Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

I just wish that the right hon. Member for Streatham (Keith Hill) had stopped a little earlier, as all my friends in my county and district councils would have been very pleased with much of what he had to say. I hope that his speech will elicit a positive response from those sitting a few Benches in front of him. This Second Reading debate has been quite curious. The debate has been pretty severely crippled by comments on the Bill's inadequacy and questions about why it should be here—I exempt, of course, the Secretary of State. Much of the debate has been on what could and should have been, but is not, in the Bill. I thought that the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), particularly what he said at the beginning and end of his speech, were most apposite. He pointed out that the Select Committee, of which I am a member, has just produced a report. It is interesting to think of the Government ploughing the Bill through—to the detriment, I believe, of local government—while answering the Select Committee's recommendations for local government to have more powers devolved down to it. His last point, which was interesting and intriguing, was that the Committee stage would be very much shorter if a lot of the irrelevant stuff had been taken out of the Bill and if the Bill had been pared down to two or three of the Government's most important points. On that basis, the Committee stage might be dealt with in about a week. My first reaction to the Bill was, like that of many others, why is it here and what is it going to do? Perhaps the Secretary of State explained that with her mantra, "places a duty", which she kept saying. Yet again, local government will be loaded with more and more duties and costs. Most competent local authorities are already doing much of what is in the Bill, so one wonders whether it was concocted and put together by Ministers who looked at local government and its co-operation with local communities and themselves and decided that because it is working quite well and to the benefit of local communities, they would legislate and put in yet more Government restrictions and more duties. When I asked the chief executive and the leader of a big unitary authority for their first reaction, they both pointed out that if the Bill had to exist, it should be revised to take away many of the plans that local authorities were currently required to produce by the Government. I am adding to some of the thoughts already expressed about what should be in the Bill, but with a slightly different slant. Their authority, like many local authorities, is overloaded with reviews and requirements for plans, checks and so forth. That particular local authority—a unitary authority—estimates that the Government require approximately 80 major reviews and plans regularly from it. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) is not in his place. When he was Minister for Local Government, he genuinely promised dramatically to reduce perhaps even half the number of plans and reviews that this local authority, among others, had to produce for the Government. I understand that nominally there has been—or was at that stage—a large reduction in the overall number of plans. However, since then, more have been added and where there were two plans, they have often been combined into one or one has been made a sub-plan to another. In effect, then, there are more plans and more reviews than there were when the then Minister for Local Government asked for reductions. Most of those plans and reviews require the input and expertise of senior local government officials, who must produce detailed plans, often with ludicrous parameters. Let me give just one example. Local authorities with an influence on housing have been required to present a 30-year housing plan. Given that the Treasury seems to be unable to predict year on year—especially at the moment—the idea that local authorities could spend time and money guessing 30 years ahead with any reliability overstretches the imagination. It is hard to get to grips with this vague Bill—some of the plans have the distinct appearance of old-fashioned, socialist "great leaps forward". It is a mongrel Bill. Apparently it is partly about "economic development", but, flicking through it, I failed to find any link to, for example, the business community. If we must have all these quangos and boards, which I severely doubt, it is critical for the business community to have a strong input on policy that affects economic development. After all, even under this Government the private sector must have the biggest role in generating wealth in any locality. As I have said, the Bill reeks of the Government's desire to produce old-time socialist plans, and one waits for the phrase "great leap forward" to appear. Many of the proposed changes, especially those involving local authorities directly, are best left for local authorities to make without rules, without regulations, and without Government overview. That was the theme of many of the speeches that we heard today, and of one key, noisy, slightly long and emphatic intervention from the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). I found his intervention intriguing, because we had discussions in the past when he was a union leader. Given that English local authorities have probably accepted petitions for more than 100 years, we should pay attention to chapter 2 of the Bill, which deals with petitions to authorities. Over time they have responded to various kinds of petition, and have responded more emphatically and effectively. Petitions are received in many forms—some are received electronically. Currently authorities acknowledge and respond to all of them, with the possible exception of the utterly ridiculous. I remember a few of those. I am tempted to suspect, however, that even the utterly ridiculous receive a formal response after consideration. The Bill contains a clause entitled "Democratic arrangements of principal local authorities". How can the Secretary of State possibly think that local authorities do not promote democracy and explain the roles of councillors, how to become a councillor, the support available to councillors to assist them in their role, how to approach councillors, and when their meetings and surgeries take place? That is common practice. It is done by all local authorities, and there is no need for legislation. Local authorities and indeed councillors, political or otherwise, naturally try to persuade other competent individuals, in particular, to become councillors and to take part on the democratic process. We do not need this legislation. Let me take up a similar theme. I am astonished that the Government feel the need to dictate to local authorities that senior officers are liable to be called to account. Local authority meetings are almost always—indeed, perhaps without exception—held in public. The appropriate senior officers are present, and they are held to account by the elected councillors. That arrangement has been the norm for decades, and it has been developed as local authorities have adopted more openness. I find it amazing that the Government require the central diktat that runs through the Bill and, perhaps even worse, will run through the secondary legislation that follows it. Perhaps the biggest opportunity that has been lost is the chance to return RDA functions to local authorities. The system worked very well before. The responsibility should be left to elected authorities, even if they work in groups—perhaps not dissimilar to the leaders' board, but without the need for legislative diktat. The Bill talks of—yet again—reviews, of further examination in public, of what is to reviewed, and of even more approval of revision by the Secretary of State, who, of course, has reserved powers to revise and make further regulations. The same seems to apply to the economic prosperity boards: there are constitutions, rules and regulations on membership and voting, costs to be met by constituent councils and still further reviews of the boards and the various schemes. As I observed earlier, the business community does not seem to be involved. In the middle of this hotch-potch of a Bill is clause 29, which has not been mentioned so far. It removes the restriction on senior local authority employees undertaking political activities such as standing for election or speaking publicly in support of a particular political party. I believe that that restriction has worked well in the past. I understand from senior local authority officials—local government officers—that it has strengthened their impartiality and standing and has actually given them more authority. Although clause 29 is small, I think that we shall come to regret that retrograde step. I believe that most tenants—certainly those whom I know on many of the estates that I have visited—will be bemused to find that yet another new national body is being set up supposedly on their behalf. It is likely to be no more than a remote talking shop at taxpayers', or perhaps tenants', expense. I have flicked through a few of my concerns about a Bill which proclaims that it sets out to increase local democracy but which will, in my view—like all the Government's local democracy Bills—do exactly the opposite. I remain absolutely opposed to it.