Sustainable Communities Bill

I would add to the right hon. Gentleman’s premise the right of Parliament, as well as national Government, to have a say in the debate. The proposal to identify public money that is spent locally, some on national imperatives and some on local priorities, is one of the Bill’s strengths. I believe that our local area agreement policy moves substantially in that direction, notwithstanding the scepticism—not cynicism—shown by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood. In the current financial year, half a billion pounds of public money—national money—is being pooled through local area agreements. Under the current proposals, in the next spending period that amount will rise to some £5 billion, pooled through local area agreements and thus subject to the prioritisation decisions of the locally elected representatives. Incidentally, that represents a larger sum than the revenue support grant that we redistribute through the formula. That is the scale of the change in relation to local area agreements that is heralded by the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, which we will debate on Monday. Our LAA policy will allow the identification of money in different areas, an approach pioneered by Kent county council, my own council and others. It will also allow the mandatory outcomes, as the jargon has it—that on which national Government and, through national Government, Parliament can insist—not just to be radically reduced in each area, but to be tailored specifically for that area. We expect each area to have about 35 goals, or objectives, in the achievement of which the council and its partners will have a statutory duty to co-operate. Those 35 targets, however, will not be the same in all areas in order to reflect the differences between areas—between, say, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish in Greater Manchester and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes in north-east Lincolnshire. I believe that our policy is the best way of squaring the circles created by the paradoxes I have described, and it is strongly supported by the Local Government Association on a cross-party basis. We have spent nearly two years—which some would say is too long—in developing that policy. The role that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State, although probably well-intended, fails to deal with the difficulty that would inevitably result from local action plans that would either require more money to meet local priorities or, through local decisions, seek to gain control of moneys identified for national priorities. I am thinking of moneys such as benefits budgets or health budgets. There is an advantage to identifying what those moneys are, but the important question of how one decides on prioritisation then arises. I fear that, because of the way that the Bill is constructed, it would inevitably lead to the Secretary of State vetoing decisions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said. I would not have a problem with the current Government having that veto, but I suggest that future Secretaries of State might not support the localist agenda. Members should take that important point into account—and Liberal Democrat Members in particular should do so.