Memorandum by Professor Gerry Stoker (BOP
33)
1. I strongly endorse the Committee's decision
to consider the issues around the balance of power between central
and local government. This is not because I care a great deal
about constitutional issues. Like most UK citizens I do not spend
many hours reflecting on what exactly the respective responsibilities
of central and local government should be. What drives me to this
issue, and gives it for me great importance, is a concern about
how enfeebled citizens feel about their engagement with our political
system.
2. The 2008 White Paper Citizens
in Control notes:
In the period from April to December 2007, only
two-fifths (38%) of respondents to the Citizenship Survey felt
they could influence decisions in their local area and one-fifth
(20%) of people felt they could influence decisions affecting
Great Britain (page 10)
These figures suggest a gap between the local
and the national sense of subjective empowerment. But what I find
really worrying is that while issues of scale, complexity and
resources mean that influencing national decisions could reasonably
seen by citizens as a massive task some 60% of us think that task
is beyond us at the local level as well.
3. In a globalized and interdependent world
it may become increasingly impossible to offer citizens a direct
sense of empowerment which makes the importance of affording those
opportunities at the local level even more vital. The reason why
the balance of power between central and local government matters
is that we need, if democracy is going to a living practice rather
than a spectator sport for most citizens, to create a far wider
set of opportunities for real decisions to be made at the local
level that people care about.
4. The Labour Government since 1997 has
been slow to recognise the importance of these issues. Its agenda
for local government has been more managerial and focused on service
delivery. And to extent the agenda has delivered local government
is better managed, more strategic, and more joined up than ever
before. It delivers many services with efficiency and many of
its practitioners have delivered real and imaginative community
leadership. The trouble is that citizens have been largely left
behind in this managerial revolution.
5. The Green Paper of the Governance
of Britain in 2007 shows the glimmer of some recognition
that advances in local government competence and capacity may
not be delivering much to invigorating our democracy. The Green
Paper tells us:
Creating a more participatory democracy requires
a healthy representative democracy at local level. It also requires
citizens to understand the roles of central and local government,
and who can be held responsible for the decisions and services
which affect their lives
I agree with that statement but consider that
the Green Paper rather underplays the role that local government
might have in re-invigorating our democracy. It proposed constructing
a concordat to set out the balance of central and local responsibilities.
And that was delivered but it was and is simply not enough of
itself to support a healthy representative democracy at the local
level alongside new mechanisms of public engagement. Let's explore
these points a little further below.
6. There are several reasons to be believe
that a more robust and effective system of local representative
democracy would benefit our attempts to re-invigorate our politics.
The local is an arena that the less partisan more free-flowing
politics that addresses issues that people care about could flower
because doing what is right for your area or community is a positive
basis for a more consensus building politics. Moreover because
it is local it can offer an engagement that is accessible to all.
That is not to say that all is well with local politics in England
but the potential of local politics can be seen not only through
abstract argument but it also demonstrated on a regular basis
in practice.
7. To make space for a more vibrant local
politics we need to take steps to change attitudes and practices
in the Westminster and Whitehall village. We need to challenge
the unthinking centralism that pervades the way national decision-makers
respond to policy problems. What is required is not every more
elaborate strategic partnerships where centrally-funded agencies
and local authorities sign off on agreed plans and targets and
rather something that breaks the mould. Options to be considered
include a parliamentary device that would vet legislation to see
if it was sufficiently respectful of localism. Or perhaps a Cabinet
Office function for checking all proposals—legislative and
non-legislative—to see if a localist solution had been considered
before a nationally-driven policy option was chosen or another
national body created. Another option is to establish create a
new statutory body to protect and promote local government. It
would be charged with making Whitehall proposals local government
friendly, demonstrate learning from and the value of local solutions,
engage in local—driven knowledge transfer. Panics about
charging for bin collections would be replaced by an assumption
that local government is designed to enable us to pilot solutions
to challenging issues.
8. Some movement on local government finance
is essential. A democratic system where all but 4 or 5% of
revenues are raised and allocated centrally through Whitehall
is odd in comparative democratic terms and unsustainable. It is
difficult to do a lot in the short run but perhaps one option
is doing something more to give even more flexibility over the
business rate and perhaps also hand over responsibility for allocating
centrally collected funds to an independent body. Given the highly
politically charged nature of local tax changes, as the poll tax
fiasco demonstrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the only
long-term way forward, if substantial changes are going to be
implemented, is to have a cross-party group charged with coming
up with a consensus set of proposals for a better system of local
government revenue raising.
9. Finally we need to return to the agenda
of how to reconstruct local politics so that it works better in
both its representative, direct and participative aspects. Here
the agenda for change is vast and the range of institutional devices
that could be brought into play developing on from our own and
others' practices is vast. The options stretch from more elected
mayors or electoral reform, through citizen initiatives or referenda
to participatory budgeting or internet focused deliberation. Some
of these options are reviewed in my book Why Politics Matters
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and together with many colleagues in
the political science community I am in position to provide evidence
on what works and what does not, against a range of objectives
( see for a start the Political Studies Association Failing
Politics? A Response to The Governance of Britain Green Paper,
2007)
10. But the real issue is not just the institutional
design of mechanisms but the political will to create a system
not subject to veto and control from political elites but rather
designed with the citizen in mind. That for me is the real goal
of shifting the balance of power between central and local government
September 2008
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