Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I, too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I look forward to continuing to work with her and with the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, particularly if she is effective in achieving realistic measures in her own party’s policies to return to local government the powers taken away from it by her predecessors. I look forward, too, to the Bills we shall be considering. I look forward to all Bills—partly because I enjoy legislation—although I know that one should not treat them as a kind of extended word game. The challenge for the Government would have been to achieve resistance to introducing large legislation, although there is talk about this being a thin programme. During the summer I tried and failed—I suspect this will find a resonance with other noble Lords—to clear up my office at home. I put in chronological order the statutes which had resulted from Bills on which I had worked during the years in which I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House. However, I had also to put them in size order because they got bigger and bigger—and not, perhaps, with increased significance. My noble friends Lady Thomas of Walliswood and Lord Lester of Herne Hill will look in detail at the proposed equality Bill. I would not presume to anticipate, in particular, what my noble friend Lord Lester might say. The House is lucky to have his expertise. I suspect that a large equality Bill may mean more exceptions to the principles we would welcome. I hope that is not the case. It may be that we will wish to scrutinise the regulations alongside the Bill. However, I believe the Bill is not the responsibility of either of the Ministers on the Front Bench today. The department of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, deals with communities and local government and is closely connected to other departments, which makes this debate quite tricky. I shall use the way in which policing operates locally as an example. The noble Baroness’s Bill has provisions about petitions to local authorities and I shall simply refer to the petition on the No. 10 website at the moment. It urges the rejection of directly elected crime and policing representatives and suggests instead, "““to work with representatives of local government and police authorities in giving the public a greater say in setting local policing priorities, and to use the money … on providing more police””." The petition continues, but that is the guts of it. It is an important issue. Conversely, housing is within the noble Baroness’s department, although that, too, is not confined to it. Tomorrow my noble friend Lady Barker will talk about the health implications of poor housing. I am asking not for more legislation but for greater urgency in addressing the crisis in the supply of houses and of affordable housing in particular, the crisis in the loss of homes caused by loss of income, the cost of rents and the problems of repossession. Last week’s announcement about repossessions will apparently help 9,000 families—significant for those who will be helped, but a tiny number overall. We do not yet know the criteria for eligibility for assistance from that scheme or how the scheme will be policed. When will the September mortgage-to-rent proposals be fully implemented? Are the Government prepared to see the current economic conditions as an opportunity? There are silver linings, or there should be: the use of land whose value has fallen, and capacity within the construction industry for building both by housing associations and by local authorities. That will not happen by itself, however; it needs investment from central government and more flexibility locally, including, for instance, the freedom for local authorities to borrow against council assets. If the capacity within the construction industry is not used, I fear that it will not be there when the economy turns up again. Perhaps some of that would require legislation—the local authorities’ borrowing position certainly would—but whether we need this local government Bill is another matter. Is it required to meet the issues that it apparently addresses? Is it the best way to address those issues? I say to the Minister that I do not require an answer to those rhetorical questions. The team on these Benches working on the Bill will include my noble friend Lord Tope, whom I welcome. We have, in my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Greaves, councillors with long and current local government experience. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Greaves will display his enthusiasm for the issues that are contained in the Marine and Coastal Access Bill as well as a practical approach to it. My noble friend Lord Tope, with his considerable experience on the Committee of the Regions, reminds me that in Europe we talk about ““spheres, not tiers””. That is an immensely useful shorthand reminder, which I pass on because I have no sense that the way in which central government works with local government is regarded as a negotiation of equals. Will we ever see a local government Bill coming out of a joint working party comprised equally of central and local representatives? Will we ever hear a Minister at the Dispatch Box, in response to a question, say, ““I cannot answer that; it is not a matter for Westminster government””? We will discuss the detail of the LDEDC Bill next week—I wish there were an easier acronym—so I do not want to go into too much detail now, but it looks like another Bill where the Government have not been able to resist paternalistic tendencies. I struggle to see that legislation is necessary for much of it and, where duties are imposed, that it is necessary to impose the ““how”” as well as the ““what””. In other walks of life it is understood that nurture and support involve giving freedom. I am aware of how topical the issue of minimum standards is. I am not seeking to comment on the recent unhappy cases that have been so much in the news, but we on these Benches are concerned about the performance management of local functions by Whitehall. It seems to me from talking to colleagues in local government that it is almost impossible not to play to the criteria and not to direct resources—people as well as money—to what is counted. What is counted is not necessarily what really counts. That is not confined to local government. When I visited my GP’s surgery last week, I was asked to fill in a questionnaire. My GP said to me that he was not yet driven to tailor services by the questions likely to be asked of him, but he could see that it was coming. The gracious Speech referred to constitutional renewal, which is relevant to local government, although I dearly wish that we were not faced almost annually with a review of the constitutional arrangements. My reaction is probably as nothing compared to that of councillors and local government officers, who could do without the diversion from services. The latest Bill shrieks to me of a government agenda of moving everybody to large unitary authorities and ““strong leadership””. Our concern is not lessened by the danger of leaders becoming detached from their own back benches and their opposition. Even though it is 25 years and one month since I was an opposition councillor, I would always claim that there is a role for the opposition. This is quite a different matter from the role of the council as community leader, which is for the whole council. There is nothing like a threat to one’s way of life or quality of life to bring the community together. When we debated the Planning Bill, what seems about 10 minutes ago, my noble friend Lady Tonge said that it was an article of her political faith to oppose the expansion of Heathrow. My noble friend Lord Watson, who is a neighbour geographically as well as politically of both hers and mine, will say something on that. Local authorities do not need to be told of the importance of their role in the current economic crisis. The local government Bill provides an economic assessment duty. Statutory guidance, which there is to be, does not smack of a partnership between local government and Whitehall. Many local authorities are putting together economic recovery plans for their own communities, and they and we are horribly aware of the strain on their finances. There are reductions in interest rates, Treasury management—of course, they are not alone in suffering that—and the extra strain on services. My own local authority, which has seen many children educated in the private sector over the years, is suddenly seeing a rush to its own schools. There are more places to be provided. All this is taking place in a system of local government finance which has little support. We will have one local government finance Bill, but the cautious addition of the business rate supplement barely tinkers with the situation. I appreciate that it is necessary for Crossrail, but it is not an answer to the many problems. The impact of the local government finance system is wide. I increasingly believe that councillors across the country are generally so ground down by the focus on council tax levels and budgets that it stifles the capacity for innovation. One of the areas of difficulty for local authorities is the recycling market. Tales of piled-up—I hesitate to describe them as ““dumped””—items collected for recycling do nothing to encourage the public. Investment in recycling materials could be productive. One hopes that that might be a focus for attention in the difficult times to come. It is essential that we do not forget environmental and climate change issues and use capacity in the construction industry towards these ends. I believe that my noble friends Lord Mar and Kellie and Lord Teverson will say something about environmental and climate change matters among other things. These debates are frustrating; there is so much that one could cover. I shall mention finally two matters which may seem merely procedural but are substantive. The first is how this House will deal with issues which fall within the category of ““financial””, where we tripped over real problems at the end of the previous Session. The impact of those matters was far wider than financial, but this House’s role was called into question. Secondly, a measure that is gaining some ground is the use of a Joint Committee to scrutinise the balance of power between central and local government. Noble Lords will understand that on these Benches we profoundly disagree with the view that power comes from the centre, but in the system that we are in, the balance needs to be tipped significantly towards the local.