Sustainable Communities Bill

It is certainly important that consensus about the merits of localism is reached between the two sides of the House. I have said that I believe that the drift to centralism began under previous Governments; I do not believe that the blame can be laid solely at the current Government’s door. I understand the importance of cross-party support for the Bill, but I am seeking to examine whether the rhetoric is always matched by the reality. After all, in 1994, the Prime Minister himself said, in his acceptance speech as Labour party leader, that"““we will…return power to local people over local services.””" Frankly, we would not be sitting here debating the Bill if we thought that that had happened in the past 12 years. Plainly, it has not. To return to the example of the police, the Government have introduced measures such as the community call for action, which they now seek to extend to other public services. That is an attempt to give communities a say on policing, and to let them express their view when things go wrong. Really, those are bureaucratic measures of last resort, rather than measures offering the real devolution of power and budgets, enabling communities to feel that they have a say, and securing the engagement that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) seeks. The Bill is right in principle, and I hope that we have the opportunity to debate its scope and precisely how it could achieve the important aim of the empowerment of citizens and communities. The tendency of the Executive will always be to accrue power, and in its long history the House has fought important battles to wrest that power away from them. The Bill is a small but important step in turning around the centralism that has characterised politics and the delivery of public services over a decade or more, and I hope that the commitment to localism that the Bill embodies will be picked up on both sides of the House.