Localism Bill

As I said, I believe that in this respect the Bill is a marginal improvement on what we had before. Let us consider the idea that the federal Governments in the US or Germany would look at each state, determine what the level is—indeed, the same level for all states—and say, ““If you want to raise your property tax by more than that, you have to have this referendum, and this is the exact way in which we specify that it has to be run.”” By comparison, we seem to have an extraordinarily centralised state, and I am disappointed that the tiny steps in the Bill have only a very little impact on that. In the policing universe, the Bill is not just a little bit of progress but a step back. The significant difference is that there is not a single body making the decision, as with a local council within the referendum protection; we are setting up a special local body, a police and crime panel, that will have scrutiny, oversight and an overview of the directly elected commissioner. We said in the coalition agreement that the elected police and crime commissioner"““will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives.””" We were then told—I questioned the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice about this earlier—that the panel"““will have a power to trigger a referendum on the policing precept recommended by the Commissioner.””" The Minister said that he disagreed with the premise of my question, which was in fact the premise in the White Paper that the Home Office published in July last year, ““Policing in the 21st century””, which said that the police and crime panel will have this power. However, the Bill, which provides for these referendums, has no provision to allow the police and crime panel to trigger such a referendum, and the powers appear to have been taken by the Secretary of State, despite the coalition agreement and what was promised in the White Paper last year. When the Minister spoke about this on 30 March, it seemed that his officials had not properly explained to him his own Bill. He said that"““the police and crime commissioner will set the precept but a referendum will be triggered. The””" police and crime"““panel will not be able to prevent that, but it will be able to propose an alternative precept with accompanying reasons that will have to be published. The public will then have to decide—having both sides of the story.””—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 433.]" That suggests that the referendum was going to be between the commissioner's precept and an alternative proposed by the panel. That is what we said would happen, but unfortunately the provisions of the Bill do not allow it to happen. In the case of the police precept, we are bringing in this third body—the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State, not the local panel, has the power to trigger a referendum. That is a highly regressive step that will prevent the elected police and crime commissioner from establishing a responsible relationship with his chief constable—perhaps being able to get him more budget and, in return, getting different priorities for policing. They will always be looking over their shoulder to the Secretary of State, who is giving a standard rise that they cannot go above without the risk of a local referendum that would cost perhaps 2% of the council tax, which they would have to pay even if they won. This will have a chilling effect on our proposals for police accountability. I am very disappointed, because in 2005 I wrote a book called ““Direct Democracy”” for which I had four co-authors—my right hon. Friends the Members for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), and Daniel Hannan, who is now an MEP. In that, we called for direct democracy and the devolution of powers, and, in particular, an elected person in charge of overseeing the police who would have local powers. We still believed that in the coalition agreement and we still believed it in last year's White Paper when we said that the panel would be able to trigger a referendum. It is terribly disappointing that this Bill fails to provide for that and instead hugs the power to the Secretary of State.