Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, noble Lords who were in the House heard two remarkable maiden speeches that we shall treasure. We also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Smith—who is not in place—that there is some mistrust of local government, or perhaps an overcritical attitude towards it, on this side of the House. I do not share that opinion, nor do I fully share the optimism of the noble Lord, Lord Best, that the tide is turning from centralisation to decentralisation. That is the subject to which I shall address my remarks. As we consider the approach of the Bill to the reform of local government structures, I am still looking for the dividing line between strategy and tactics; I am looking for a direction of travel as well as for the detailed signposts along the way. I am not so certain that we have reached the turning point marked ““the decentralisation of central government power””. Over many years, local authorities have been subjected to many attempts to achieve progressive and lasting reform. As yet, local government is still caught up in the continuing tension between systems of central control and the alternative of decentralised local independence with undiminished accountability. Local government also remains threatened by regionalisation. The Bill is silent on the subject, yet parallels with the re-emergence of the European constitution must be in many people’s minds. What do the Government believe? Are today’s issues better dealt with nationally or locally, but not in between, or only nationally? It is hard to see which issues common to Whitby and Hull are amenable to a regional resolution, for if Whitby has issues in common with Hull, it is certain that those issues will also be present in many other towns and cities, thus calling for a national response. Yet local Whitby issues will not affect Hull. Each town can solve its own issues, but only if it is enabled to do so. Local authorities are also subject to schools of thought about efficiency and good value derived from the harsh, utilitarian beliefs of their proponents, so we have centralised regimes of targets and league tables. Local authorities also experience the fashion for following single-solution approaches to issues—solutions that are frequently replaced by others when they do not appear to be working too well. We have had that in relation to Part 14. There seems to be a predictable gap of six years between one piece of legislation and the next. That is not an atmosphere that encourages local authorities to innovate when they are constantly up against those who are busy showing that they already know what should be done. It is ironic that the Prime Minister recognised that need and wished to pursue an interesting strategy towards devolved local democracy, had he been able to persuade his colleagues, but as he is ever willing to move on if an idea does not meet with the right response, he accepted the position, leaving only tactics behind. Now after all those reports and the White Paper, we have the Bill. It is long and mechanistic: all tactics and no strategy. It tackles neither entrenched positions—those of some local education authorities, for example—nor the acceptance among many engaged in local government that they are only the administrators of decisions made elsewhere. Those who argue, as I do, for the real revival of local democracy need to remember that there are many who find that doing administratively that which they have been told to do and then ticking audit boxes is a more comfortable life than management decision-making. Whatever the Bill sets out to do with its utilitarian approach to single tiers, possible adjustments to boundaries—with options for executive structure and for the rules governing elections—even its ““will it work”” approach to parishes, it will not change the fundamentals of the present settlement between central and local government. Yet a new settlement is the key strategic component of a new and more successful strategy, as the Prime Minister recognised when he wrote in the foreword to the White Paper, "““We want to see local authorities rising to the challenge of leading their areas””." After all the study and the promises, what is missing? It is the money because the shared responsibility for raising the required money is at the heart of any new funding settlement. In the background, the public know only too well that they are heavily taxed. They know who sets and collects the taxes, and they know that all that money confers power. Their perception of local government is that it can do only what it has been funded to do by central government. Rightly or wrongly, council tax is perceived to be centrally controlled. It is interesting that when there are lobbies against council tax, they take place outside the Houses of Parliament. Conscious that he who pays the piper calls the tune, why should the public become engaged in, and by, the work of local authorities? The world of league table and targets reinforces this disengagement. It is possible to climb up this league table only by conforming to benchmarks that are set centrally because in this league, there are no contests that produce a clear result—win, lose or draw—nor is there much hope of persuading the adjudicators to agree to different or special circumstances. The best that can be done is to duck and weave in the interests of independence while mastering the presentation of conformity, which is not a good recipe for local engagement. The Bill promises some light-touch relief, but will it happen? I judge that it will not happen until there is a major change in the funding settlement between central and local government. That brings us back to money. If local authorities are to be truly representative, they need the power to raise a much more significant proportion of the necessary money. As my noble friend Lady Hanham said, that may be to grasp a nettle, but nevertheless, the choice is clear. The public understand that responsibility and accountability go together and will be achieved only when the public can call local authorities to account for the way they raise and spend the public’s money. Of course there are problems to be solved, but they are surely not beyond the capability of the incoming Prime Minister. The fact remains that to achieve the local leadership that is needed—the type of independent leadership called for by the Prime Minister, which will engage the public and recruit into local government those who can deliver—we need a new funding settlement between central and local government. Meanwhile, this long and mechanistic Bill contains no such direction of travel. However much we discuss and amend it, it will remain yet another appearance of reform rather than the reality.