Queen’s Speech

My Lords, the Queen’s Speech no doubt marked the starting point for what could be a very long general election campaign, but, however long that campaign is, we can be sure that it comes at a time when politics and politicians are held in lower esteem by the public than at any time in the past. That must worry all of us. Perhaps this is a reflection of my personal background in local government, but I feel strongly that democracy, like charity, should begin at home. If citizens feel disconnected from the political processes that are closest to them, how can they have any confidence in what we are doing and saying in Westminster? If they have to deal with litter-strewn streets or councils that cannot deal with paving slabs and potholes, how can they be confident in Governments who say that they can deal with climate change or the economic crisis? If their councils are continually overridden and the views of local people ignored, how can any politicians ever be believed? I note that the Minister said at the start of today’s debate that he felt that this Government had a good story to tell about local government, that they had devolved powers and that they had done a huge amount for local government, but that is certainly not how it feels if you are a councillor or council official. A combination of policy decisions taken over several decades has led to the slow and steady transformation of councils into local administrations. Some beacons try to be much more than that. I pay tribute to people such as my noble friend Lord Tope from Sutton. Sutton is a remarkable council, which has been at the forefront of environmental initiatives for more than two decades. It has done that in response to local people and to what they wanted, not as a response to government target setting or the latest initiative. There was a deal between the council and the people who elect it, which is exactly how it should be. For many years now, councils have been able to raise only £1 for every £4 that they spend. That is the heart of the problem because, when three-quarters of the money that they spend comes from central government, it is inevitable that central government, which after all is accountable for the money that it has raised from taxpayers, will tie up local councils in rafts of inspection regimes, target setting, performance management, ring-fenced grants and all the other paraphernalia that comes with that. I note that the Minister talked in his introduction about councils being able to raise more money from a variety of means. We should welcome that, but only as long as there is clarity about this deal and councils are not forced by the back door to charge local people for services that they previously had for free while the Government slowly and inexorably reduce their grants. If the question of who should pay for what local services is to be rethought, it should be done openly and honestly. We should have the sort of genuine debate about this that we have never had in the past. We came close to it when Michael Lyons produced his report—probably too close for the Government, because the report was just locked away in a cupboard. That means that, in years to come, when there are cuts in services and charges are being brought in, politicians from both local and national government will argue about whose fault it is and why it has happened. Local people will look on in bemusement and just think that all politicians are the same and no one is looking after their interests. Like my noble friend Lord Tope, I have done my stint on the Committee of the Regions. When I speak to people from the rest of Europe, they are astonished at the extent to which this country has centralised control. It is a source of amazement to them. When I told them about the eight pages of primary legislation brought in by the Government last year telling councils how to look after a petition, they thought that it was funny. In a way it is, except if you are a poor benighted council that has to spend money on trying to do it all. The 2007 Act is now beginning to kick in. What that legislation does, among other things, is invest all executive authority in a council either in an elected mayor or in a so-called "strong leader". Local councils have no choice in the matter. If the Government think that this is a good thing for councils, they should let them come to that decision for themselves. In large councils, particularly rural ones such as Suffolk, where I come from, putting all the power into the hands of one person, however capable they are or wherever they come from geographically, leaves voters elsewhere feeling that the mayor or leader simply does not understand either them or the problems of their area. Also, the model does not leave any scope for the increasing number of councils that are under no overall control. It might be an administrative inconvenience for the Government if a council is under no overall political control, but that is, after all, the will of the electorate. What voters do not want is to see a mayoral or strong leader model imposed on them when they have made their view very clear. The other issue that we are grappling with in Suffolk is local government review. This has been a shambles. We are now three years on from the start of the process and still mired in legal challenge, largely due to the inept way in which it has been handled. Not only has the review been massively costly, but it has undermined partnership working across the county and created huge uncertainty for the workforce. I would be pleased to know if the Government have any views about the future of local government review because, if the door could be closed on this sorry episode, that would be a very good thing. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people in a given area to work out who has made a decision in their area and why they have done it. As my noble friend Lord Greaves said, we now have an alphabet soup of local area agreements, local strategic partnerships, multi-area agreements and now something called Total Place. Whatever the arguments about how all this might improve service delivery, the fact is that accountability is completely blurred so that, when a decision is made, the people in the area have no way of knowing who made it and why. More important, it means that, when people go to the ballot box, they cannot express a view based on what has happened—and that is even before we talk about the £43 billion being spent by quangos that are not accountable at all. The planning system, which in many ways is at the heart of local democracy, is becoming increasingly centralised. The Government are introducing the Infrastructure Planning Commission so that very large and potentially controversial planning applications will now be dealt with by a new quango that has no democratic accountability. But even before the commission comes in, there is a real problem. Recently I looked at a very controversial planning application that had been turned down by the local council. Local people did not want it; there were all sorts of good reasons why it should not happen and the council turned the application down. It went to appeal and the planning inspector agreed with the council, saying that it need not go ahead. Local people celebrated and thought that that was the end of it. Then the Minister intervened. The decision of the planning inspector, the council and local people was overturned by the Minister—a Minister from this House, someone with no form of democratic mandate at all. This, I suggest, is absolutely guaranteed to make people think that politics and politicians have nothing to say to them. I genuinely believe that we will never rebuild faith in politics unless we start with local government. For that to happen, we need two things. First, we need a framework within which votes are cast freely, fairly and honestly, which means voting reform. Secondly, we need a system in which there is a very clear link between your actions as a voter and the outcome that you see. Unless we pay attention to this, local government will continue to weaken and our entire democratic process will weaken with it.