Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Forgive me for expressing my disappointment, but I thought the point of the debate on the Gracious Speech was for the Government to promote their legislative programme. I have therefore addressed myself to what was in the Queen’s Speech. Members of the public listening to such a presentation by a Minister will be disappointed by the level of party political point scoring and evasion of the point of the debate. We welcome the debate and for good reason we have chosen to yoke together the subjects of local government and the environment. It makes sense to do that because it is local authorities that shoulder a great deal of responsibility for taking the steps necessary to improve the quality of our environment locally and, by extension, globally. In most cases councils are rising to that challenge with innovative ways to reduce our environmental impact. The work that they do is poorly recognised by central Government, who fail to credit local authorities for the amount of commercial waste that they collect and recycle and the amount of composting that takes place. Even the transformation of waste into energy does not count. Local authorities tell me that these important aspects are not taken into account when a council is assessed for its green credentials. That is evidence of a lack of coherence in the approach of the two Government Departments represented in the Chamber today, a lack of coherence that stems from a party unsure of its future direction, as was laid bare in the Queen’s Speech last week. The Queen’s Speech comes not long since the publication of the local government White Paper and it allows us to compare the rhetoric of the White Paper with the reality of the legislative programme. Let us start with the local government Bill. We will welcome any measures in the Bill that give greater freedom to local councils. Rationalising the inspection regimes, cutting Government targets, scaling back best value and the comprehensive performance assessment will not be met with opposition from us, mainly because we have been campaigning for so long to scrap those procedures, although we shall wait and see if the replacement, the comprehensive area assessment, which sounds suspiciously like ““son of comprehensive performance assessment””, merely results in more red tape under a different guise. I am sure I am not alone in seeing the irony of the Government’s present position. In order to cut the targets and directives that have hamstrung councils, the Government will have to repeal their own legislation from the Local Government Acts 1999, 2000 and 2003. But in a spirit of consensus, I shall simply say, ““Better the sinner that repents”” and leave it at that. I shall be watching closely, however, to ensure that we do not have a bonfire of directives one day, only for new regulations to break out like rekindled embers from the fire on the next. I hope that taking a knife to the red tape will genuinely liberate councils in the long term, but I am sceptical that the culture that created the red tape in the first place can really be changed overnight. I find it astonishing, for example, that my local authority is being prevented by the Department for Education and Skills from fitting a sprinkler system in a brand new academy, despite four local cases of school arson in the past two years.