Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I would like to return to issues relating to local government and begin by warmly welcoming the positive commitment to the revitalisation of local democracy that was so evident in the Secretary of State’s introductory speech. I welcome and pay tribute to the substantial increases for the funding of local government that the Government have delivered in recent years and the considerable improvement in local services that has come about as a result of those increases. I also welcome the Government’s evident commitment in the Queen’s Speech and the previously published White Paper to rejuvenating local government. But—and there is a ““but”” in all this—welcome as those steps are, we should recognise that they are unlikely of themselves to repair the centralisation of recent decades, which has so substantially undermined local democracy. They are unlikely to restore the standing of local government in the public eye and unlikely by themselves to restore the morale of demoralised elected members and officers in many parts of local government. Measures in the White Paper and Queen’s Speech are also unlikely to deal with the fundamental issue of local government finance. We shall have to wait for the Lyons review for that essential measure, and only when we get that review—[Interruption.]