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Central and Local Government

That is entirely right, and compared with the total costs of reporting that is modest and achievable. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity of this debate to welcome and take on board that report, which is consistent with their own "Smarter Government" document and could be seized upon and worked with. My hon. Friend makes an important point, because the LGA is a cross-party organisation and its report comes from local government practitioners. I hope that it will be taken on board. Linked with that is a matter on which I agree with both Labour Members and my hon. Friends, which is the fact that we should not regard a postcode lottery as always indicating a problem. It is undesirable if it is the result of arbitrary allocations, but where a difference in out-turns is the result of an informed, democratically driven decision, it is something not to condemn but to praise and encourage as it reflects the working of local democracy. An important cultural shift needs to be taken on board, and I am glad that it was addressed in the Committee's report. Another real concern is the growth of the quango culture, which, again, has happened under Governments of both persuasions and over a period of years. The number of unaccountable agencies, and more to the point the degree of public spending that they take up, has grown exponentially. That is now a real obstacle between the elector—the informed and interested resident—and the governance systems, central or local, intended to represent them. I have seen one estimate that there are 1,152 quangos, including the small regional ones. There are a massive number, and they administer something like £43 billion. I saw an interesting figure, I believe again from an LGA source, that of every £7,000 of expenditure, only about £350 is spent by democratically accountable bodies. That indicates the degree to which we have slipped into a form of centralisation and unaccountability. Many of the functions of quangos could readily be carried out by local authorities, and I hope that we can look forward to finding consensus between the parties as a means of achieving a transfer of many of those functions back to democratically accountable bodies. Examples have been given by Members of all parties, and many of us who have worked in the field know that greater alignment of the working of primary care trusts and local authorities could produce significant benefits. There is no doubt that good local authorities could take on valuable roles in commissioning, particularly in the local public health services. The question of acute hospitals is different, but a natural synergy could be achieved with good will and collaboration. That might not only save money, but get better results for the resident and the patient. That is significant. Linked to that, we could simplify the number of funding streams and agencies that local authorities have to deal with. I have looked at some of the detail. It is striking that in Durham, there are 47 funding streams for social housing. How is anyone going to navigate their way through that? In Luton and Central Bedfordshire—one established and one new unitary authority next door to each other—there are 49 different public sector agencies. Such proliferation gets in the way of making government either joined up or comprehensible to the citizen. The alternative is to concentrate those agencies wherever possible—the obvious place to do that is in the democratically accountable forum of the local authority. If the Minister indicates that the Government are prepared to move in that direction, she would certainly find support elsewhere in the House. I want to give the Minister ample time to respond to this very useful and constructive debate. I am very impressed by much of what has been said. There are some areas where more work needs to be done, but I hope we will have the opportunity to continue to raise local government issues. Sometimes we do that in rather technical terms, in relation to finance settlements and so on, as we did earlier in the week, but in a sense, they are but the mechanisms by which we try to drive the broader agenda of making services responsive to the needs of local communities. That is why the topics we have debated today are particularly important.