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Local Authorities (Overview and Scrutiny) Bill

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. In the Bill there is no such way, but through the ballot box there is. Another answer to his question is that increasing emphasis is being given to the power of the public to influence and pressurise local authorities, through the community call for action, the councils' call for action, and the new emphasis on petitions. All those were introduced in recent local government legislation. That, in addition to the normal power through the ballot box, gives the public more power to influence local authorities' decisions. I want to draw attention to an important change in recent years: local authorities now have a general power of well-being, after calling for it for many years. They are no longer shackled by central Government restrictions on how they interpret the long-term needs of their areas. Of course, the role of councillors and councils, with their unique democratic mandate, is absolutely critical to making sure that local services respond to the needs of local communities, although I fully accept that, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, decisions by local authorities do not always reflect the needs of their communities. Councils must be given the powers that they need to act decisively and effectively on behalf of their citizens, and the powers and capacity to scrutinise, influence and shape all public services, including those delivered by other providers, which may be in the private sector or the third sector, or that may be agents of central Government. That is a new, much stronger role for local government, placing it firmly at the centre of decision making in the community. It is central to the long-term process of rebuilding public confidence in the democratic process overall. I want to say a word about the role of scrutiny and how it has developed in recent years. Although the separation of local authorities' powers into executive and scrutiny functions has been in place for barely 10 years, enormous progress has been made in many local authorities, where the power of scrutiny is clearly understood. In some parts of the country, oversight and scrutiny panels have started to shape the local delivery of health and crime prevention policies. In the more successful authorities, the panels have already led to an increase in public engagement and a greater recognition by service providers of the need to respond to public concerns. It would be naive to assume that every local authority has fully grasped the potential of the new scrutiny function, but I think that it is generally recognised that understanding is increasing, and the number of people calling for a return to the old system is dramatically reducing. Now is the time to move forward and ensure that scrutiny is an outward-looking process that considers the wider impact of how effectively public money is spent across all public services in a local area. The growth of local strategic partnerships and the establishment of comprehensive area assessments mean that councils must now take responsibility for the effective use of public funds across their whole area, and they should be able to hold all public service providers to account on behalf of the communities that they represent. At a time of rising public aspirations and increased aversion to higher levels of taxation, councils and other public service providers need to find ways to deliver ever more personalised and flexible public services with the same level of resource. Effective scrutiny processes can help them to find ways of doing more with less.