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Communities in Control

The Government are right to recognise the need for more direct democracy and radically to devolve power to local people. However, does the White Paper contain measures to devolve control over local government finance to local people or to ensure locally accountable police chiefs? Does it contain a right of initiative, rather than merely a right to petition and trigger town hall talk? Without such steps, the White Paper just pays lip service to localism—it does not have the Levellers behind it, so much as Sir Humphrey Appleby.