Sustainable Communities Bill

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head, and it allows me to pass on to the next part of my speech, which is to address the Government’s response to the Bill. At the heart of the Bill, I have tried to set out four simple steps designed to give our constituents real influence, but the Government have made it clear that they are not inclined to support the Bill. The Minister might argue that existing policy covers the bases—that local strategic partnerships and local area agreements are the vehicles for developing community strategies. Those mechanisms are good as far as they go, but they do not go far enough. In the conversations that I have had with local authorities, the same messages come through; I do not know whether other Members have received similar messages. The pooled money in these agreements is small and it will remain small as part of the whole, even on Government expansion plans, which I am sure that we will hear about. The amount of money being spent in Kent is £8 billion. The amount of money that will be pooled in terms of local area agreements is tiny. The majority of budgets are, and will still be, held separately; they are, effectively, badged and boxed in by central Government targets, and they are vulnerable to budget pressures. Moreover, funding streams into local area agreements appear to be inconsistent. One authority told me that its 2008 funding turned out to be half what was allocated in 2006-07. It is difficult to plan against that background of inconsistency. Any reallocation of funding under existing arrangements is a zero-sum game with winners and losers sitting around the same table, where there is no clear leadership. This Bill would strengthen that process and those mechanisms in a number of ways. Community action plans, local area agreements and local strategic partnerships would all be more effective if they were plugged into a national action plan that was itself created through a bottom-up process, if they had access to more resources that were not ring-fenced or vulnerable to budgetary pressure, if they were being clearly led by democratically elected local authorities with greater power to decide and freedom to innovate, and if they were constructed with the full engagement of the communities whom they are there to help. Last but not least, this Bill would make sure that the issue of sustainability was given the priority that it deserves in those discussions. The Government may also try to argue that this Bill will place burdens on both local and central Government, which was the point that I think that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) was trying to make. The Bill may require additional resources in terms of management, be a pain in the neck for the bureaucrats and make Ministers’ lives a little harder, but that feels like a tiny downside against the upside of giving our constituents a real chance to influence the future of our communities. It will be rough and raw democracy. Sharp elbows will be needed, but that is surely a better direction in which to go than continuing further down the path of centralisation and ““one size fits all””, when it so clearly does not.