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“not a shred of evidence that local authorities can deliver economic development on the ground”.
Does anyone in the Chamber agree with that? I think that it is the kind of arrogance that comes with unaccountable quangos; it is not a basis for co-operation. I hope that my right hon. Friend will take note of that statement; I can give her the full reference if she wants it. It remains the case that, sometimes with the encouragement of officials, these quangos see themselves as in competition with local elected councils. They could not be more blatant in seeing themselves as delivering better services than local authorities do.
As with the delivery of services by central Government, however, the reality is different. Because these quangos and RDAs have no democratic mandate, it is difficult for them—I want to be fair—to take decisions. They reach lowest common denominator decisions, where everything becomes a priority: seaside towns are a priority, as are rural communities, Cumbria and core cities. Until we look at the numbers involved and find out what is being consulted on, it is difficult to establish what exactly is happening. When we try to look at where the money is going, it becomes inexplicable.
RDAs should be spending money on two main areas: primarily, creating a better economy and more jobs, and supporting regeneration. However, the money does not go to the areas where we would expect the most added value. The centre of Manchester, for example, should be responsible for 40 per cent. of the GVA—gross value added—for the north-west, and the centre of Liverpool for a significant chunk of the funds, yet the money is spread out quite differently with no justification. My solution is for the Government to take decisions. They should inquire whether the money is there for economic
development or to alleviate poverty in some way—the two main reasons for spending public money—and explain what is happening, in a way that the RDA, as it runs around in different directions, does not. What is the Bill’s response to that problem? It is to consult leaders’ panels, but that does not deal with the fundamental democratic deficit. What it does is take the level up and provide some form of fig leaf for the regional development agencies that allows them to carry on, but it does not allow people a say at the ballot box.
Let me finish my remarks. The Bill is a lost opportunity. I believe that local authorities—they are not perfect, and some are poor—are better than quangos at delivering economic development and other services. Even more fundamental, however, is the fact that local authorities are immediately accountable to the people through the ballot box. One of the aims of the Local Transport Act 2008 was to transfer highways powers to the integrated transport authorities. Combining that with leaders’ boards or prosperity boards or whatever they may be called, consisting of indirectly elected people, may well remove not only the highways powers but a series of other powers from people. They will not be able to say, “I do not want those double yellow lines in front of my shops, but I do want investment,” because they cannot vote for or against those with whom they must deal.
Martin Horwood: The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech and a powerful case. Is there not a risk that the establishment of leaders’ boards will repeat the mistake made with regard to the regional assemblies? In the south-west at least, there was rarely any kind of contested vote. The proceedings ended up being strongly influenced by officers who spent as much time talking to the Government offices as talking to representatives who had been elected, even in an indirect capacity.
Graham Stringer: That is one possibility. A stronger possibility is that deals will be done without the involvement of the electorate. There is a democratic deficit which the Bill will not solve. The English regions in particular already suffer because they are disadvantaged financially by the Barnett formula. What people really want from the Bill is clear democracy.
Let me give two examples. People want to be able to go to their local councillor—as people have come to me in my capacity as a Member of Parliament and in my capacity as a councillor—and say “We have bad private landlords and we want you, as a council, to regulate them.” It has taken nearly 12 years, under a Labour Government, to create a regulatory scheme. That should not have come near Government: it should have been up to local authorities to alleviate people’s problems with bad landlords and bad neighbours. Similarly, people are concerned when their buses do not turn up. We have more powers to deal with that than we used to have, but we are still left with a deregulated bus system.
Anyone who talks to people in shopping parades or advice bureaux will know that those are two of the immediate problems that regularly arise, and that such people are not particularly interested in finding out how to become a councillor or in the detailed names of the quangos to which the Bill refers. We should be legislating to solve the real problems that I have described.
5.27 pm
Julia Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), who made a thoughtful speech. As he said, the Bill provides opportunities; it is just a question of how we make the most of them, given the obvious deficiencies in what we have at present.
I think there is common ground throughout the House on the rhetoric about devolving responsibilities to the local level and giving people a say, but a real division when it comes to how that is to be delivered and whether the words are backed up by actions. I know that the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) likes diversity, but that tells me more about how she voted in “Britain’s Got Talent” than about her party’s position on the devolution of power. Most of the correspondence arriving in my letter box expresses the opinion that the Conservatives would prevent local authorities from having any say in, for example, the way rubbish is collected. It is obviously difficult for the Conservatives to square providing all this autonomy with reserving the right to lay down the law centrally on issues such as taxation. The council tax freeze is nothing other than a centralised measure.
Mrs. Spelman: I feel that I should correct the record. The bin tax is driven by central Government’s desire to establish an architecture in which local authorities are cash-strapped and encouraged to buttress the shortfall in their funding. The localist view is that they should be free to decide.
Julia Goldsworthy: I was not aware that the Conservatives were happy for local authorities to press forward with variance in things such as bin collections should they wish to do so—that was not my understanding at all. I thought the hon. Lady was intervening to tell me that she voted for Susan Boyle, so what she said was slightly unexpected.
The Secretary of State’s contribution took me back to when I was first appointed as my party’s local government spokesperson, because some of the advice I received then was that it is very easy to get sucked into local government finance, which is very technical, and structures. On the local democracy side of things, I share her honourable intentions in trying to give people a voice and setting up structures that are responsible to the people, but I fear that this Bill has morphed into the architecture for delivering services—I believe those were her words—and there is far more about setting up structures that are there for administrative convenience, rather than for the benefit of the people they are supposed to serve.
It is ironic to be debating this issue in this House, given that the mechanics of making local democracy work are what is happening on the doorsteps all over the country. We are sitting in this air-conditioned bubble talking about the theory and the structures, but what really makes local democracy work is the volunteers who go out to make their case on the doorsteps and to encourage people to turn out. It is also ironic that we are, in theory, debating this from a position of moral strength—we are telling local authorities how they should be doing it—given that we are doing so much at the moment to undermine people’s faith in our democratic institutions.
I am frustrated that we are looking at local democracy in isolation. Surely if we wish to restore people’s faith in a process, we have to go through it from top to bottom. That means that we cannot just talk about constitutional reform at one end; we have to talk about how that translates from the grass roots right up to the very top. I am slightly concerned that we are siphoning off this particular aspect. That does not do us any good and does not make the most of the available opportunities.
The Bill is an opportunity to make sweeping changes to restore accountability and to rebuild confidence from the grass roots up. This is something in which I strongly believe: part of the reason I got involved in politics was the feeling that the community in which I was born and brought up did not have a voice. I felt that if I could play a role in getting its voice heard, in whatever way possible, by taking part in a political process, not only would I enjoy that, but it would have a value and purpose. That was why I supported the Sustainable Communities Bill, both when it was first introduced and later when it was taken on as a private Member’s Bill.
That Bill was all about setting up processes that mean not only that people can participate but that there is an impact on the outcome. What frustrates people, and the reason they do not vote, is not that they do not have opportunities to do so, or that the voting age is not low enough or that the offer of an iPod is not being thrown in; they do not vote because they do not think that voting will have an impact on the outcome. If people feel that something will make a difference, they are more than willing to do it. I have seen so many parish plans whereby the whole community has got together to identify the key issues in making its village more sustainable, and the point at which people have got disillusioned is when they have found out that they can do little to deliver the things that they want.
The same applies in respect of, for example, consultations. The problem is that participation is now a dirty word, because people think it is used just to pay lip service to a consultative process, rather than to have an impact on the outcome. That is what I found with the Post Office consultation process. People were more than willing to sign petitions, turn up to public meetings, deliver leaflets, put up posters and do whatever they could, but ultimately they were not being consulted on two different options. Instead, they were being told, “This is what we would like to do. You have the opportunity to vent your frustration, but then we are going to do it anyway.”
Kelvin Hopkins: The hon. Lady has rightly identified a problem with our democracy: people do not feel that they are being given choice. Academic studies suggest that because the parties have narrowed their differences and they all now subscribe to the neo-liberal model, people have lost interest in voting because the choice is not a real one.
Julia Goldsworthy: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point and uses another word, “choice”, that has been bandied around an awful lot and has perhaps become devalued. People feel that whatever they do has no impact on the outcome. That might involve an issue relating to voting reform or purely just to the way in which our structures are set up, but the frustration goes from top to bottom in respect of how our public services are delivered.
The hon. Member for Meriden spoke of the different ways in which the Bill has been described. We prefer to call it a compost heap of proposals, with bits and bobs from many different areas. We are not even sure about the nature of the beast that has resulted. The main sources appear to be parts of the community empowerment White Paper and the sub-national review. However, the Bill is frustratingly timid, and instead of empowering people it will only add to the quangocracy that has built up over the past 10 years.
The key challenge for the Government is how they can strengthen the Bill as it passes through Parliament. There are opportunities to do so, if the Government will only accept them. I hope they will rise to the challenge and engage in a debate on all the amendments that will be tabled by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
I shall give the House a potted history of how we ended up with this Bill. The first part of the Bill derives mainly from the community empowerment White Paper, published in July last year. It was clearly the Secretary of State’s baby, and it is frustrating to see how much of what was essentially a best practice manual has ended up in primary legislation, and how much has been booted into the long grass. When the White Paper was announced, the most memorable proposal was that people would be entered into a prize draw to win an iPod if they turned out to vote. The hon. Member for Meriden criticised that suggestion, but it bears a striking similarity to proposals made by the leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). Only the other day he said that what we needed to do to re-engage people with Parliament—as opposed to local authorities—was to put parliamentary proceedings on YouTube and to send people text updates on the progress of Bills. I hope that the hon. Lady will lead the way on this Bill and ensure that all those interested are updated on its progress by text. If we have anything like the 170 amendments that were tabled in the Lords, people’s phone inboxes will be very full.
The White Paper was a best practice manual that essentially restated much of what councils do, including participatory budgeting, transferring assets to the community, spending decisions being made by area committees, and the calling in of the decision-making process. For example, in Kingston it requires only the say-so of 100 people to call in any decision made by the council—real evidence of best practice. However, it is not clear why we needed a White Paper or primary legislation. We thought the White Paper would lead to a community empowerment, housing and economic regeneration Bill, but the Government felt that that would be too unwieldy. If this Bill is a compost heap Bill, that would have been a rubbish tip Bill, and that is why we have ended up with this Bill, which retains about half the proposals in the White Paper.
The other half of the Bill comprises the remnants of a suggested draft Bill which has now been kicked as far as possible into the long grass. In March, a colleague in the other place asked when the Government intended to bring forward the community empowerment Bill. The reply was:
“Given the scope of this Session’s Bill, we have decided not to publish further draft provisions on empowerment for pre-legislative scrutiny during the current Session. We will discuss with key
stakeholders how best to take forward any remaining proposals where legislation may be required.”—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 7 May 2009; Vol. 710, c. WA133.]
The reply also mentioned a communities progress report on the White Paper, although I have not been able to track that down so far. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us when he winds up which aspects of that will need primary legislation at a later date, and which will not. I wonder whether the same test should have been applied to some of the proposals in this Bill.
Given the salami-slicing of those proposals, it is no wonder that what we are left with will not set the world on fire. For example, the first clause states that local authorities have a duty to promote understanding of their functions and democratic arrangements. There is nothing to oppose in that, and the Local Government Association describes it as “business as usual” for councils. There is nothing new in it. However, there were some important omissions from clause 1, which have now been included only because the Liberal Democrats drew attention to them in the Lords—including partnership arrangements and even parish councils. When we are talking about local democracy, it is completely mad to ignore the important first tier of local government, as those councillors probably have the closest connection with their communities. That reveals a mindset that is narrowly focused and silo-based, despite what the Secretary of State said. She said we should not be worried about which Department is responsible for some of the new organisations that are being set up or rearranged, but at the same time she was telling us that we need new structures to manage the arrangements. I do not see how we can have it both ways, and how one can say, “We can have flexibility, but we need this new overarching architecture.” Even the first few clauses of the Bill open up the flaw in her argument.
Petitions are another key aspect of the Bill that leads one to think, “Well, it’s all well and good but what are these measures doing in primary legislation?” We are not talking about a couple of clauses—3,000 words and 8 pages of primary legislation cover how councils should respond to petitions. I completely agree that councils need a mechanism for responding to petitions, but they need a mechanism for responding to any means by which members of the community might wish to contact their council.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD): My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. If I may return her to an earlier comment that she made, is it not the case that many petitions received by local authorities relate to issues over which, although they are consulted on them, they have no direct control? That is one of the key points. Instead, given a Bill with such a title as this one, local authorities ought to be expected to be given greater power to deliver the wishes of people in their community. They could then respond to petitions far more constructively than they can at present.
Julia Goldsworthy:
My hon. Friend makes a very valuable point, which draws my attention to a specific example in my constituency. There was a debate about the transfer of upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery from the only acute hospital in Cornwall to Derriford. There were real concerns about the impact that that would have and, obviously, there was a debate about safety, and the petition that went to the overview and
scrutiny committee contained 30,000 signatures. Of course, the council has an overview and scrutiny committee but does not make any decisions on what happens to that service. As a result, people feel massively frustrated, and not only because the petition was not acknowledged. We need a process for acting on such petitions in a way that will make a difference, rather than simply responding with a cursory acknowledgement.
Before the Government start putting forward proposals on how local authorities should deal with petitions, they should probably consider not only how the House deals with petitions, whereby they end up in a baize bag at the back of the Speaker’s Chair, but how Departments deal with them. I notice that in answer to the questions tabled by my noble Friends, only the Department for International Development, the Cabinet Office and the Northern Ireland Office said that they even knew the number of petitions submitted to them in the previous year. Those that said that they did not know included the Department for Communities and Local Government. Only DFID and DEFRA publicise the petitions that they receive. Basically, once again, local authorities are leading the way while central Government Departments fall behind—yet suddenly the expert on all this is the Department that does not have a policy on how to deal with petitions.
Although some improvements were made to the Bill in the Lords—we now do not have the lengthy specification of what a valid petition is—there are clearly proposals that should not be before us at all. What strikes me is that this shows the Labour central-controlling tendency that we saw with the whole Damian McBride affair, when No. 10 Downing street attempted to control the left-wing blogosphere. In the same way, Whitehall is trying to— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) says he is very pleased that Mr. McBride can no longer control what goes on in the Labour blogosphere.
What also surprised me, looking at the progress of the Bill in the Lords, was the lack of enthusiasm among those on the Conservative Benches for tackling the issue. Again, that seems to run counter to the words they use to describe their zeal for local autonomy.
Kelvin Hopkins: It is interesting that it was the Conservatives who abolished the Greater London council and the metropolitan county councils and took away the business rate, taking it to the centre. They also sought to undermine and dismantle local authority housing provision and many other things. I do not quite believe that they are really in favour of local democracy.
Julia Goldsworthy: Actions speak louder than words for all parties, which is why I am proud of the Liberal Democrats’ track record. The councils that we control are pushing as many decisions as possible down to a local level, including decisions on budgeting and spending.
It is difficult to see how the Bill’s provisions on local democracy will restore people’s confidence in politics and politicians. We have a weird but certainly not wonderful rag-bag.
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