---

Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 77: 77: Clause 62, page 34, line 23, leave out subsections (2) and (3) The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am grateful for the support of colleagues in the House, who are showing such an interest in the future of local government by staying for approximately two minutes while we begin Report stage again. This is a dauntingly long group of amendments, which seeks to achieve just one thing: to give local authorities full flexibility in their governance models. The Bill narrows the range of options to local authorities down to three. One of these, as we will see in later groups of amendments, is to all practical intents and purposes totally unworkable. The other two options are based on the so-called ““strong leadership”” model, with the council at large taking on a largely scrutiny role. I start by again asking the Minister why the Government feel it necessary to change the arrangements for local authorities from those currently in place. She talked in Committee about how councils are now agents of change and said that they need to adapt to new challenges. Well, there have always been new challenges for local authorities. When councils were in their heyday in the 19th century, they dealt with the major problems of the time—public health and so forth—because they were free of Whitehall interference and were able to choose governance structures largely of their own making. If councils are to meet the new challenges of climate change, law and order problems and so forth, they can do so if left free from government interference. There is no evidence of any public appetite for elected mayors. Referendums have been held throughout the country and the electorate have rejected them as an option. Even in those areas where we have an elected mayor, the turnout has been low; there are mayors who operate with no popular mandate. I fully accept that there are areas where the mayoral model is the right one and that people want it—that is fine. However, in other areas, mayors are enjoying pretty much untrammelled power with no popular mandate. I ask the noble Baroness to consider again that in areas that have no strong geographic identity the mayoral model is wholly inappropriate. To the south of where I live is a local authority called Babergh. Even people who live in Babergh do not know that they live in Babergh. It has no identity as a council. If someone were to stand as mayor of Babergh, that would be pretty meaningless, as you cannot have an identity for an area like that, which was simply a construct of the last round of restructuring. In Committee, the noble Baroness talked about the importance of strong leadership. We all agree with that, but there is no evidence that mayors are stronger per se. Those in the current round of mayors were often high-profile leaders who came through the old system. The evidence is that, rather than mayors themselves being strong and high visibility, it is the personalities that bring that to the fore. We have seen that with the most high-profile mayor of all, Mr Livingstone. There is no guarantee that moving to a mayoral model will ensure that a person of such a profile and personality will come through. I also take issue with the Minister about whether the new models will allow for the development of new people coming through. As I argued in Committee, the abolition of the old committee structure does not allow for people to learn their trade in the way that they used to. In Committee, the noble Baroness said that this learning process would come through chairing overview and scrutiny committees. However, that involves an entirely different skills set. Chairing an overview and scrutiny committee is not high profile; it is essentially a technical job, and it will not lead to people coming forward who are then suited for executive power. I suggest that most people think that Gwyneth Dunwoody does a great job chairing a Select Committee, but she is not your Prime Minister. A different set of skills is required. The Government also quoted studies that show that mayors are more effective at articulating a vision for their local area. Again, that probably has as much to do with personality as position. I challenge the Government to pause. It is not simply the ability to articulate a vision that makes someone a good leader. That is important—of course it is—but so is service delivery, and the Government have, as yet, given us no evidence that those areas that have moved to these models of governance have improved service outcomes, which have to be the most important outcome of all. I am a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications. We took some interesting evidence this morning from a company that runs local newspapers throughout the country. It said: "““Today there is much less open debate in council chambers with more decisions taken behind closed doors and the outcome being managed by press officers””." In other words, it is all spin. It is no wonder that people feel that a vision is being articulated. It is a vision that is wrapped in spin; it is developed by the press officers and has no real substance in many cases. Overview and scrutiny still has a long way to go in many areas before it becomes effective. In any event, it can be quite a damaging model. Essentially it involves councillors looking back at decisions that have already been made and, quite probably, picking holes in them. From the public point of view, it portrays the council as inward-looking. What is worse, when the scrutiny process takes place and nothing happens, which is the case a lot of the time, the council comes across as looking toothless and people ask, ““Why have we bothered to elect them at all?””. We often hear criticisms of the London Assembly, which, notwithstanding the work done by my noble friend, is often accused of being toothless. But that is exactly how the Government set the models up. This long raft of amendments seeks to bring back the ability of local authorities to choose a model of governance that suits them so that they can, if they wish, revert to the old committee system. I suggest to the Government that there is nothing wrong with councils making decisions by committee if that is what they think suits them. There is enormous variety in the make-up of our local councils, whether because of size, geography, culture or politics. To straitjacket them as the Bill does—to reduce them to three models of governance—will be to risk the very stability and service improvements that the Government seek to achieve. I beg to move.