The Balance of Power: Central and Local Government - Communities and Local Government Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-227)

MR PETER GILROY OBE, MR PAUL CARTER, MR DAVID PETFORD AND COUNCILLOR MIKE FITZGERALD

10 NOVEMBER 2008

  Q220  John Cummings: Have you done that? Do you have the evidence to support what you are saying?

  Mr Gilroy: Yes, we have.

  Q221  John Cummings: Can you present that to the Committee?

  Mr Gilroy: Not today I cannot.

  Q222  John Cummings: But you would be able to send it in?

  Mr Gilroy: Yes, we can get you evidence to show that.

  Q223  Chair: Can we try a different one? As indeed did Birmingham or Manchester, you want control over incapacity benefit to be handed to upper tier authorities to ensure close co-ordination with welfare to work programmes. Do you think you would get a yes or no from the people in Maidstone, and do you think you would get the same answer from people in Margate?

  Mr Carter: I referred to the Supporting Independence programme, and the activities that we have been on working in the most deprived wards in the county of Kent, comparable with the rest of the country, and had that analysed by Oxford University, and the interventions that we have made since 2002 on incapacity benefit, the conclusion that Oxford University reached is that those people on long-term incapacity benefit of maybe up to 10 years or beyond have a 30% greater chance of getting back into employment having had the interventions of the Supporting Independence programme in the Kent economy. We have statistics that Peter probably has in his briefing note —

  Q224  Chair: That is not quite the question. That is the evidence the programme works. What we are asking is whether you have evidence that your local populations would support you getting those extra powers.

  Mr Carter: My answer would be, you talk to those 30% who have been on long-term incapacity benefit now being able to enjoy employment opportunities that were not there for them before. We have a massive thrust on what we call our 14-24 unit for the young people getting generational change by making sure that we maximise the opportunity of vocational programmes which we have been pioneering for the last seven or eight years into quality apprenticeships into sustained employment. How can the public sector, I chair the public service board in Kent, respond to creating more job opportunities, with what I call reverse ageism in the public sector? When you look at the age profile of people under the age of 24/25, it is pretty small compared to the population of the 45 pluses age category. So what can we do, in the 12 districts, roughly we have about 500 or 600 long-term unemployed people per district in the Kent economy under the age of 25, costing about £60-70 million a year on the DWP or JobcentrePlus. We have some massively creative schemes that we would love to run with, but the freedoms and flexibilities that we are given, we have been working with DWP for a number of years —

  Q225  Chair: Sorry, Mr Carter, I do understand that, that is not the question that was asked. The question was asked: before any of these powers are given, have you checked with people beforehand and asked them whether they want you to do it, and therefore is there any evidence that local people, before the power is given to you, actually want you to be given extra powers? That was the question. Mr Gilroy?

  Mr Gilroy: The answer would be yes if you are talking to the particular users of that particular service. If you talk about the generic population of 1.4 million, or nearly 2 million if you use the unitary, the answer would be no, but it would be the same for central government. Members go out and have a manifesto and they tell local people what they are going to do, the same as central government.

  Anne Main: That is the bit I wanted to get to. You probably say that politically, you would have to ensure that this was spelt out as a political message: does that cause any problems where different authorities operate on different electoral cycles, some coming up in thirds; for example, my own district comes up in thirds. You would need an electoral mandate at a local level to carry through much of what you want to do. Do you see there is some sort of need then to ensure that we have a degree of maybe electoral reform to ensure this happens?

  Chair: We really do not want to go down that —

  Q226  Anne Main: I am only talking about terms of authorities —

  Councillor FitzGerald: And we are on thirds.

  Chair: And we need to get Maidstone in.

  Q227  Anne Main: If you are on thirds, that is a good question to you.

  Mr Petford: I do not want to deal with the specifics, but the difficult questions I think are all about engagement and leadership. To pick up your point, sir, about localism, I think that again is about engagement and leadership. As a council, my cabinet goes round and visits every parish, calls a parish meeting, and talks about its work, what it is achieving, what it is not achieving, enters into a dialogue. That is very time-consuming. I have to say, when we first started it, as a chief executive, I thought, hmm, we are not going to get much from this; but it has been tremendous, the feedback has been tremendous, and the council does things differently because of that. I think you can do it on a larger scale, we have had some difficult issues in Maidstone, so we have had meetings called a "big debate", and we have taken over the local picture house and called the public, it has been packed out, and the cabinet, and leaders of the opposition within the council have had a debate with the public. Now I think if you engage and you express those leadership skills, you do move forward, and I think it is how you do it. It is not about imposition, it is about how you actually manage that process. It is hard, it takes a long time, but it is certainly worth it in terms of localism, and that for me is all that localism is about.

  Chair: Thank you all very much. We have to move on to the London boroughs, who have been sitting here patiently. Thank you.


 
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