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The participation of electors in local council elections is disappointingly low and efforts to increase that participation must be encouraged. The report of the Councillors Commission, Representing the Future, made a number of recommendations, which the Government seek to implement by way of Part 1. However, placing a duty on local authorities to promote understanding of their functions and democratic arrangements, together with the functions of other public bodies in their area and how to take part in those arrangements, is not entirely new. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, stated, local councils have been undertaking this work for decades. From now on, local authorities will have to refer to statutory guidance on how to fulfil this duty. I am sure that it will become one of the numerous performance indicators that waste so much of local authority officers’ time in compiling for audit. That is the top-down approach, which really does not empower local authorities. As the noble Lords, Lord Smith and Lord Best, identified, we need to do this with a much more light-handed approach.
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What is really needed is individual registration on electoral rolls, which the Electoral Commission has been advocating for a number of years, together with the reintroduction of postal voting following individual registration. When the pilot scheme for all-postal voting was tried in west Norfolk in 2003, the number of votes recorded increased by 10 percentage points.
Petitions to local authorities should be treated with care and respect. It is quite proper to consider both paper and electronic versions. With rights go responsibilities and, in devising a scheme for a local authority, it is important to balance the one with the other. Like other noble Lords, I am concerned that hopes may be raised by organising a local petition—for instance, about placing a ban on the development of wind energy, which might receive enthusiastic support from the public, and even members of the council, only to be instantly dismissed by the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that petitions are only an expression of local opinion and will have no effect on policy. We will need to explore in Committee whether only those on the electoral roll should have the right to sign a petition, as council tax payers will be footing the bill for the action taken by the local authority to give effect to the action demanded by the petition.
I turn to regional policy for a moment. The Bill replaces one or two quangos with three or four quangos. The regional strategy will replace the existing regional spatial strategy for the region, so the notes to the Bill explain. We will have the regional development agency and the new leaders’ board to enable local authorities to act collectively and decisively at regional level. Although the RDA and the leaders’ board will have the economic development and regeneration of the region, the promotion of employment, business efficiency and investment and the contribution to sustainable development, including the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, in their remit, the Government have decided that economic development and regeneration should be undertaken by yet another board, the economic prosperity board. A majority of the EPB must be elected members of the constituent councils, who may already be on the leaders’ board. Although the Secretary of State will provide funds for the leaders’ board, the EPB will be funded by the constituent councils.
Together with my noble friend Lady Warsi, I believe that this will be a recipe for muddle and confusion and will not add value to the work undertaken by the county councils and the borough or district councils acting together locally. These quangos are mostly talking shops that represent the Government’s attempt to force regional government on to an unwilling public, who have demonstrated that regional government is not for them. Some infrastructure projects, such as highways and mineral development, should be considered at a regional level, but not business efficiency and investment.
Lastly, I should like to encourage the Government in their review and reform of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, especially Part 2 regarding construction contracts. I played a small part in the formulation of that legislation when I was a Minister of State at the Department of the
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Clauses 136 to 139 tackle the problem of payment under a construction contract and seek to improve the existing arrangements. The payment of subcontractors in an industry that has multiple contracts and subcontracts is always fraught with difficulty. However, the issue of paying for work done, not just “pay when paid”, needs to be looked at again. The introduction of payment notices may be a way forward. In Committee, it will be worth exploring the issue of who should issue payment notices. The amount paid should be paid by the final date for payment unless the paying party has issued a notice in the mean time reducing the amount claimed and giving the reasons for doing so.
Apart from the review of construction contracts, this Bill replicates so much of what local authorities already do, and do well, that I can give it only a cautious welcome.
6.22 pm
Lord Borrie: My Lords, to my mind, local government in many parts of the country seems to be in a state of poor health. Of course, I know that many local authorities and the services that they provide achieve success—in housing, education, business development and even, sometimes, social services departments, which are not all to be properly described as inadequate. I am well aware, as are especially Members of this House who are members of local authorities, that large numbers of elected councillors and officials serve their communities with dedication and effort.
However, if you think of the public’s attitude, you must recognise, whether you are in local government or not, that local government is seen as worthy but remote, as is evidenced by the low turnout at elections, which has been referred to several times this evening. To that I would add the reduced coverage of activities and debates by the local media. I am afraid that elected representatives are often seen not as “us” but as “them”.
In its early parts, the Bill seeks to give local government a boost and to reinvigorate local democracy. The iconic word of the moment is “empowerment”—I do not say that I am enthusiastic about it, but what it means is clear enough—whereby representative democracy is supplemented by voters becoming active citizens, not just once every few years in the polling booths, but with an ongoing role in influencing the decision-makers and holding them to account on a regular basis.
A new duty on councils to promote democracy and to show people how they are to get involved may be, like other things in the Bill, something that many good councils are doing already, as the noble Viscount just indicated. They are not doing it everywhere, however.
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Useful, too, are the proposals to enhance accountability through regular public hearings and petitions that must be responded to. I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, has said; there may be misconceptions. “Respond” does not necessarily mean “agree”. “Response” does mean, however, an intelligent, reasonable response to the points that have been raised. Without that, “response” would mean nothing.
I am particularly interested in the proposals for better redress facilities if service delivery goes wrong. The Government’s White Paper of July, Communities in Control, pointed out that a substantial number of people are dissatisfied with the quality of local services and often do not know how to complain. Those who do complain are dissatisfied at how their complaint is handled. Greater understanding of these matters, including of the role of the Local Government Ombudsman, is vital.
The Local Government Ombudsman has not been mentioned so far this evening. I hope that some of the weaknesses of the Local Government Ombudsman system, especially the difficulties in enforcing its findings, are to be remedied. Due to the ombudsman’s powers of investigation, which no individual councillor or member of the public has, empowering the ombudsman seems an obvious practical way of empowering the citizen.
My right honourable friend Hazel Blears said in July,
- “there is no conflict between representative and participatory forms of democracy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/07/08; col. 1413.]
I hope that she is right but I am not sure, as I have concerns that introducing participatory forms of democracy may reduce the desire and interest of more politically active members of the community to seek election as councillors. Being a councillor will not be quite as significant if participatory democracy begins to be as important as representative democracy. I am not sure that representative democracy would be reinforced, as the Government hope, rather than undermined by the direct participation of citizens.
In an interesting passage in the White Paper, the Government admit that shifting power to citizens generally may be “uncomfortable” for both politicians and service providers. Whether it is uncomfortable or not, I agree that that should not stand in the way of desirable change. The test must be what is in the best interests of the community.
Your Lordships may think that I am going off at a tangent and that I am being extreme, but I have more to say about my anxieties. The impact of the detailed provisions of the Bill should be examined carefully by us, by the other place and by the Local Government Association, from whose president, the noble Lord, Lord Best, we heard earlier. I would be grateful if Ministers could reassure me that my anxieties are unfounded. Am I wrong, for example, to fear that unelected and possibly unelectable individuals could acquire undue influence locally by pushing single-issue
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I said that I was going off at a bit of a tangent at this point, but these anxieties have been thought about by people in the past. They seem not to have troubled the representatives of local councils who have spoken to us so helpfully this afternoon, but ministerial assurance from our splendid Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, would be excellent.
6.30 pm
Lord Mawson: My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s and the Government’s concern in the Bill to give a stronger voice to local people in determining the future of their communities. I believe that the Minister’s wishes, expressed in her response to the gracious Speech last week, to,
- “provide real help for people in tough times; to support strong ... communities; to continue to plan for the long term by creating more sustainable communities; and to prepare people and businesses so that they are best positioned to take advantage when the upturn comes”,
are genuine desires of both her and this Government. I also agree that:
“There is a direct link to be made between the connection people feel to their communities and how far they feel that they can influence change and impress their views and concerns on local government for a thriving, confident economy. People are more resilient when they feel they belong and can play a full part in communities that are strong and sustainable”.—[Official Report; 10/12/08; cols. 399-400.]
That is all correct, in my view. As a general statement, who can disagree? The difficulty comes when we get into the detail and what this all means in practice.
Can we believe that all our local councillors have the experience to be our local leaders? That might be true in some places but not everywhere. Some local leaders who are well respected and have achieved much are not members of local councils; they have not chosen that route.
I worry, as does the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, that, when notice of this Bill was first given, more emphasis was placed on community empowerment but some elements of that have been dropped. This is a real shame, at a time when we need to empower local leaders, who can deliver real change on the ground. Why have we watered down the Bill? It would be helpful to know.
In my response to the gracious Speech last week, I described some of the work of social entrepreneurs—local leaders whose serious track record in building strong, sustainable communities is not even referred to in the Bill. The Bill assumes that the public sector will lead us all and do it all for us. I do not believe it.
Social entrepreneurs and the social enterprise movement have achieved a great deal and have demonstrated real delivery on the ground. Responses to the social entrepreneurial approach have changed over the years. At first, politicians thought it a great idea but bemoaned the lack of examples. When Community Action Network—which I co-founded and thus must declare as an interest—and others started to uncover examples in communities across the
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That does not mean that the social entrepreneur should be discounted. Quite the opposite: it demonstrates a need for all our politicians now to develop a political framework that legitimises this approach and brings it more seriously into the mix. The Bill does not do this.
Service delivery needs clearly accountable leadership. We need to find ways of encouraging this and giving legitimate authority to the Jamie Olivers of this world. Equally, I could mention John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, or Tim Smit of the Eden Project, and there are many others who are less well known. They are people with a track record of leadership and delivery in local communities and they are very accountable.
We also need to invest in future generations of these people. They should not still be forced to face into the wind, as we have had to do for so long in Bromley-by-Bow while the council sorts it all out for us. These entrepreneurs have earned the right to have the wind put into their sails.
People make the assumption that simply involving more people in the representative decision-making process is a good thing because it is “more democratic”. As a new life Peer, I have heard this argument a lot during debates about the future of your Lordships’ House. I have listened to all three main parties in this House arguing for a 100 per cent elected representative Chamber in this House believing that greater representation will mean a more lively democracy. This has not been our experience on the streets of Bromley-by-Bow. Local people do not feel represented; they often do not feel or see the practical results of that representation and so do not feel empowered. They feel disillusioned with the democratic process. People are practical; they want to see a connection between what they do and what happens on the ground, then they get interested and committed.
At both central and local government level, New Labour has rightly taken steps to strengthen the power of elected leaders and enhance their ability to act decisively. There are many examples of this, but perhaps the clearest is the agenda for modernising local government, replacing old-style council committees with a leader and cabinet model, in some cases with the direct election of executive mayors. This new thinking, while not perfect, has really begun to move the public sector on in east London. When I first arrived there 25 years ago, the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney were basket cases. They are not so today.
Yet the Government’s modernisation of Whitehall and town hall politics is strangely at odds with the approach taken by a whole plethora of neighbourhood-based regeneration schemes, most notably the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, whose work in overseeing the Government's neighbourhood renewal strategy is, as its website said, “a continual, two-way process” between Whitehall and local government and communities, rather than being about Whitehall telling local government and communities how they should run things.
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At the same time as one part of government has been removing committees from town halls, another has created a massive committee infrastructure in disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the country. This all seems confused. I would suggest that the time has come for politicians to put real energy into creating a political framework in which the work of leaders such as Jamie Oliver, and the Tim Smits of this world, who have not chosen the representative route, can be given greater legitimacy. Many of them are well respected leaders in their own communities and in their own right, are not local councillors, and have a serious track record of delivery and success.
It would be helpful if this Bill could send out absolutely clear messages that this kind of leadership must not be diluted by bureaucracy and a culture of committee that imagines everyone should be consulted about everything. In return, such leaders would be expected to take personal responsibility for both their successes and failures. If the Bill were to open that box—and I fear it will not—and put this discussion on the map, it might have an important contribution to make towards both local economic development and greater community and individual empowerment.
The practical experience of the social entrepreneur is starting to influence behaviour in the public sector. There are examples of local authorities coming to similar conclusions to us. The London Borough of Newham has also been grappling with the issue of local leadership, shifting its emphasis from neighbourhood committees to active community teams made up of volunteers and linked to the borough's Olympic volunteering programme. These teams work with local councillors to help shape and strengthen their communities, for example through free events, which are used to help the council and community lead councillors to identify and address the priorities in each area, and to help inform future service priorities, such as crime and anti-social behaviour services, sports facilities and parks.
This has echoes of the way in which Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, has mobilised his very large number of volunteers, whom he hopes to use as he moves into the White House. He recognises that it is not just what government can do that counts. This approach is encouraging a broad range of people to help shape their neighbourhoods through practical activity, rather than perpetuating talking shops with the usual suspects. In the process, volunteers develop skills that help them in employment and other areas of their lives.
I encourage the Government to look closely at Newham's approach. There are clues here as to how, in practice, you actually begin to empower local government. LOCOG would also do well to study Newham's approach, as it recruits and trains its volunteers for the 2012 Games.. It is a shame that what I am suggesting here is not reflected at all in the Bill, but I thought that it might be helpful if I brought it to the attention of your Lordships’ House and made some tentative suggestions about how the Government might at least begin to welcome these entrepreneurial leaders into their structures and into the fold. The Bill could make a major contribution towards practical community
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My practical thoughts on what these steps might be are as follows. The Bill could publicly recognise that local people, businesses and social entrepreneurs should be involved in the local delivery of local services, where they wish it. Encouraging them simply to comment on how the state talks and delivers does not go far enough. One of the ways in which the Government could help small businesses in the coming recession and increase social cohesion, tackle worklessness and create community empowerment is by promoting a broader local economic mix. The state is too large a proportion of the local community, particularly in regeneration areas. It wastes money, creates dependency and costs taxpayers a great deal.
The Bill makes no reference to partnership and to encouraging and promoting local procurement from SMEs and there is nothing about engaging with business and entrepreneurs in the setting-up and running of economic prosperity boards. The assumption seems to be to leave it to the state. I ask the Minister whether it would be possible at this late stage to include in the Bill some of this thinking.
I make some specific suggestions. In Chapter 2, about petitions, could the Bill encourage local people, businesses, members of the voluntary community services and social entrepreneurs to present petitions to run any service which is currently run by one of the statutory partners? Could we introduce a presumption that, if such organisations can deliver to the same cost and at least the same quality, they should be entitled to deliver that service? This could include measurement of value of other community benefits; for example, social cohesion, employing local people and so on. Government could use the proposed audit function to provide an objective analysis on the benefit that would bring, otherwise the statutory body will simply justify itself. Perhaps the Government could pilot this first in the economic prosperity board areas.
Part 6 of the Bill could suggest that everyone who sits on the economic prosperity boards is there because of specific expertise they have and not just because they represent particular committees. We all know from hard-won experience that representative committees of this kind simply do not work. If those boards are truly to be about economic prosperity, then a majority of the board must be made up of local entrepreneurs, with focus on smaller rather than larger businesses. Without that experience around the table, those boards will produce a great deal of paper and many expensive strategy documents but little prosperity. Could we allow local social entrepreneurs, or members of the voluntary community sector, or other local partnerships to petition to set up an economic prosperity board? If not, why not?
In Part 2, Chapter 2, the Bill suggests that there is also a strong audit function, which is necessary. Could the Bill give a specific role to audit on how well public bodies are using their purchasing power to support local businesses and social enterprise? To do that, of
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I have used this speech to further set out the case for the role of social enterprise and the part played by the social entrepreneur. I would like to know whether the Minister is interested in any of my suggestions, which are designed to empower local communities in practical ways at a time of financial hardship. Last week, during his summing-up in response to the gracious Speech, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested he would like a meeting. Perhaps we could meet before Committee stage to see whether any of these points can be taken on board.
Earlier today, I hosted a very helpful visit of the Secretary of State from DCLG to east London to explore deepening the role of social entrepreneurs and social enterprise in the Olympic legacy. Both she and the Minister are deeply concerned about those issues. I welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters in your Lordships’ House. New ways of working are emerging; we all need to engage with them for the sake of our democracy.
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