Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on the way she introduced the Bill. I share the views of the noble Lord, Lord Best, that participants in local government welcome the Bill. That is important. I felt that the comments of the Front Benches opposite were certainly lacking in the seasonal spirit of goodwill. Harold Wilson said that a week is a long time in politics. It does not seem that to me. We are again, on a Wednesday evening, talking about these matters as we were last week in the address on the gracious Speech. In some sense, it is a big change for me. In addition to the interests I declared last week, which was as leader of a local council, chairman of AGMA—and I am sure I might respond to some of the comments made earlier on that—and as chair of what is already a north-west leaders’ board, I was appointed on Sunday to be a member of the North West Development Agency, so Members can treat me with even greater suspicion than they do already. One of the reference papers on this document about being a member of a council had a quote from someone saying, ““I am 32 and I haven’t a clue what a councillor does””. I was 32 when I was elected as a councillor. I did not have much of a clue about what being a councillor was and had to learn while doing the job. During those early years, and mainly under the Thatcher Government of the Conservative Party opposite—and it may be a lesson in history for the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi—I remember there was a constant attack on the powers and the financial responsibilities of local government. You cannot get away from it—the greatest loss of local authority autonomy was under that particular Government. If that has changed, we welcome it. My experience of local government has taught me three lessons. If the world is divided, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, told us it was last week, into two parties, I am very much in the localist camp. I have learnt that. If we are going to improve services to local people, devolution is the path ahead. There are two uncomfortable lessons for the Government, and this would be true of any Government. First, situations will vary. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, local authorities are different. Their priorities will be different and although you will not get a uniform service across the country, it may well meet what local people want. Secondly, there will be failures. Some local authorities will fail. We are not the only organisation that has failed. In the papers today, there are reports of pensions mistakes and the Sutherland report into the mistakes in the examinations agency. Other public servants make mistakes. We have to learn from mistakes and not just assume that if a local authority makes a mistake, that is a problem for local government. It is a problem that we all should face up to. If we are to deliver effectively, we shall have to work in partnership locally and to work collaboratively with other authorities. After all, as my noble friend said in her introductory remarks, the economy is not consistent with local authority boundaries. If we want to do well, we need to collaborate with others. I welcome the fact that the Bill recognises that and allows it to happen. If local authorities and local government are to mean anything, elected members need to be at the heart of what we do. The difference between a local authority and a PCT is that the former is elected. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, referred to a referendum and appeared to use the word ““officials”” as a term of abuse. However, elected council leaders promoted the scheme she discussed. She may not have liked it but it would have attracted £3 billion-worth of investment in transport to Manchester, so it had a lot going for it. We cannot now proceed with the scheme, but we acknowledge people’s views on it, as reflected in the referendum. We put the matter to a vote. However, local elected councillors, not officials, saw a need for the scheme and proposed it. We need to recognise that. Noble Lords have adequately covered the democracy provisions in Part 1. However, we need to recognise that time will be needed to implement these changes. When I bemoaned the lack of good women candidates in my local area, my wife said, ““Most women are too sensible to put up with what you do””. Perhaps that comment gives pause for thought. The other fly in the ointment is that, at the end of the day, the electorate, not the parties, choose the councillors. I was interested in what was said about petitions and share some of the concerns mentioned. However, we must be honest about what we mean by the word ““respond””. I suspect that people interpret it differently. Some believe that it means to accede to a request. We need to ensure that we listen to people. However, we also need to acknowledge that we do not always accede to their requests. We need to be up-front about that. I am concerned about the implications of petitions. I believe that they are very much the preserve of the middle classes. People in middle-class communities are much more likely to respond to petitions than those in the deprived communities that I represent. We need to be aware that petitions may represent the views of only a part of a community. If I may slide into a ““Donald Rumsfeldism””, people only know what they know and they don’t know what they don’t know. They respond to petitions on that basis. In my local area, two primary schools which took their intake from deprived communities had falling rolls. The simple decision would have been to close one and concentrate on the other. However, they both had outdated buildings. With the support of the local Member of Parliament, we agreed that we would close both schools and build a new one, but in so doing construct a new complex with the involvement of other public services. The proposed closure of both schools upset two sets of parents and petitions were submitted. However, we stood firm. We now have a brand new primary school, which is performing better than either of the two previous schools, a health centre and a housing office. Despite its initial response to the project, that community is proud of what has been achieved in the long term. The message that seems to be directed to my noble friend from all sides of the House is that we need a Swedish minimalist approach to regulations as regards Part 1. We must not overburden local authorities by making them undertake those measures in certain ways but give them the chance to tackle them in their own way. As regards the economic development provisions, I am very much in favour of local authorities developing their economic assessments. If they are to achieve what they need to do locally, they need to understand how their local economies work. If we are saying—as I think we are—that local economies and local authority boundaries are not coterminous, it may be sensible to have an economic assessment for the whole of the Manchester economy concentrating on the problems and issues within districts rather than doing 10 different assessments, which would all be pretty much the same and would involve paying 10 sets of consultants rather than one. Certainly, we would want to do that in Greater Manchester. I hope we will be allowed to do that. I hope the Minister can also look into Clause 64, which refers to the partners that we need to consult. It does not mention health. The health service is both a major employer in most areas and a major procurer of local services. If we are going to look at the economy, we need to engage with health as well. As I said in the debate on the gracious Speech last week, I am a great supporter of Part 5 of the Bill, which deals with regional strategy. One of my roles, although I will be rid of it early in the new year, is that of chairman of 4NW, which was a forerunner of the proposed leaders’ forums. We did it by means of all-party voluntary agreement in the north-west because that seemed to us the sensible way to have real and intelligent dialogue with the RDA, and to have much more influence than we ever had before. It is beginning to work. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that it works in the north-west. We engage more with other partners; we talk to all our constituent bodies to make sure that we are doing what they want us to do. While I have been chairman of 4NW and its predecessor, which was an executive board for the regional assembly, I managed to avoid any need for votes. We understood that, if we were to move together, we had to do so on a consensual basis. I confess that there was one vote, which was on the change of name to 4NW. I am not sure that that was the best decision we ever made, but that was how we did it. We are also pioneering work on a single regional strategy. I take the point that this needs to be broadly based and sustainable, and needs to recognise the issues that are coming forward. What has tended to happen in the past, unless all parties engage in such discussion, was that the RDA put down its strategy and the regional assemblies put their spatial strategies forward in response. These were not aligned and were not able to move the area forward in the same way. In Greater Manchester, we also set up an economic commission, which does broadly the work of the economic prosperity boards. In looking at the detailed legislation, I hope we can make it less prescriptive, because that is what we have done. The 10 authorities have agreed that we should not all have a seat on the board. If we had, in Greater Manchester there would have to be seats for 10 local authorities to start, before anybody else. It gets too big. Secondly, the majority of the board are from business and the private sector, and we have a private sector chairman, who is a significant person. Unlike the CBI, which has a lot to learn and should come to Manchester, we get significant private sector players who want to make a contribution. Finally, the MAAs are voluntary. We welcome the fact that this puts them on a statutory basis, but they are voluntary agreements. I hope the Government will accept that what we agree to do together in Manchester will be different from what we agree to do in other parts of the country, and rightly so. I apologise for speaking for too long. I am sure that we can improve this Bill and that we will do so in Committee.