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Democracy: POWER Inquiry

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. It is to the credit of your Lordships’ House that we have managed to debate this subject now for almost three hours and no one has seriously used the awful word ““stakeholder””. Perhaps there is hope left in this country, even if it is only in the House of Lords. My final point before I start is that in the town where I live—as noble Lords will know, I spend half my time attempting to be very active as a local politician—a much needed and quite attractive Sure Start building is being built, which we are all very excited about and grateful for. I was one of those negotiating with Sure Start on the design of the building; the district council had no direct involvement in Sure Start and I do not think that the county council had either. So, as far as we are concerned, it is a local quango partnership set-up—arrangements which seems to run everything nowadays, certainly as far as Colne is concerned. The report contains a huge amount of valuable research and a lot of good sense. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness and the others who produced it will not be too upset when I say that its conclusions are rather timid. I found the whole package a bit disappointing. I do not think that I was quite as disappointed as the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, but I am an active politician and not an academic. I do not look for the academic rigorousness that the noble Lord looks for; I just look for sensible proposals. Although most of the proposals are useful and helpful, I do not think that they are ““transformational””—another of the Government’s buzzwords—regarding people’s active involvement in politics. A couple of unarticulated threads run through the report, shouting out on page after page, but I do not think the report has grasped hold of them. They concern how and where individuals can take an active personal involvement in politics. People can do so at two levels. First, they can take part in political parties. My noble friend Lord Shutt has given the technical phrase for the state of political parties in this country and I agree—they are due for the knacker’s yard. Secondly, people can take part outside political parties, which more often than not is done at the local level. It concerns things that are happening in the community and the neighbourhood which people feel strongly about or get involved in, whether they do so positively, oppositionally or whatever. Increasingly, as the noble Lord, Lord Gould of Brookwood, pointed out, involvement is about the internet, which is opening up a huge array of ways in which people can take part in debate and discussion. That is a vital part of political involvement. Individuals can also get involved in campaigns and so on. One of the flaws of the report is that it does not investigate this area as it develops. I was fascinated by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gould, who used the buzzwords ““participatory democracy””, which warmed my heart. The first person I heard talking about participation as an important part of politics was Jo Grimond, over 40 years ago. It was one of the reasons I got involved in politics. After listening carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Gould, had to say, I am still not sure whether I strongly agree or disagree with him. Perhaps we agree on a great deal but we just use different words. The tension between representative democracy and participatory democracy is crucial and underlies the whole argument. I do not believe, as the noble Lord does, that participatory democracy is the future of politics. I rather go along with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that although more participation will enrich politics, participatory politics and representative politics have to work together. It is difficult to see how one can work satisfactorily and democratically without the other. It is difficult to see how participatory politics can work on its own. You need a system of representation; without one, it is difficult to see how the system can work at all. I do not think they are separate things, but an emphasis on more participation is absolutely fundamental. This comes down to what I call real politics and real democracy. There is an enormous pressure in this country to say that real democracy and real politics are bad things, and I shall explain why. More than anything else, real democracy and politics are about debate. They are about people exchanging and thrashing out ideas in debate and coming to a consensus or agreeing not to agree. They are about people interacting with the system, being involved in discussions and campaigning, and, as far as possible, being involved in the decisions themselves. These are all the things that today’s party managers in this country do not like. They do not like it in their own parties and they do not like it outside. I am not pointing the finger specifically at any party; it is a tendency in all political parties including, unfortunately, my own. Party managers want well-managed and well-mannered parties, carefully controlled messages and well-scrubbed and well-painted candidates, both male and female. There is an obsession with management, an obsession with spin and an obsession with style. All these things mitigate against real democracy and real politics. Democracy is not like that. It is unpredictable and people will not necessarily make the decisions you want them to make. It is untidy. If people are campaigning, organising and associating—the right of association is not much talked about nowadays, but it is absolutely crucial for taking part in politics within a democracy—such things can often be subversive. There are clashes, differences of view and big arguments. Big arguments lead to rows because it is not just intellectual debate. People feel strongly about issues. If someone is building a new supermarket in the field next to your house, you feel emotional about it as well as looking for arguments why the building should be turned down under the planning rules. So there are clashes of emotions, and nowadays all that is thought to be a bad thing. If people in political parties row with each other or even have minor disagreements, it is splashed across the press as big rows and splits and all the rest of it. Like the inquiry, I do not believe that people are apathetic, just that they are discriminating about what they do and do not take part in. I have been to some pretty fantastic events over the years. I remember my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford when he was my Member of Parliament in the days when I had the opportunity to vote for my Member of Parliament, although I regret to say that I did not vote for him. We had a fantastic public meeting in the big sports hall in Colne. The Conservative Government of the day, about 20 years ago, proposed to close the local hospital. I was chairman of the campaign group and my noble friend was there as our local Member of Parliament; he had come along to give us his support. In the circumstances, he probably did more than he reasonably could have done. Some 400 people were at the meeting, which was part of a terrific campaign. The people who went to that meeting will remember it, and they still talk about it today. It became part of their life experience and their participation in politics. Almost the last time I saw my noble friend before he came to this House was at an election rally for the European elections held two years ago, believe it or not, at a local hall in Nelson. Over 100 people were there, and that is not apathy. So there are places where people manage to break through apathy now and again. At the same European election campaign in the north-west, I spoke at the biggest political meeting I have ever spoken to in my life apart from at party conferences, with over 1,000 people in attendance. It was a European election rally in Manchester. That was perhaps quite extraordinary, but it can and sometimes does happen. I should say that, for my sins, I was also the agent this year in a number of local elections. In one ward in Nelson I believe that we had the highest turnout in any urban ward in the country, in the mid-70 per cent range. Also in the all-postal elections held on the same day as the European elections, we had a turnout of 82 per cent, again the highest in the country, and certainly the highest for an urban ward. At 82 per cent, pretty well everyone has voted apart from those who are away, incapacitated, Jehovah’s Witnesses or dead—and since it was an all-postal election, I suspect some of them voted too. Political parties have to find ways of reinvigorating themselves as democratic organisations, as well as try to organise themselves into running elections in ways that do not put people off, as I believe happens at the moment. There are no real answers, but the problem has to be looked at. At the local level, the report rightly talks about the need to reinvigorate local government. That is absolutely crucial. Another report produced by Rowntree, Whose Town Is It Anyway?, which is about Harrogate and Burnley and my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton referred to, makes a useful observation in a piece of academic research that I think the noble Lord, Lord Norton, might like—that if you want people to become more involved in local government, local elections and local affairs, the smaller the unit, the more the involvement you will get. Yet that is contrary to the present drive towards larger units. The Government are pushing for larger units in the health service, in the police and, in some parts of the country, probably in local authorities. The basis of that thinking is that a top-down, management-based drive for efficiency will result in better delivery of services. But I have to say that I regard the word ““delivery”” as a New Labour weasel word. Of course this is about producing good services, but it is also about producing democratically controlled services with the democratic involvement of the people involved in their production. In some cases it will mean that delivery is not quite what central government want. They might not meet their targets because the local people may think that other things are a bit more important. Until we get away from the idea that public services have to be produced uniformly and in a management-efficient way throughout the country, local democracy has no future. One way the Government are promoting local involvement is through something called ““neighbourhood management””. There are 35 Pathfinders—another buzzword—as well as many other neighbourhood management areas in the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders, including three in Pendle alone, one of which I am involved with. A lot of the talk in the old ODPM about ““double devolution”” to the local level was based on the idea that neighbourhood management in these Pathfinders would provide a model for devolution below the level of local authorities to neighbourhoods. As someone who is heavily involved in a neighbourhood management scheme in Colne that is working quite well, I nevertheless have a great deal of doubt about whether that will be the case. Perhaps I may conclude by giving a typical example of why that should be so. If you look on the neighbourhood renewal unit website and do a Google search for ““Neighbourhood Management””, you will find a glossary to help you through the nightmare. There are 137 different things that you will have to learn about, ranging from an ““Active Community Unit”” until the last on the list, ““Working Together Learning Together””, which turns out to apply in Scotland only and is run by an organisation called Communities Scotland. The glossary runs through the ““Building Communities Initiative”” and the ““Community Empowerment Fund””. Of course floor targets and mainstreaming are absolutely crucial to the whole thing. So, if you want to engage with your local community, you have to learn about floor targets and mainstreaming before you get involved. The glossary continues with ““Local Public Service Agreement””, ““Local Strategic Partnerships””, ““Locality Budgeting””, ““Neighbourhood Management Programme””, ““Neighbourhood Renewal Fund””, ““Neighbourhood Support Fund””, ““New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal””, ““Public Service Agreements””—which some people will know are an absolute minefield—““Sustainable Communities Programme””, and so on. Perhaps I may finally read out the public service agreements’ definition:"““Deprivation will be tackled through the bending of main Departmental programmes such as the police and health services, to focus more specifically on the most deprived areas. Departments now have minimum targets to meet, which means that, for the first time, they will be judged on the areas where they are doing worst, and not just on averages””." In other words, everything that happens at the bottom has to meet targets, floors and all the rest of it, prescribed from above. It then says:"““(See Floor targets)””." It is all top down. It is a well-meaning attempt to deliver the services but is profoundly undemocratic.