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I have mentioned elderly people and families with children, but, for rather obvious reasons, women in general have an additional need to gain access to high-quality, clean public conveniences during certain periods in their lives. That is another issue that is not often spoken of publicly.
Another group affected consists of people with severe disabilities, and, in particular, the families of children and adults with such disabilities, who need to be able to gain access to good disabled toilets, especially the excellent ones promulgated by the Changing Places campaign. Let me at this point put in a good word for my own constituency-well, not my constituency, but Milton Keynes council, which was one of the first to provide a Changing Places toilet in the Milton Keynes shopping centre. The shopping centre is not in my constituency, but in the adjacent constituency of the hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster).
For families caring for severely disabled young people or adults, the ability to gain access to a Changing Places toilet is even more important. Our Committee heard evidence from one family who had been unable to enjoy a day out as a family until Changing Places toilets were provided. If their disabled family member had an accident, they had to give up their whole day and all go home because there was no way in which they could gain access to suitable facilities. If there is not decent public toilet provision, those groups do not have the freedom of movement that everyone expects in order to use leisure and shopping facilities. That is not to mention issues about tourism and the need for resort towns, for example, to ensure that visitors have adequate public toilet provision.
There is a public hygiene aspect. We had strong evidence from those representing residents associations, which are particularly concerned about the public nuisance that is caused in some city centres where there is inadequate public toilet provision, where there are lots of pubs and clubs and where lots of young people drink a great deal, come out on to the streets and often cause extreme nuisance in public places and in front gardens. Therefore, a huge range of people think that this is an important issue to which not enough attention has been given, either locally or nationally, and they were very supportive of the Committee's inquiry. Many were keen that councils should have a duty to provide public conveniences. We did not go as far as many of the groups that made representations to our Committee wanted us to go. We did not think that it was necessary for local authorities to have a duty to provide public conveniences. The Minister raised points about the need for local authorities to be able to take decisions on the way in which they use their resources and provide for local needs. However, although some councils have been excellent, many councils have not been, so we thought that there should be a duty to draw up a strategy in consultation with the local community.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con):
All the examples that the hon. Lady has given show considerable local concern, and I am lucky to have two local authorities that provide extremely well in this area: Suffolk Coastal district council and Waveney district council. However, surely it is up to local authorities to decide; it is not for us to tell them that they have to do such things. If provision is needed, they will provide it. If they do not
think that it is needed but it is needed, the local electorate will soon demand it. We must give local authorities the power to decide what their priorities are.
Dr. Starkey: As I have said, I am in two minds about that argument. The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Committee has just published a report on the balance of power between central and local government, where we argued strongly for local government to be given considerably more powers. I am in two minds because of the evidence that we received from individuals and organisations. Although there has been significant public pressure from individuals and groups in many localities to get their local council to take the issue seriously and to look at the best practice of councils that are providing good toilet provision, often through community toilet schemes, where they have worked with local businesses, pubs and cafés to ensure that a range of provision is available-much of it is provided by the private sector, primarily for its customers, but also for public use-regrettably, quite a lot of councils still do not seem to be susceptible to pressures from such groups. They seem to be locked into the idea that the provision of public toilets is extremely expensive, cannot be done these days and is beyond them. They do not seem to be looking at the good practice of other councils and thinking imaginatively about the way in which they could provide such facilities. That is why we put forward the recommendation that councils should have a duty to draw up a strategy in consultation with the local community. That would give more weight to the local groups that want such facilities and are pushing councils into activity.
The Minister provided a pre-emptive response to my proposal in which she reiterated the Government response to our original recommendation. I have some sympathy with the notion that we should not at this time be putting additional constraints on local authorities. In her response however, the Minister gave the impression that this was about councils directly providing facilities, whereas in fact it is about councils drawing up a strategy. I accept that even drawing up a strategy and having a public consultation is not cost free; there is of course a certain financial cost to the council in doing that, but drawing up a strategy is not quite the same as the council directly providing public toilets. Therefore, I hope that the Minister might reconsider some of the emphasis in the original Government response to the report and recognise that this is not about direct provision but about strategy.
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I accept that the Government strategy providing guidance to local authorities is excellent, and if all councils followed it there would not be a problem or a need to put any additional pressure on councils. However, before I definitively decide that I am not going to pursue this matter, I shall need the Minister to give me a bit more reassurance, such as on how the additional powers in the Bill could be used by local groups to push recalcitrant councils into at least having a strategy. If she were to state that on the record, it would at least be a further campaigning tool that all those organisations could use against recalcitrant councils in order to get them to be more active.
I also seek reassurance that the Department recognises that this is an extremely serious issue in respect of equalities of opportunity, particularly for disadvantaged
groups. If there is not decent local provision of high-quality public loos, those groups are not able to enjoy all the facilities within localities and they find that their lives are constrained as a result.
Therefore, I ask the Minister to say that the Department might consider at least monitoring the situation. Also, she has given assurances that there are other ways for the public to exert pressure on their councils on this matter. If they do not arise and we are left with inadequate provision of public toilets in certain parts of the country, I would like the Department to consider being more active, not just leaving things to run their course and councils to do their own thing in response to the national strategy.
Julia Goldsworthy: The hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) has raised an important issue that we have not discussed previously in proceedings on this Bill. It is important to pay tribute to the Changing Places campaign that has done so much to draw attention to this issue and to put pressure on local authorities to improve their standard of provision. I can understand why the hon. Lady is in two minds as to whether there should be some kind of statutory duty. The way the process works at present in many areas of local government is that national guidelines tend to set a lowest common denominator which councils then feel they have to reach as a minimum level. We do not currently have a system with a highest common denominator whereby the excellent work of some councils-which some Conservative Members have raised-sets the standards that other councils have to try to achieve. I wonder whether a way of dealing with this might be to set up a system whereby the impetus is on local authorities to reach the highest common denominator rather than on their being beaten into trying to attain the lowest common denominator.
I find the Minister's response on this whole issue rather bizarre, because she says there is no way this should be within the remit of central Government and that it should be a matter entirely for local government, yet we are discussing a piece of primary legislation that sets out in minute detail and thousands of words and pages how councils should respond to petitions. There is therefore double-think in the Minister's response in that she can take one view on the provision of public toilets but a very different view on the minutiae of much of the other work that local government undertakes. Perhaps she could square that in her response-I will be impressed if she manages to achieve that.
I turn now to the initial Government new clauses relating to the Court of Appeal ruling on local authorities and mutual insurance. The Liberal Democrats are not going to oppose them, because they deal specifically with the problem that the ruling identified, but they are necessary to although not sufficient for the needs of local government. The new clauses do not address a much more general issue relating to how the well-being power could be applied. The Minister's remarks seemed to indicate that she was prepared to take a piecemeal approach, addressing other issues that might arise from the way the well-being power was exercised. Such an approach is unnecessarily complicated, because introducing a much more general power of competence would address the matter far more effectively. The Liberal Democrats are inclined to support the Conservatives in what they
are saying about the general power of competence, because such a power would make things explicit and deal with them in a simple way, rather than saying, "We'll deal with each issue as it arises, depending on what rulings may or may not be made." Like the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), I understood that this was not an either/or approach, because we could adopt it in addition to matters relating to the LAML case.
I shall keep my remarks brief, because I know that many hon. Members want to raise specific points today and I wish to give them the opportunity to do so. On the Conservatives' new clause 15, Liberal Democrats are broadly supportive of the need to push down to a more local level power and resources from any level further up the line, be it central or regional. I was slightly concerned about the language that was used, because I would much rather see a push to devolve funding and decision making, rather than simply to delegate it. One of the problems that I have with the regional organisations, which seem to have so much power, is that they are not actually responsible for decisions; they see themselves purely as making delegated decisions and they are delivery arms of central Government. In a sense, where someone is undertaking and executing delegated powers, it does not matter whether that is being done at a national, regional, sub-regional or parish level, because ultimately they are doing only what is being required of them by the central Government guidance. I would much rather there were devolved powers than delegated ones.
Mr. Paul Goodman: I have a lot of sympathy with the point that the hon. Lady is making. Our intention was simply to dangle in front of Ministers a proposal that, as it would leave a power in the hands of Ministers, they might accept. Unfortunately, our offer is likely to be rejected.
Julia Goldsworthy: I suspect that it might be rejected, but I was pleased to see that new clause 15 refers specifically to resources. My real concern is that powers and responsibilities are easy to hand down, but unfortunately the resources that should go with them never seem to make the full journey. What the Minister was saying was bizarre. She was saying that the Government have an excellent track record on pushing these responsibilities down to regional level and that they want to focus on getting councils to push responsibilities down to communities-I do not have a problem with any of that. My problem is that the bit in the middle is missing: why can regional bodies not have a duty to push down responsibilities to the local authority level too? The Government's approach is strange and the thinking is certainly not joined up, particularly in respect of the group of provisions that we are dealing with today.
The issue raised by new clause 15 is a theme to which we will return, if we get the opportunity to do so, because a number of other amendments that are to be considered further down the line deal with the powers of regional development agencies. RDAs still exercise a huge number of reserve powers, and concerns have been raised about the number of decisions being taken by people who have not been elected and who have power over people who have been elected. It is not just one
narrow area that is being raised here, because there are much broader concerns about the priorities of RDAs and where their powers go back to-ultimately they go back to the Secretary of State. I hope that we get the opportunity to return to this issue.
The Liberal Democrats have no problem with the very narrow new clauses that the Government have tabled, but we feel that if this really is a Bill about local democracy it is very disappointing that the Government are not prepared to be more wide ranging in the powers that they are explicitly prepared to pass down to the local authority level.
Graham Stringer: That is precisely the point, is it not? The title of the Bill is a misnomer. It is yet another Bill that should be entitled "Interfering with local government", rather than having its title suggest that it is about local democracy. The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) was right to ask what the difference is between leaving the determination of a policy on toilets to local authorities and telling them how to deal with petitions, with informing people about councils and with many more important issues. That explains why I wish to speak to new clauses 16 and 15.
New clause 16 deals with a general competence power, about which there has always been a debate. I recall serving on a national executive sub-committee in the 1980s and discussing what a new Labour Government would do for local democracy-we were doing that because the huge rows about rate capping and the abolition of the county councils had taken place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was on the same working party. Many of us thought then that a general competence power should be given to local authorities-I still think that-but he came up with this stunning argument: if there were such a power, what would there be to prevent Islington from making an atom bomb? I do not know why he chose to use Islington in that absurd example, but if seriously intelligent and respected people such as he come out with absurd arguments such as that, there really is no argument against giving a general competence power to local authorities.
Unless local authorities have the ability to do things unless they are specifically prohibited from doing them, the converse of that will occur and there will be regular interference in very important local matters-beyond those relating to public conveniences-that are better determined locally. I could give three quick examples that apply to my constituency. It is blighted by appalling private landlords, whom we have fought for a long time. We now have a scheme that regulates them, but because the Department does not like it we suffer terrific interference from the centre in the detail of the regulation. It is completely unnecessary because the scheme is beginning to work and the local authority should be left to decide the best areas for the scheme to operate in and how to implement it.
The product of interference is always inefficiency and extra cost. When the Select Committee on Transport examined local transport plans, it found that the Department for Transport was getting into the detail and interfering in the definition and placement of puffin crossings. That is not something that central Government should be doing. We have had big rows in Manchester about the tram system. The Department for Transport
examines the number of seats on trams, but that is not what central Government should be about. Until central Government they stop doing such things, local government will not achieve what it is capable of achieving.
Mr. Gummer: I know that the hon. Gentleman and I do not have quite the same view about the private sector, but has he noticed that most big companies have given up trying to manipulate every local branch, and find that by giving independence and freedom they get a very much better response? Why are civil servants so reluctant to allow local authorities to make their own decisions and, indeed, their own mistakes?
Graham Stringer: The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid and excellent point. Long ago, almost every large private company gave up trying to control everything from the centre, because such an approach is inefficient and ineffective.
My second point-let me move on to new clause 15 -concerns my right hon. Friend the Minister's answer to my question about why non-elected people on RDAs should be taking decisions over and above those taken by elected people on local councils, in some ways distorting what might be national priorities. In a subsequent statement, she gave the real answer: the Government are still wedded to the idea of regional government, which the people in the north-east threw out completely. I do not understand why the Government are still wedded to the non-democratic and inefficient part of that process, when the electorate-in a part of the country that was chosen because it was most likely to support regional government-threw it out.
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I can base the argument around a statement made by the newly appointed chairman of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, a man called Robert Hough, whom I would class as a friend. He has done excellent work on the Commonwealth games in Manchester and I was a colleague of his on the Manchester ship canal. As a capitalist, he has put a great deal of effort into the community. On his appointment to the board, he said, "We have to be the referee between local government and central Government." That is completely silly. He is an excellent man, but I think he was looking for justification for a job and position that have no justification. People who are elected do not need someone to referee between them and Government. As a leader of a council, I was quite capable of agreeing or disagreeing with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). That is the way it should be. Local government should speak directly to central Government, because both have a mandate from the people. It might be a different mandate, but that is part of the glory of democracy.
I am not simply making an artificial argument. In the north-west, the RDA has produced policies that are economically indefensible and I do not believe that a Government of any political colour would have followed them, and neither would local government in the north-west. They are capricious policies that are damaging the economy of the north-west. That is a simplification-in detail, it is worse. Rather than putting money where it is most likely to generate most jobs-the economic hub of the north-west is Manchester, the second economic hub is Liverpool and the third is probably Preston and
Chester-the greatest amount of money per head of population has gone to Cumbria. There is another justification for spending money, and that is the relief of poverty, but that has not been the justification that has been given.
I do not want to make a Third Reading speech; I just wanted to talk about the two new clauses, but the Bill does not do what it says on the tin. It is not about improving local democracy. Increasingly, as the debate goes on, it is clear that there is no proper justification for RDAs to continue. For this country to function at its best, local government needs to be set free. Giving it a general power of competence would be one way of doing that.
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): I shall try to be brief and to stick strictly to new clause 1, which seeks to close a loophole in planning law that allows one council to try to meet its housing targets by designating areas within the boundaries of another council as its preferred area for development.
The Opposition do not like top-down housing targets at all: we want to sweep them away and replace them with responsibility devolved to local authorities, which will be given freedom and proper incentives to meet the needs of their local areas. They will do that much better than the present system does. However, while the present system exists, we need to tackle this pernicious loophole, which is, I understand, being exploited by councils in several parts of the country. It came to my attention as a result of a chain of events in my area.
Luton and South Bedfordshire councils were obliged to meet the housing targets imposed on them within the Milton Keynes and South Midlands sub-regional spatial strategy. Initially, the councils designated as their preferred areas for development locations within their boundaries. Then, as occasionally happens, they met local resistance, but they discovered the loophole and decided that they would overcome that local resistance by proposing an area in my constituency-as it happens, it is named Lilley Bottom and is one of the most beautiful features of my constituency-as their preferred area for development, thereby escaping any retribution from their voters and leaving the voters in the threatened area powerless to oppose them.
One can understand the outrage that followed. One thing that unites the people of Luton and Hitchin is a desire to retain the green belt that separates them from each other. The proposal is unpopular in Luton as well as in north Hertfordshire. However, it is a double outrage for the people of north Hertfordshire that it has been imposed on them from outside.
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