Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

No, I am not offering, but if the Government want my advice on anything at any time, it is freely available. As this is the beginning of the Committee stage, I remind noble Lords that I am an elected member of Pendle Borough Council in Lancashire. The amendment is in some ways a probing amendment, although it is suddenly and unexpectedly topical following the Statement on the constitution on Monday, when the Government announced all sorts of interesting things. We are clearly embarking as a House, a Parliament and a country on another major debate about constitutional affairs. That is something that I personally and the Liberal Democrats generally very much welcome. However, the interesting thing about the Statement on Monday was how little it said about the issues covered by the amendment; in fact, it had nothing at all to say about them. I think that it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who noted that the Statement did not mention devolution once. Devolution and decentralisation to local government do not seem to be seriously on the Government’s agenda, although there are some rather minor aspects of them in the Bill. It seems to me and many people in my party that the time has come to take a long, hard look at just how much power can be devolved from the centre, from the regions and from unelected bodies—partnerships, quangos, et cetera—to local government. Of course nobody is saying that partnerships are not important and that local government should not take part in partnerships—of course it should—but where does the locus of power, of decision-making and of authority lie as set out in legislation? Local government has been stripped of powers over the years by what might be kindly called an evolutionary process. It is time to take a long, hard look at just how much power can be returned to local government and provided to it in areas for which it traditionally has not had responsibility. This amendment sets out one way of doing that. The precise details of the devolution commission—the standing commission that I am suggesting—are not perhaps vital now. What is important is the principle that there should be a free-standing autonomous body which is representative not just of central government but of local government and which is responsible for looking at issues outside the traditional framework of government and Whitehall departments. People at the centre have a vested interest in maintaining powers there—that is where they are and that is what they do—and they may be suspicious of anybody else trying to do these things, particularly if powers are devolved to a range of authorities in different parts of the country that might make different decisions. There might be a diversity of provision, which is anathema to people who want uniformity. Clearly, there have to be standards and minima beyond which people cannot go, but the degree to which local government is now in a stranglehold of detailed rules, regulations and targets is a scandal. The Bill perhaps goes go a little way towards relieving that, but it is only a little way. Something much more fundamental is required. The amendment is therefore more than a probing amendment; it is a challenging amendment. It challenges the Government to say whether they agree with it and what their vision is for local government. I will briefly refer, if I may, to the Green Paper The Governance of Britain, which was published on Monday. On page 10, the first bullet point in paragraph 7 says that, "““power remains too centralised and too concentrated in government””." I am not quite sure what the second part of that means, but if the Government believe that, "““power remains too centralised and too concentrated””," at the centre, what will they do to release it? Are they seriously going to let go? On page 49, paragraph 169 talks about local communities. Some of this stuff was in the White Paper and some of it is in the Bill. The Green Paper talks about ““empowering””—I use the Government’s words in the hope that they might understand—and ““engaging”” citizens and neighbourhoods and devolving more power directly to the people. A number of interesting ideas are set out. Again, on the next two pages, a requirement is placed on local authorities to, "““consult and involve local people””." An odd thing about these pages is that the word ““new”” keeps cropping up. There is nothing new about all this; many local authorities have been doing it in different ways very successfully. Later in Committee I will talk about one or two of the ways in which we do it in Pendle. The Green Paper talks of examining, "““new ways in which to strengthen the ability to influence local decisions … and a new provision for local communities””," to look after local budgets and so on. Again, that is nothing very new in some places. The point is that the Government are absolutely right to be looking very hard indeed at the relationship between government and Parliament, which is what most of the Green Paper is about. They are also absolutely right to be looking at the way in which people living in streets and communities can get involved in local decision-making. But somewhere in between—at regional level and local authority level—there is a great void in the Government’s thinking and proposals. Unless they are prepared to have democratically elected local authorities that have real powers, can achieve things and can raise funds to achieve those things, then all the local engagement in the world is no use. It is a complete waste of time engaging with a local authority whose powers have been emasculated and whose ways of working are subject to the stranglehold of detailed rules and regulations from on top. Let us have a bonfire of all those regulations. Let us have a sustained and serious devolution of powers from the centre to local authorities over a period of years. It is no good trying to have a big bang; you need to do it slowly, steadily and evolutionarily, and get a new culture. Until you do that, all that local involvement will do is produce immense frustration because people will get involved but nothing will happen. I therefore have great pleasure in begging to move the amendment.