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The total cost of these receptions was £23,500.
Equitable Life
Statement
The Financial Services Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Myners): My right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Liam Byrne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I can today provide an update to the House on the continuing progress of Sir John Chadwick's work in relation to Equitable Life.
On 16 June 2009, Sir John Chadwick issued a document that set out his proposed approach and issues to be addressed, alongside announcing his formal appointment of Towers Perrin as actuarial advisers and establishing a website through which interested parties can keep informed of his work as it progresses and make representations to his office.
The document intended to give interested parties an opportunity to comment on Sir John's proposed approach and Sir John requested that comments be returned in written form to his office by 17 July 2009. I am pleased therefore to inform the House that Sir John has received a range of representations on his proposals, including from Equitable Life and an Equitable Life members group, a range of policyholders and the Government. Sir John is in talks with these interested parties and he is now reviewing all representations with a view to identifying the next stages of his work.
I can also inform the House that, running concurrently with this work, Towers Perrin, the appointed actuaries to Sir John, has already begun to thoroughly review and analyse the many hundreds of thousands of extensive policyholder records that have been provided by Equitable Life.
Sir John intends to publish a further document in August. This interim report will contain a definitive statement of his approach for determining relative losses and a definitive list of the specific issues that he will address.
International Debt Relief
Statement
The Financial Services Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Myners): My honourable friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Ian Pearson) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
The Government remain determined to lead global efforts to tackle poverty in the world's poorest countries. As part of that, they are fully committed to delivering on their international debt relief commitments to ensure that the poorest countries are not faced with an unsustainable debt burden.
To support these efforts, I am today publishing a consultation on legislation designed to tackle creditor non-participation in the heavily indebted poor countries initiative. By opting out of international debt relief efforts and pursuing the full value of claims through the courts, this minority of private creditors can negate the benefits of debt relief. This is at the expense of poor countries and British taxpayers. The proposed legislation would limit the scope for creditors to recover
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Copies of the consultation have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
Learning and Skills Council for England: Annual Report and Accounts
Statement
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Lord Young of Norwood Green): My honourable friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs (Kevin Brennan) has made the following Statement.
I inform the House that the Learning and Skills Council for England has today published its annual report and accounts for the period to 31 March 2009. Copies will be placed in the House Libraries.
Local Democratic Renewal
Statement
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (John Denham) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today announcing a consultation on local democratic renewal. This follows the commitment set out in Building Britain's Future to explore ways of increasing both the powers and the accountability of councils and city regions. Local democratic renewal forms a major part of the Government's proposals for constitutional reform, alongside other strands for debate, including reforming the House of Lords, considering a written constitution, reviewing the electoral system and increasing public engagement in politics.
The founding principle of local government is that citizens have the right to influence the decisions that affect their lives and their communities. A key way in which local citizens are able to exercise that right is their ability to elect a strong local council that can lead and shape their area. That is why the role of councillors and councils, with their unique democratic mandate, is critical to making sure that local services are responsive to the needs of their local communities. Citizens have a right to have their voices heard and to expect those delivering services to care what they think.
Citizens rightly expect that councils should be the centre of local decision-making and the one place that they can go in order to influence and challenge what local services are doing. In order to do this, councils must be fully equipped to act on behalf of local residents, with the powers to scrutinise and shape local public services and respond to local need.
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There is a large and untapped pool of people who would like more say in what happens in their area and it is right that both central and local government should do more to give them greater direct control over the decisions that affect their lives and their community. But we must also recognise that, in today's time-poor society, citizens have only limited time to give.
There are other imperatives driving the need for stronger local government. First, it is to increase democratic accountability, since councils, uniquely among local services, have a direct democratic mandate from residents. Secondly, it is a way of promoting greater value for money. Local government has already saved £4.5 billion through efficiency measures since 2004. If local authorities are given greater powers to oversee and co-ordinate all the money coming into their areas, they will better be able to drive change and improvement, cutting out duplication and waste. Thirdly, councils have a vital role to play in promoting economic development. They are best placed to bring together partners from across their area to support residents and prepare for future prosperity. Finally, there is the delivery of personalised services. As the drive continues to deliver personalised services and enforceable entitlements, it will become ever more important to ensure that local services are delivered flexibly and in response to local needs.
Recent reform has gone some way towards giving councils the powers that they need to play this stronger role. The three-year financial settlement means that councils have much greater certainty to plan ahead. They have powers to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area and they have powers of scrutiny to challenge and hold to account some of those who provide public services and serve their local communities.
This consultation sets out proposals to radically reform and strengthen local government so that it is even more able to take on a new role in serving residents by strengthening public service delivery. It contains proposals to:
Put local authorities at the centre of local decision-making-our aspiration is that they should be the one place where citizens, through their councillors, can hold local services to account. This would mean that, when citizens go to vote, they are electing someone who can act on their behalf in relation to every aspect of public spending in their area. We propose to achieve this by enhancing local authorities' power to scrutinise other bodies and by extending the range of bodies that these powers can be applied to. This builds on the concept of the Total Place initiative, which gives councils a unique role in scrutinising all the money that comes into their area.
Strengthen local government's ability to act in the local interest-we ask whether councils have the powers that they need to respond effectively to local challenges, or whether there are barriers that prevent them from using the powers that they already have. This will be essential to enable local authorities to deliver the minimum entitlements set out in Building Britain's Future. We also set out our response to the recent LAML judgment, proposing to introduce a specific
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Strengthen local authorities' ability to tackle climate change-we propose to give councils more direct responsibility for fighting climate change, perhaps through introducing local carbon budgets.
Support sub-regional working-we set out a range of options to make sure that the greater powers being devolved to city regions and other sub-regional partnerships are matched by greater transparency and accountability for local residents.
Achieve a clearer relationship between central and local government-we set out the principles in which central and local government broadly operate and ask whether these should be more formally articulated, in order to give citizens greater clarity and certainty about our respective roles and functions. We also explore the possibilities for overseeing these more formal arrangements, potentially through an ombudsman or a joint select committee, subject to the outcomes of the consultation and the views of Parliament.
The consultation seeks views on these proposals and will run from 21 July until 2 October 2009. Copies of the consultation document have been placed in the Library of the House.
Local Government: Business Growth Incentives Scheme
Statement
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My right honourable friend the Minister for Local Government (Rosie Winterton) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today announcing the publication of the Government's response to our public consultation on reforming the local authority business growth incentives scheme, which sets out that we will distribute a total of £100 million to local authorities in 2009-10 and 2010-11.
The Government launched the consultation on 25 August 2008 and invited comments to help to refine their thinking before a new scheme was introduced for 2009-10 and 2010-11. The consultation closed on 20 November 2008.
Given the broad support that the Government's proposals have received, the revised scheme will largely be as proposed in the consultation, although with two significant changes made in response to the representations we received.
First, instead of the mapping of local authorities into 28 sub-regions plus London as originally proposed for the purposes of the scheme, we have decided to recognise 55 smaller sub-regions21 July 2009 : Column WS184
The decision on sub-regional mapping follows further consultation, in February 2009, further to which we invited all local authorities, including those that did not respond to the consultation, to enter into discussions with nearby authorities in an effort to reach a local consensus about the sub-regional mapping that they wished the Government to consider.
In the consultation responses, the balance of opinion was that we should publish a provisional list of sub-regions for comment first rather than proceed directly to publish a final list, which we have done at annexe A of our consultation response.
Here we are also setting out the proposed allocation of the £50 million available in 2009-10.
A period of two weeks will now be available to authorities to make any final representations on both the provisional list of sub-regions and on the provisional allocations for 2009-10, before those allocations are made.
The Government's response to the consultation, along with the provisional list of sub-regions and provisional allocations for 2009-10, is available on the Communities and Local Government website at http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/localgovernmentfinance/labgi/labgischeme2/.
Copies of these documents are available in the Libraries of both Houses.
Local Government: Stoke-on-Trent
Statement
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My right honourable friend the Minister for Local Government (Rosie Winterton) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
On 8 May, my right honourable friend the then Minister for Local Government announced to the House that, as part of a programme of action to help the people of Stoke-on-Trent to restore to the city good city governance, the Government were minded to make an order under Section 86 of the Local Government Act 2000 specifying a scheme of whole-council elections from 2011. He also announced that, to enable the focus of all to be on this 2011 new start, and while an electoral review is being undertaken, the Government were minded to include in the order provision to cancel the 2010 elections for the city council. He explained that before taking final decisions there would be a short soundings period until 18 June to provide an opportunity for interested parties to make representations to us.
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That soundings period is now complete and I am today announcing that, having regard to the representations that we have received, we have decided to go ahead with a scheme of whole-council elections for Stoke-on-Trent City Council from 2011. We intend to lay the necessary order before Parliament as soon as practicable.
We have, however, concluded that there is not a sufficiently strong case for cancelling the 2010 elections for the city council and hence the order will not include provision to cancel these elections.
We reached these conclusions having regard to the 11 representations that we received during the soundings period. There was broad support for whole-council elections, but a number of concerns were raised about cancelling the 2010 elections to the city council, including from the Electoral Commission, which considered that on the available evidence a clear case for cancelling the elections had not been made.
In his 8 May announcement, my right honourable friend also indicated that he was asking the Electoral Commission to undertake an electoral review of Stoke-on-Trent, which would consider the size of the council and the warding arrangements for the city. The Electoral Commission has now directed the Boundary Committee to undertake this review, which we understand will begin shortly.
We are confident that these measures to reform the electoral arrangements of Stoke-on-Trent will help to provide for the people of Stoke-on-Trent the opportunity that they need to achieve that well governed city, with high-quality public services, successful economic regeneration and improved quality of life, which they deserve.
Ministry of Defence: Annual Report and Accounts
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