Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her full and detailed description of the Bill. I am sure she will agree that the Short Title is a mouthful. Indeed, when I first heard the Title of the Bill—it is the first Bill that I have dealt with—I thought that it was a Bill of unrivalled importance and complexity because it sounds as if all those ingredients are there, not just local democracy but economic development too, and construction for good measure. The noble Baroness very patiently set out why the Bill has come about. Apparently, it is both the long awaited answer to local government problems which have been thought about by the Government's officials for years and a response to the Prime Minister’s current economic mess. I fear that I find those two explanations somewhat contradictory, but whichever is the more likely story is not really the issue here. The reality is that the Bill is not the answer we have been looking for; it does not actually do very much at all. In our debate on the gracious Speech last week, I said that I thought this was a ramshackle piece of legislation with, "““lots of motherhood and apple pie””,—[Official Report, 10/12/08; col. 404.]" but no real substance. The community empowerment elements that the Government trumpeted in the draft Queen's Speech have been quietly dropped. They have instead taken a few half-hearted ideas from here and there, bound them together with a dose of warm intentions and called them a Bill. There are, it is true, proposals in this Bill to which this Side of the House has no objection. We support the move to reform the functions of the Electoral Commission according to the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The construction clauses appear to do what they say on the tin. We will, of course, be looking at the Government’s proposals with close care in Grand Committee in the new year. However, other parts of the Bill leave me baffled. Only this year the Government set up the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords, Oftenant. It has been operational for only a few days. Surely even this Government are not yet able to judge its success, so why is another tenant board being created, necessary though I am sure the Government will show it to be? Why was it not included in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008? Above all, why do the Government claim to promote local democracy in Part 1, and undermine it in later parts by establishing more tiers of bureaucracy? Part 1 will apparently be a panacea for the ills of voter disillusionment and poor participation in local government. Apparently individuals will be able to petition their way to satisfaction, while local authorities will be duty-bound to provide it for them at a cost, of course, of millions of pounds and the creation of new bureaucrats’ posts. I am sorry, but I think this is a fig-leaf proposal, which will do nothing to empower local people. For example, if someone organises a petition on a matter about which they feel strongly, such as the workings of a primary care trust, they may raise searching and pertinent issues. They will then, inevitably, face frustration and disappointment. Their local authority will take steps, as it is obliged to do, to respond, but that response will probably be, ““Sorry, we cannot help you because we do not have the power to do so””. As the Minister said in opening, the local authority will guarantee a response, but not a solution. This Bill effectively enshrines in statute the duty of councils to be accountable, but for the decisions and actions of quangos and bodies over which they have not been given the power to exercise control. In that respect, perhaps these provisions could have a beneficial effect over time. They will eventually allow people to see just how much power has been sapped away from their local elected representatives and placed in the hands of unaccountable committees, commissions and boards. The Minister told your Lordships’ House that the more people feel involved, the more likely they are to feel satisfied, the better services will be and the more confident the community will be. I am impressed by the Minister’s faith in the power of petitions to deliver such peace and prosperity. I, however, do not believe that a costly form-filling exercise will cover up the real criticism that people have of local government: too often the men and women they have elected to represent their views and interests are prevented by a thickening layer of bureaucracy from actually doing so. I have already described this Bill as the ““motherhood and apple pie Bill””. Perhaps the ““bureaucracy Bill”” is more succinct. I am sure that other noble Lords with an ear for the mot juste will have other, pithier suggestions for a catchier title than the Bill currently has. I feel that the true theme of this piece of legislation is to add more strips of red tape to local government, chapter by chapter. Take the leaders’ boards for regional strategy: these are welcome up to a point, for at least they recognise that local authorities must not be bypassed, but they are still top-down arrangements. The Secretary of State retains extensive reserve powers, and she is unlikely to approve anything that does not fit with the Government’s agenda of creating a layer of bureaucrats to implement the will of Whitehall. That will mean that the boards will likely cleave to the views which come from the centre, and the claims for devolving strategy will be little more than an illusion. Once again, the Government can use this to continue their attack on the green belt, as we have already seen in the south-east. We must ensure that this Bill does not become the ““green belt up for grabs Bill””. We could use this Bill to look at the delegation of funds. Currently the Bill allows the regional development agencies to trundle along unchanged, and to continue to control the purse strings. For example, in the huge work of developing Birmingham New Street station, every invoice must be signed by the RDA, rather than it simply delegating the money where appropriate. Then there is the proposal for economic prosperity boards, which—despite their somewhat alarming, iron curtain-style resonance—are really a new level of unnecessary officialdom. They put on a statutory basis something that councils are quite happy to do anyway, which is to co-operate when they need to. We must ensure that such agreements stay as voluntary agreements and that any such arrangements are fully accountable. Trusting local communities is giving them space to do what they feel they need, and not prescribing them to do what they must. The Secretary of State will have the power to get involved in the make-up of an EPB, but only a majority of its members must be elected councillors. Where will the rest be drawn from? How can we be sure that there will not simply be government placemen installed to make sure that the Secretary of State may meddle more easily? It is typical of this Government that they have latched on to an idea and obsessively overmanaged it. I fear that all these statutory provisions will end up weakening democratic accountability—responsibility is once again taken away from local government and moved upwards, into the ever burgeoning tier of quangos and bureaucrats. The structure is becoming more important than the economic outcome. I hope that we are able to show the Government the merits of our arguments, because I truly believe that these provisions, and others like them, undermine all the fine talk about empowering communities and improving local democracy. Failing that, I suppose I could always start a petition; but who would be the appropriate authority that I would present to? Can I be sure that I would be the appropriate petitioner? Presumably, there will be a newly created petitions officer whom I could consult. On a more serious note, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the recent debate in Manchester about congestion charging. Charging was supported by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and resoundingly rejected by the people of Manchester in a referendum, on a high turnout of over 1 million people. That is the sort of empowerment, the sort of engagement and the sort of local democracy in action that I understand all those terms to mean. Local people responded to an issue that mattered to them. It was debated frankly and publicly, and it seems pretty obvious that the people of Manchester were unimpressed at being told what to think by officials; they have told the officials in unambiguous terms what they actually think. Should the voters of Manchester, and elsewhere, be uneasy then, with Clause 99, which will allow the Secretary of State to pass over transport arrangements to a combined authority? We will be looking very carefully in Committee to make sure that this is not the Government’s route to get around awkward voters who show that they understand very well how local democracy works. We must ensure that this Bill does not disempower communities by stealth. We must ensure that this does not become a ““congestion charge by the back door”” Bill. I have drawn attention to a few specific points and a few general themes. Other noble Lords will no doubt approach this Bill from different angles in their usual forensic manner. We will have a good deal to examine in Grand Committee. This side of the House is concerned that the Bill is not the miraculous cure to all the problems of local government that the Government might claim. It is, in fact, a stealth attack on the rights and freedoms of local voters. The Bill is a curious mishmash of the vague and the ill thought-out, which adds to the ceaseless slow drip away from local authorities of meaningful power and responsibility. There is a new quango here, and a new set of Whitehall guidelines there, which are building up to the opposite of what the Minister has said she wants to see. As for an answer to the problems of the Prime Minister’s recession, the spending of many millions of pounds of public money in each of the next two years on what is in essence a job-creation scheme for new town hall bureaucrats does not seem to this side of the House to be serious economics. The Minister has been at pains to stress that this money has been carefully budgeted for but, if the recession deepens, will we find that local councils start feeling pressure to meet more of the costs of these schemes out of their own overstretched budgets? This is a matter that we will be looking at carefully, at a time when local authorities are trying to keep council tax rises to a minimum to ease some of the burden being felt by hard-working families. The Government claim that this Bill will empower people; what it really does is show how much power has ebbed away from their elected representatives. The Government might believe that they are encouraging democratic participation by putting petitions on a statutory footing; what they are in fact doing is meddling in what councils are better placed to arrange themselves. The Government claim that the Bill will strengthen local economies, but it chips away at the accountability of those who make decisions. The Government might also believe that they can develop local responsibility through the interference of the Secretary of State. We remain to be convinced. Finally, I hope that this is not another attempt by this Government to be seen to be doing something because they have once more run out of substantial and serious measures for these most serious of times.