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Local and Regional Government

: I would be happy if that idea had occurred to the Department and the Minister. For us, the basic principle is localism. Power should be exercised at the most local possible level. However, it is important to understand not just the principle but the reasons for it, as they may determine a lot of policy direction. The Minister has heard me say this before, but perhaps other hon. Members have not. We have three distinct reasons for being in favour of localism, which lead to distinct conclusions in their own right. One is that power should be dispersed, rather than being too concentrated in too few hands, and that local government has a constitutional role to play. The second is that there is a need for diversity and experimentation, both in government and in society, and that local government can play a role in that as well. Thirdly, there is a need for democratic participation, and it is important that local government should be seen as a way in which local people can participate in the democratic process. I do not have time to go into those three reasons at great length, although I am sure that Ministers would be happy to respond on the reasons for localism, rather than simply stating conclusions. The most important aspect of our belief in the dispersal of power is that we think that local government should be about local politics, not about local administration. Part of the problem is central Government's view that local government should be their agent rather than a source of political legitimacy in its own right. We should look forward to a situation where national Government respect the powers of local government within its sphere and a financial structure is in place to back that up, and where, when national Government want local government to act for them, they have to negotiate with local government about accepting extra responsibilities, rather than simply imposing them through legislation. The central point about experimentation and diversity is that local government should be able to experiment not only with the delivery of policies but with what policies to deliver. National Government should content themselves with minimum standards and providing information about performance and practice. The crucial difference is that the implied national policy for decades has been that public services should be delivered in the same way throughout the country. That is implicit in the local government financial system. As a matter of principle, we should move away from the idea of uniformity to one in which local government is encouraged to have different policy aims from national Government. The most important of the three points concerns democratic participation. It is necessary to the survival of democracy itself that as many people as possible have direct experience of the democratic system. By that, I mean not only voting but standing in elections, serving as a representative, making decisions and being held accountable for those decisions. We cannot afford a further development of a small and separate political class—an isolated clique of leaders who are divided from a resentful mass whose only experience of democracy is being governed by someone else. The best defence of democracy is the widespread experience of democratic politics. The theme that lies behind what is said on many sides, including in the leaked document in The Daily Telegraph, is that it is a good idea to reduce the number of councillors just for the sake of it. I oppose that. By international standards, we are not over-represented in this country. The Government might quite rightly—this relates to a point raised by the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby)—be worried about the quality of local government councillors, and think that one way of addressing that could be to reduce the number of councillors and to use the money that would otherwise be spent to increase allowances to make attractive salaries. However, that is the wrong way to attract talent to local government. The best action to take would be to increase the powers of local government and to free it from national control, so that councillors can achieve something for their communities. Freedom for councils means better councillors. It seems that one of the Government's reasons for unitary councils is a reduction in the number of councillors. I would not accept that. I also reject the idea of a single system of local government throughout the country. A single system is wrong; there should be various ideas of how to run local government. There is immense geographical diversity in the country and what might be appropriate for a rural area might not be appropriate for an urban area. As another former council leader, I am much attracted to single-tier local government, especially in urban areas. The present system leads to immense confusion and failure among the various levels of local government to take responsibility. It is difficult for the electorate to believe that the county council is responsible for all the roads, even in an urban district, or that one council deals with waste collection, while another deals with waste disposal. I remember from my time as a council leader that the local population always thought that I was responsible for all the county's services, including part of the health service. That lack of clarity is a real problem for democratic accountability. If The Daily Telegraph leak is right, I strongly advise the Government to think carefully about the way in which they propose to go about the reform. They risk repeating some of the mistakes of the Banham/Grant commission. That went for speed. Its remit was limited to building new authorities out of existing authorities, and not crossing county boundaries. In many areas, including mine, those two rules by themselves meant that no agreement was possible, because fears of dominance of town over country or country over town, or the existence—in my area—of several important towns close to county boundaries made the creation of a rational system of unitary authorities impossible. I advise going for a slower, but more thorough process that allowed more radical solutions and that sought ideas not only from existing councils, which are bound to reflect their institutional interests, but from a wider community. Structure is probably the last thing that must be decided after function and finance, and it is important for the Government to return to that.