Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

As I said, the economic prosperity boards could be useful forums for debate, but what worries me, looking at the number of powers that the Secretary of State reserves on the issue, is the extent to which the measures are voluntary. Instead of the Bill setting councils free, a lot of what we see in it looks like a below-the-radar move in favour of unitary authorities across the board. What we should favour is real diversity in local government structures, whether we are talking about the cabinet system, a mixture of unitary authorities or multi-tiered layers of authorities. Instead, we have top-down imposed structures, a one-size-fits-all approach and an approach that seems to want to create more quangos and more bureaucracy for everybody—and all that is being done in the name of local democracy and democratic accountability, whereas what underlies all of it is administrative convenience. No consideration is being given to how it all looks to, or how things will work for, the person on the receiving end of the services. If the Government were serious about closing the accountability gap at the regional or any other level, they would have opened up the question of the allocation of resources. So much of the communities empowerment White Paper was about requiring local authorities to push down resources to the community level. There was nothing about the Government being required to push down resources to the local authority level. Let us look at other legislation that has tried to open up that question, such as the Sustainable Communities Act 2007. In that primary legislation, the Government said that local spending reports would be produced so that, for the first time, people would know not just exactly what their council spent, but what all the quangos in their area spent. That has been completely whitewashed, and proposals are being pushed further and further down the line, so that people will still find it difficult to understand what public money is being spent in their area. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley said, we also need a much clearer link between the money that is raised locally and the money that is spent locally. That means a debate about how councils raise money, as well as how they spend it. That means reopening the issue of council tax. I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for Meriden had to say about revaluation, because my understanding is that the Conservative party would not abolish the council tax. As the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) said, we will be left with a Government who are looking either to revalue and continue with the council tax, or to continue with a basis for the valuation of properties that is 30 years out of date. It is just not intellectually coherent to hold that position: one either has to say, "We will support the council tax, and I'm afraid that at some point, that will mean revaluation," or one has to start looking for other systems of local government finance. Other questions could have been dealt with in the Bill, such as localising business rates to provide people with a clearer link between the money raised and the money spent locally. There was an opportunity in the Bill to create accountability in areas where there is none, particularly at the regional level, where I am really worried that what we will have will be even more of a dog's breakfast than what we have now. We should have had options that were flexible, and that local authorities could have tailored to their needs. Those are the kind of things that would have helped to restore faith in local democracy. Instead, we have rigid, compulsory requirements. What the Government just do not get is how it all looks from the public's point of view. The Bill should be about engaging people, not "building the right architecture". None of what I have seen bodes well for the Bill, but what is of more concern for Government Members is that I do not think it bodes well for any of their wider plans, and their professed commitment to wider democratic renewal.