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Local Government

My Lords, a previous Lord Acton said that there always should be a problem of Church and state. It could fairly be said that there always should be problem of local and central government and parliamentary sovereignty as against the legitimacy of the local mandate. There is also the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, about local decision making, with its implication of the risk of postcode lottery, as against national standards. Yet behind it all, we all share the belief, described by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that Britain is not a tidy place geographically and, therefore, different local government structures are necessary for different places. Local government is about that difference. If it were not, it would not be needed. That crucial belief that local government is about difference was dismissed as romantic nonsense in 1974, when a tidy two-tier structure was imposed on most of the country in the false belief that rural communities were essentially thinned-out cities and needed the same services delivered in the same way. At the same time, that was allied to a second false belief in the era of Baines and mega-American management-speak that bigger is better and more competent. Both propositions are false. Since then, the two-tier structure has increasingly been seen as deeply-flawed for much of the country; and most cities in the mid-1990s, under a previous administration—I give credit to the work of David Curry—became unitaries: Leicester, Plymouth, York, Nottingham, Bristol and Milton Keynes. But unfinished business remains, to which I now wish to turn. I declare my interest as a former leader of Norwich City Council. Some cities, such as Norwich, Oxford and Exeter, failed to gain unitary status during the Banham review, despite the good will of Ministers at the time. We still do not know why different standards were applied at different times to different places. Apparently, size mattered; except that the smaller Hartlepool became unitary and the larger Ipswich did not. Apparently, history mattered; so, tiny Rutland became unitary, yet the historic cities of Norwich or Exeter, county boroughs for 800 years, did not. Apparently, centrality mattered; so, Northampton was too central to the economy of Northamptonshire to become unitary, but, bizarrely, Leicester and Nottingham—which, one would have thought, were even more central to the local economies—were allowed to become unitary. Do those questions matter? Ultimately, structures are only a means to an end. We all accept that, but they do define a sense of place; they do enable or inhibit partnership workings; they do shape the delivery of local services; they do ensure responsiveness to local neighbourhoods, while emphasising the strategic vision and local leadership that cities, in particular, need. I suggest that a two-tier structure vitiates all that. Services that are interdependent, such as housing and social care, are splintered between tiers. Your Down’s Syndrome adult son needs supported housing. Should it be city or county? Services that should be integrated, such as trading standards and environmental health, are overlapping now and concurrent. You buy a piece of mouldy cheese. Do you report it to county trading standards or to city environmental health? Services that should be focused, such as economic development, are duplicated. So the company considering relocation will approach whom, city or county? In my experience it will probably go to a unitary authority for the sake of simplicity. So under our present structures, some services are delegated, others are duplicated, still others are splintered, a few are concurrent and a very few are not done at all because they fall down the cracks between the two. I could go on. People living in the Norwich area, for example, who look to the city for services, are in fact run by four different local authorities, with different values, priorities and partnership arrangements, including a county council, which understandably does not have a single councillor from Norwich on its cabinet, meaning that many key financial and political decisions are taken without any first-hand knowledge or understanding of the region’s most important city and the county’s economic powerhouse. As the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, rightly said, rural communities face real problems of sparsity, where services cost more to deliver to small villages stripped of school, post office, bus, shop and pub. Norfolk County Council tries honourably and decently to meet those needs; it knows about them. A city’s problems are no less real but are almost the exact opposite—problems of density and congestion, of litter and waste management, of late night safety, noise and street policing, of traffic management and car parking, of the need for strict planning controls, of housing pressures from those seeking jobs as well as homes in the city, support for the major national companies located there and care for a glorious heritage of historic buildings and medieval churches. The city is a regional capital expected to fulfil regional functions on the revenues of a rural district council constrained by the policies of a rural county council. How on earth can rural county councillors living 40 miles away in a small village comprehend a city’s needs? How could I, as a former county councillor, vote sensibly on laying down yellow lines on roads on which I never drove? I might just as well have been in London taking that decision. It certainly had nothing to do with local government. The ODPM survey, State of the English Cities, shows very clearly that cities lead this country’s economic regeneration except for three places in the south and east, Ipswich, Norwich and Hastings, which all happen to be non-unitary authorities. The survey shows that what matters to charge that economic growth is innovation, competition, business partnerships, transport connectivity, to use the phrase—the determinants of growth—all of which are severely constrained within a two-tier structure. The city, I suggest, would better serve its county if it could play to its own economic strengths, develop its own entrepreneurial capacity, attend to its local neighbourhoods, partner its local businesses and recharge its civic leadership as a unitary authority. So, equally, would the county—which does admirably with its rural services—gain if it was free to focus on what it knows and does best: developing services for a rural, scattered, low income and, too often I regret to say, low aspiration county. Even when an urban district is located within a two-tier urban county, services are confusing enough. Now add a city within a distinctly rural county on which rural standards are instinctively projected onto a city, add profound political divergence between the tiers and what is the result? No one knows who does what, to what standards, at what price and to what authority. Without such clarity there can be no accountability, and without such accountability there can be no meaningful local government. Two-tier local government in such cities means confusion, incoherence, inconsistency, sometimes ignorance, and duplication and disagreement. So are we then surprised that local government is run by the few people who can be bothered to stand and elected by the few people who can be bothered to vote? I do not know—perhaps my noble friend can help me on this—what criteria the Government will use when they consider these issues. Will it be population size, administrative savings and scope for increased efficiency, clarity and greater accountability for the public, community identity and history, or local preference of voters, business and voluntary organisations? I shall spend only a moment on the first two of those—the connection between size and competence—and shall suggest that that does not hold any more. First, I shall quote the Audit Commission’s comprehensive performance assessments. Of the 1990s unitaries, more smaller authorities than large ones got three and four stars. Not only is it the case that large authorities do not do better but the reverse may well be true. What matters is not population alone—itself often the product of artificially constrained boundaries—but critical mass: the presence of a university, an airport, regional TV and newspaper companies, national business and a major teaching hospital. The second point about size is that functions have changed. The police are now run by a separate authority, schools are locally self-managed, children’s services will be transformed by the new children’s trusts, and further education has gone to the Learning and Skills Council. The purchaser/provider split has transformed local government, and, although a provider of services may need a minimum size for scale and efficiencies, the purchaser does not. What matters is civil leadership, a focus both on local neighbourhoods as well as strategic vision, and the willingness to engage in flexible local partnerships to meet different needs as they emerge. UDCs may be one such vehicle. I very much welcome the Government’s willingness to ask whether for cities such as mine the current structure of local government is fit for purpose. Locally, the bid for unitary status has full cross-party support and, as far as I can tell, wide public and business support. Therefore, I am particularly grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has given us the opportunity today to make the case for a new council which is integrated, effective, outward looking, proud of its history, rated by its citizens and fit for the challenges of the next half-century.