Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak at the end of this stimulating and wide-ranging debate. I, too, commiserate with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I think she has given her throat infection to me and I may start coughing during my speech. We know how she was suffering yesterday. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, on their magnificent maiden speeches. I am sure they will have a tremendous part to play in the House given their vast knowledge of voluntary service and so on. We have had an extraordinary debate. We were talking mainly about local government but we may or may not have solved the problems of the health service. I commiserate with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is to reply to the debate. When I was talking to him earlier today he said that he had to read the whole Bill this morning to be able to answer this afternoon. So I shall commiserate with him in a little while when he replies. We have debated the health service and the Sunday trading laws, and we have had a great insight into the Cinque Ports. We have learnt a great deal today. I particularly thank my noble friends Lord Howe and Lady Cumberlege for their contributions on the health side of the Bill; they have a vast knowledge of that and I do not. I also thank my noble friend Lord Bruce-Lockhart, who made a valuable contribution as chairman of the Local Government Association. It will be his last appearance in that role as he gives up the appointment in a week’s time. I turn now to the legislation and my comments may not be quite so light-hearted. The Secretary of State stated that this Bill would contain, "““significant proposals to empower communities, enhance the leadership role of local government and bring about a radical change in the nature of the relationship between central government and local government and its partners””.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/07; col. 1155.]" I do not doubt that several proposals are significant or that local leadership will be enhanced by the Bill’s provisions, but will the Bill bring radical change between central and local government? I am afraid the answer is no. Will the Bill help me to act more decisively as leader of Essex County Council? I should explain to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, that I am leader, not the chairman. I prefer to be leader because the chairman does not have any powers these days. Will the Bill help me do more as leader, representing the interests of 1.4 million people, on issues such as transport or affordable housing? A key test of the Bill is what tangible difference it will make to people’s lives. I do not think it will be very much. We all know that ““localist”” rhetoric is in full swing on both sides of the political divide; localism is very much in vogue. But I sometimes feel that all things local—democracy, delivery and enhancing the quality of life—are still a foreign language to central government. It is still a case of ““nanny knows best””. It was the same when my party was in power some years ago; I do not think the philosophy of central government has changed too much. The Bill forces me to ask: when will we genuinely give back power to local people? When will central government catch up with what the best of local government is already doing? Local government has been doing great things over the past few years and is ahead of national government in the way it operates. We have heard today how the Bill completely ducks the issue—there have been various phrases—of funding local government. This is not a red herring, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, but a very vital issue. My noble friend Lord Eccles put it very well in his contribution. Perhaps the Government are hoping that the Lyons report will somehow disappear, another casualty in the long fight for a simple, sustainable local government finance system. We will return to these issues in Committee. As several noble Lords have said, the Bill is a waste of an outstanding opportunity finally to devolve powers over planning, housing, transport, skills and economic development from national Government and regional quangos to democratic, local councils. It could have been a flagship Bill, perhaps even a legacy Bill. Unfortunately, the Government are going around in circles on the issue of devolution. I do not believe that the Bill will alter the fact that we are one of the most centralised democracies in the modern western world—other than, as everyone says, Malta, which has only about 30,000 people anyway. We are certainly the most centralised country in Europe. I shall now touch on some of the issues that have been addressed today about which I would like to make some contribution. We are unequivocally against the latest, pointless reorganisation of local government. I personally stand against the wish of Governments, of whatever political party, to keep redrawing the administrative boundaries of England. Do the Government recognise the damage they have done in creating a district/county war up and down the country? Norwich and Norfolk, Chester and Cheshire, Bedford and Bedfordshire, Ipswich and Suffolk, Shrewsbury and Shropshire—they have been fighting each other all the time. No doubt they are all distracted from working together to deliver better services for their citizens. For how long can the chaos continue? The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, mentioned a timetable at the beginning of the debate—I congratulate her on her introduction of the Bill—but that does not really help. Reorganisation rarely delivers the promised savings. Indeed, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury seems to agree. I urge the Government to bring this sorry episode to a close as soon as possible so that councils can get on with their proper job of serving the public. We welcome the thrust of the Government’s proposals for developing the role of parish councils, particularly in allowing local people to petition for parishing and extending the power of well-being to certain parishes. However, I ask the Minister to consider the reservations highlighted by my noble friend Lady Hanham, regarding the impact of this legislation on London. I also draw attention to the importance of county councils in supporting parishes in two-tier authorities and suggest that a way can be found to bring them, as well as district councils, into the process of creating and extending parishes. With regard to the proposals for local partners and co-operation under Part 5, we are glad that the Bill is heading in the right direction. Once again, however, the Government could have gone further. They have not followed their own reasoning through to its logical, and localist, conclusions. Very few of us would dispute that LAAs are a welcome initiative. To try to use all the money that is spent in an area in the best way is obviously the right way forward. I am committed to pursuing the council’s role as the convenor of local public services. We need maximum flexibility to do the job properly, though, and in Committee we will be seeking clarification from the Minister about how she sees the proposed duty of co-operation working in practice. Of all the issues in this Bill, the most important to me is to tackle the culture of national targets. We need a veritable bonfire of national targets if we are to renew local democracy and improve local service delivery. The Bill will go far enough for me only when Whitehall demonstrates that it truly wishes to empower local government by setting an upper limit on nationally designated targets for LAAs. We will table amendments to ensure that that is the case. We also welcome the extended powers of scrutiny outlined in the Bill and the recognition of councillors as local democratic champions. However, once again the Bill does not meet the expectations raised by the White Paper. While we wholly support the Bill in extending the scope of scrutiny to cover some partners involved in the delivery of the LAA, we feel that the list of those partners is not sufficiently comprehensive. All organisations involved in the delivery of the LAA targets should be subject to the same scrutiny as local authorities. We also believe that representatives should be required to attend in person if requested. There has been a lot of this when have tried to carry out scrutiny of local government; some people just do not turn up. How can you scrutinise them? That needs to be a requirement. We will also pursue amendments to bring the provisions for the Community Call for Action in the Bill and the Police and Justice Act under one single mechanism; otherwise, this welcome initiative will simply be too confusing. I move on to the issue of by-laws. Although a minor provision within a large Bill, this devolutionary provision is welcome. However, in Committee we wish to ensure that the proposals to devolve by-laws will apply across all government departments: for example, by-laws regulating the use of taxis and walkways, which is the responsibility of the Department for Transport, local nature reserves, which are the responsibility of Defra, and public libraries, which are the responsibility of the DCMS, do not appear to be covered by the Bill’s provisions. Why should devolution stop at the doors of the DCLG? On the subject of best value, I should like to reiterate the point made earlier by my noble friend Lady Hanham. Best value reviews and performance plans will not be missed, but it is vital that the targetry and obsession with audit processes associated with best value do not creep in through the back door under the new LAA regime. We welcome the permissive measures introduced, following the LGA’s lobbying, on joint waste authorities. We will, however, wish to probe the Government’s thinking more closely in Committee. We will wish to explore exactly what benefits are anticipated beyond those that could be achieved by existing regulatory structures, such as joint committees and special purpose vehicles. We will wish to explore whether the Government could go further with this legislation to encourage greater private sector investment in waste disposal, collection and recycling. I shall mention one measure that could be classified as ““miscellaneous””: local authority communications. As a county council leader, I believe that the time has come to reform the code of conduct for local authority publicity. Increasingly, local authorities seek, and indeed are expected, to meet the challenges of place-shaping and promoting social cohesion. That role demands greater confidence and flexibility, especially when it comes to communications. The current code does not provide the clear and confident guidance needed by councils, resulting in excessive caution that can undermine effective engagement with communities. The existing code should be either substantially revised or replaced with voluntary guidelines. It will be important that the framework, whether statutory or voluntary, is simpler, allows local discretion and, in particular, supports councillors’ advocacy role for their constituents. We would like to explore how we can achieve that with the Minister in Committee. The Government have the right aims in attempting to strengthen local democracy and local services. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the Bill as currently drafted will be equal to the task. I reiterate my earlier point that fundamentally it is devolved democratic powers and a sustainable funding system that would deliver the Government’s aims of local leadership and empowered communities. None the less, the Bill contains some welcome deregulatory provisions, and where we still believe the legislation to be deficient, I will be working closely with my noble friend Lady Hanham to improve it in Committee.