Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Greaves. I became interested in devolution when conducting research on comparative economic development across Europe and looking at the role of regional redevelopment and regeneration. It became clear that the parts of Europe where there was considerable regional devolution were moving forward faster—Barcelona could be an example. That was because the local authority had the power to go to the market to raise money in bonds and to go ahead with ideas of its own volition as distinct from always having, as in this country, to go hat in hand to the Treasury to say, ““Please Sir, may we do this?””. Time and again, as in the Green Paper published earlier this week, we see the statement that we need more devolution because we are a centralised country. Indeed, we are the most centralised country in Europe—in the whole world, I think—in terms of governance and economy. Everyone used to pour scorn on France. One used to say that one always knew what the schools were studying at a particular hour of the day because that was laid down centrally. In the 1980s, France went for major devolution under Mitterand and the provinces now have a considerable element of autonomy to do their own thing. In the comparative development of provincial France, again, it was this power to do their own thing that I judged gave the provinces considerable advantages over the English regions. The Länder in Germany have considerable statutory powers to do their own thing. We should remember that this type of governance was set up on British advice in the post-war period to prevent the centralised state from abusing power. We deliberately created the Länder system to do this. I feel strongly about two issues. I have already referred to one, which is economic devolution. It seems an insult to local democracy that we now have in this country a Government at the centre who dictate to local government not only what it may spend, as my noble friend Lady Scott made clear, but, through the capping system, what it should tax. What greater insult is there to a country, which is sometimes regarded as being the mother of democracy and whose democracy was built on the tenet of ““no taxation without representation””, that the Government are telling us what we may tax at a local level? In a form of stealth tax and through the squeeze imposed by limits on what local government may spend on social services, the Government frequently pass on unpopular decisions, such as those affecting the care of the elderly. That is dictated through these mechanisms. Another issue is capital. I have already referred to the fact that in other countries metropolitan authorities can go to the market and raise money through bonds. That is not allowed in this country, where no local authority can raise money directly from the market. In America, the states and cities have their own credit rating; an equivalent process could happen here for local authorities. Devolution is extremely important and economic devolution is an important part of that process. Secondly, I wish to consider the degree to which the Government have devolved authority to quangos. We are again seeing the giving of power to academies to do their own thing—to opt out of the national curriculum. What is the academy? It is a group of people who can raise £2 million towards the cost of a new building and then can have a governance role in relation to the whole school and decide its ethos. Not only is the academy totally unaccountable to any democratic organisation, but it is put outside the bounds of the community. On these Benches, we feel strongly that education should be community oriented and should serve the local community. Enabling people to set up a school outside the bounds of any form of local accountability is an insult to local democracy.