
a village hall. Probably quite a large part of the village population
crams into that small space. Quite often I have involved myself in
meetings with a quarter or a fifth of the total village population. If
I can put it this way, they are real live people. They live in the
village and know about the village and care about it. They are exactly
as my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood described them. They
are the quiet voices. They are not people who normally participate in
democratic politics or anything else that is formal or official. They
go about their business and their lives and then they get involved in
the village plan.
What we are trying to do here
is to move from the one to the other. We are trying to get to the point
where people are not simply being consulted by an outside body on
something abstract, foreign and alien, but are being involved in
talking about things that matter to them as local residents and which
they have a collective sense they are influencing. The output of a
village plan is something that the village owns. I am not a good enough
poet to describe it, but it makes a moral difference to the feel of the
village.
Everything
that flows from the village plan after that is influenced by the tone
of that document and the decisions that differ greatly from village to
village. If something comes up that is wholly unexpected to a
bureaucracy, it is not surprise to me or to the people forming the plan
because they are a different set of people. They are looking from the
bottom up and not, however well-intentionedly, from the top down. That
is what we are trying to achieve here. We are trying to get the point
where, whatever mechanism the Minister produces, when a local authority
tries to find out what would most help it to create a more sustainable
community, instead of going to the usual suspects and receiving the
formal views and proposals, it can find out what real live ordinary
people who are concerned about the place they are living in
think.
That will be a
revelation to many, including many conscientious and excellent local
officers, for example, who because of the nature of their work are
sufficiently detached from what is really being felt that they do not
have any idea of it. That revelation will be a profoundly important
consequence of the Bill. It may well lead local authorities to propose
things that are nowhere in
their political manifestos and have never been formulated as part of
their strategic plans, but have emerged from talking to their
populations in a way that has not happened before.
I understand
that clause 108 is intended to have a similar effect but the way in
which it is cast means that on the ground we will see the same old
stuff, more or less. Lots of things that may be useful will emerge, but
they will not be like the things that we are trying to achieve. They
will not be like the village plan. If the Minister could have that
image in his mind as he seeks a way through—I do not think that
any of us want to stand by the exact drafting—it would be a huge
bonus. We might get a clause that begins for the first time to build
into statute the idea of people doing something that is very difficult
to describe, but that one knows when one sees it—real local
participation, not consultation. There is all the difference in the
world between participation and
consultation.
Mr.
Rogerson:
The right hon. Gentleman is making a very
valuable point about the sense of ownership that people feel about
parish plans. For example, if affordable housing in a village comes as
part of the local development framework and is seen as coming from
outside the village community, there may be opposition to it, but if
people have demonstrated the need for affordable housing in their own
parish plan, they are far less likely to oppose it and go through all
the planning and development control processes that the hon. Member for
Newcastle upon Tyne, Central
described.
Mr.
Letwin:
I completely agree. To extend the example, in one
of my villages—Buckland Newton— a group is trying to set
up a community land trust. A group of people inside the village are
trying to promote something that will look after the interests of young
people living there. If somebody had come from the outside, exactly as
the hon. Gentleman said, and descended on them from Dorchester, the
headquarters of the district council, which is not very far away, and
said, “Thou shalt have eight extra houses here”, all hell
would have broken loose. I know exactly what the letters would have
looked like—I am sure that he does—whereas this way
around, it is the villagers’ initiative. That is what we are
trying to get to. I really believe that we can get there, but it will
require imagination on the part of the Minister to overcome the
understandable reluctance to engage in something so flakey, so to
speak, as allowing people to participate.
3.30
pm
Clive
Efford:
I entirely agree about engaging and the fact that
we are looking for a bottom-up approach. However, it is all about
ensuring that the bottom is all-embracing. There is a danger that the
front rooms in the right hon. Gentleman’s 55 villages and 64
hamlets are not, and that they are not engaging. Does he agree that the
clause has to ensure that those people who are claiming to be
representative at the bottom are actually representative and therefore
engaged with all sections of the
community?
Mr.
Letwin:
I completely agree and that is why the amendment
is so specific—perhaps overly so. The
reason why it says that we need young people, people from ethnic
minorities, tenants in social housing, and people on low incomes on the
panel is precisely because otherwise we might get the usual suspects
again.
The point
about a village, oddly enough, is that villages—not every one,
but most, if they are small enough—are still working societies.
Society is not broken; it stretches from the rich to the poor, from the
disabled to the able-bodied, from the young to the old, in a way that
urban life, alas, does not nearly enough. In those front rooms,
therefore, we tend to find the genuine composition of society. Because
we are legislating here for the whole country, and because not every
village is of that form and many urban areas are not of that form, we
need specify who has to be in the front room. I accept the
Minister’s point that we may not be able to specify quite so
closely as we have here, but we have to ensure that it is a front room
populated by people of every kind who are really
participating.
Mr.
Hollobone:
Why is it, in his view, that the village
community that my right hon. Friend described self-selects the very
people whom we want to engage in this Bill? Why are villages working,
when other places are
not?
Mr.
Letwin:
I am sure that you, Mr. Cummings, will
shortly prevent me from continuing, but I can offer one brief thought.
The point is that, if the community is small enough, people know one
another, not in the sense of passing one another on the street, but
actually knowing one another—they might not always like one
another, but at least they understand one
another—
The
Chairman:
Order. I think that we are moving away from the
point.
Mr.
Letwin:
Just to say, such people tend to interact and
participate together. We are trying to create that degree of
participation. The Minister is nobly trying to do so by creating, so to
speak, parish councils in urban areas, which we strongly welcome.
However, in a housing estate, there might similarly be a feeling of
cohesion, but in a London borough, that is unimaginable; Ii is much too
large a terrain. We are trying to get right down to the level of a
neighbourhood that has a real existence, in the sense that people know
one another, care about talking to one another and participating
together.
Jeremy
Corbyn:
The right hon. Gentleman will probably remember
his days as a Conservative candidate in Hackney, North some years ago.
He will be well aware that the test of the Bill is, yes, what happens
in the rural communities of the sort that he and colleagues from
Cornwall represent. However, if it is to mean a great deal in urban
areas, it must work and it must be inclusive. It has to work in a place
such as my constituency, which has a very fast population turnover, a
multiplicity of languages and an ethnic dimension. It requires a lot of
work to create that community, but in doing so, we have won a great
deal because often we have won lower crime, greater respect for the
local school and so on. The Bill must work in an urban area as well as
a rural one.
Mr.
Letwin:
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, which
is surprising because we are hardly at the same point in the political
spectrum. I would go so far as to say that, if we can get our proposals
to work in urban areas, we will begin to knit together communities that
are fractured, and the social gains, measured in terms of social
responsibility and the connectedness of the community, will be greater
than those that we could possibly achieve in a rural area that is
already relatively well connected.
Participation matters even
more. On a point made in an earlier intervention, paradoxically, it is
necessary to specify—we must ensure that people from every part
of a community are participating and involved. We cannot simply say
that a local authority should go out and consult and not worry about
how that will be done. It matters that we use the Bill as a vehicle for
what we want to achieve.
Julia
Goldsworthy:
Experiences of the campaign for the Bill show
that there is a great appetite for it in urban areas, too. I am aware
that the right hon. Gentleman had to change the venue for a meeting in
his constituency about it because of the huge number of people who were
going to turn up, but I understand that there has been a similar level
of turnout and a similar appetite for the Bill in densely populated,
urban areas. People see the Bill as a way of ending ghost town Britain,
even if that means their own high street. There is an appetite for that
around the country, not only in rural
areas.
Mr.
Letwin:
I agree. When the right hon. Member for Birkenhead
(Mr. Field) and I were working with Lord Kirkwood on the
preservation of sub-post offices—alas, they are no longer to be
preserved—it became evident that threatening post offices in
urban areas often created as much worry about, for example, how old
people would go about their lives, as threatening the post office in a
rural village. These things are not as exclusive as the mythology often
has it.
There is an
appetite for the Bill. The issue is a tough nut to crack, but this is
the clause that will enable us to crack it. The Minister will be
achieving an enormous amount if he can find a way to accept the Bill
which the Government can live with.
Mr.
Hurd:
My right hon. Friend has powerfully articulated the
kind of culture shift that the Bill seeks to make happen. He has
painted some powerful
pictures of how consultations should work and of the sense of ownership
and engagement that we wish to bring about. I happen to think that the
Minister buys into that—he understands and shares the objective.
The Minister is right to warn us against making excessive claims on
behalf of the Bill, but it provides an opportunity to inject a catalyst
into the system.
I warn the
Minister that I am concerned about some of his language in connection
with this and other Bills. I am concerned that he is leading me to
believe that he thinks of the Bill as an extension of current
Government proposals, albeit one that strengthens them in certain
areas, and as fitting into a stream of work and objectives that are
under way. It is my perception—I sense that it is shared in the
Committee—that although the processes of local area agreements
and community strategies are well meaning, logical and rational, they
do not engage communities in the way intended in the Bill. The
Government need to think carefully about that disconnect.
I know that there are plans in
the pipeline to extend the scope of local area agreements and to make
them work more effectively. I understand why the Minister views the
Bill as a useful tool in that process. My message is that if we want to
take a step on the journey toward the kind of culture change that we
have talked about, it is not enough to continue with the status quo or
to continue to go down the same track. We have to send a strong signal
of change, both to the communities that we want to engage and to the
local authorities that are the conduit to them.
The Government track, well
intentioned though it may be, might not change a great deal. The Bill
is an honest attempt to throw a rock in the pool, as it were, to change
things and to act as a catalyst for the kind of culture change
articulated by my right hon. Friend the Member for West
Dorset.
On the
Minister’s remarks, I took some encouragement from receiving the
impression that he recognised that clause 108 of the local government
Bill is not enough and needs to be built on, and that he will consider
the Committee’s message that there is a need to send stronger
signals to local authorities about the kinds of consultation processes
that will be required. My understanding is that he will need some time
to reflect on those issues and come back to the Committee, at which
point I feel that the debate is usefully concluded.
Debate
adjourned.—[Mr.
Hurd.]
Adjourned
accordingly at nineteen minutes to Four o’clock till Wednesday
16 May at Ten
o’clock.
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