Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I broadly welcome this Bill. It brings me back to the time when I served as a local councillor, not in the exalted position of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, but as an opposition councillor in a Tory-controlled council. Nevertheless, anybody who has had the privilege of serving as a councillor on a local authority—whether in the majority or minority party—will inevitably have learnt a lot about politics and had a real sense of the relationship between local government and local communities. I notice that there are some changes in the Bill on giving local authorities complete powers over by-laws without having to check them with central government. By-laws are important, but I remember amusing occasions when we revised them. It is difficult to get the wording right without it seeming quite humorous at times. I welcome the Bill because, as had already been said, it transfers power from the centre to local government. For too many years, the movement has been in the other direction. Therefore it can only be a good thing to say that local government should be healthy and made even healthier. We have suffered a great deal from low voter turnout. I am not saying that the Bill would change that overnight, but anything that can be done to make people feel that local government has a power to make a difference in local communities will encourage them to vote. That can only be a good thing. A number of comments have been made. I suspect that the opposition parties have had difficulties with the Bill. I do not want to inject too much party politics into this evening, but I suspect that when they got the Bill, they said ““My God, this is pretty good stuff! How are we going to criticise it? Let’s find something to criticise””. So they came up with the argument about local government finance. Well, if we local government finance reform were in the Bill, we would certainly not get it through before the Queen’s Speech. In any case, everybody in politics accepts that there are two proposals to which Parliament is unlikely to give easy passage. One is reforming the finance of local government, and the other is reforming the membership of this House. Governments take note of that. I ask two brief questions. First, I see that if a local council elects some of its members every year, it will have the power to change that to all-out elections every third year or so. If a local authority wanted to move in the other direction and have elections annually, I wonder whether it would have the power to do that. I know that people sometimes say that it is better for local democracy to have annual elections. When I was on a local authority for a London borough, we had elections every three or four years. Do the Government intend to give the power in the other direction, or does it only go in one direction? Secondly, in moving from a possible two-tier structure in local government to a single-tier structure, what will be the basis of local consent to enable that to happen? In other words, if there is unanimity between district councils and the county council, it is fairly obvious. But suppose that there is some disagreement between the county council and one or two of the district councils. Can that be resolved, or does it give a single district council the power of veto? I ask because there are certain areas where these issues are quite hotly contested. There is certainly no agreement, and I wonder what the way forward is. Briefly, if I am going to make any suggestions for strengthening the Bill, they will be on the voluntary and community sector. It is clear that local area agreements are important and becoming increasingly important. I notice that, in the Commons, the Minister said, in discussing Part 5 of the Bill, "““we cannot deliver our agenda in local communities without the voluntary sector. We cannot involve people, or consult them, or reconnect people with policy, let alone politics, withoutthe voluntary sector. We cannot get the innovation, the focus, the flexibility or, crucially, the trust of the public without the voluntary sector facilitating the relationship””.—[Official Report, Commons, Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill Committee, 22/2/07; col. 363.]" I think that there would be broad agreement that that is pretty sensible. Therefore, it is rather surprising that the involvement of the voluntary and community sector in the Government’s proposals is somewhat weak. There are no provisions in the Bill which fully recognise the importance of the voluntary and community sector as formal members of the arrangements for local area agreements. There is a need for a statutory duty for local authorities to enable voluntary and community organisations to play a full part at local level. The Government said in the Commons that guidance would follow. Well, guidance is guidance and we do not have it before us at all. It would recognise the importance of the voluntary and community sector if they had a statutory responsibility within this. The Government’s view, which they set out in the Commons, is that since the voluntary and community sectors and the business sector are not statutory bodies, a different approach needs to be applied to them. They said that the wording of the Bill, "““puts the onus on the local authority, or gives it the option””.—[Official Report, Commons, Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, 22/2/07; col. 363.]" That is pretty weak stuff. We know that in some areas local authorities perform well in this. For example, in Gloucestershire and in Northumberland there are compacts that fully involve the voluntary sector in a wide range of activities and responsibilities. We also know that other local authorities fall short of such a high standard. It would be desirable if the Government were willing to have the Bill strengthened in order to entrench the position of voluntary and community organisations within these local arrangements. That would strengthen the Bill and be a move for the better.