Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Many of us did not serve on the Committee but nevertheless retain a strong interest in the Bill’s passage. We have had all the debates and all the votes—except one. There were not as many debates or votes as we wanted; in fact, because of the guillotine—sorry, programme motion—I was deprived of making on Report the only speech I wanted to make about the Bill. Many of us know that the Bill represents a substantial shift. For local government veterans in Parliament such as me, who served as a local government finance Minister in the days when I had to propose that shocking thing, compulsory competitive tendering, things have moved a lot. We are nowhere near the continental model of local government—giving people carte blanche at local level—nevertheless we are going in the right direction, although I wholly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and his team that the localisation agenda is still only an agenda and will have to be made a reality by a future Conservative Government. The only reason I shall vote against the Bill is that I find one aspect of it completely contradictory. With an agenda for turning government around, towards more power to local government, there is none the less a power that will deprive my constituents of their rights and their local democratic representation. No Member of the House should be indifferent to local government. I pay tribute to councillors of all parties who give up hours of their time and effort for local government. What an irony that in my constituency of Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire the county is making a bid for unitary status, to take democracy away from local people and move it way up-county to somewhere completely remote. Decisions on local issues will be made by councillors 50 miles away who know nothing about them. That is good enough reason for me to vote against the Bill. Yes, it contains some good things, but many of us think that there will be a lot of work to be done by an incoming Conservative Government.