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National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Local Government) Order 2010

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly on this order. It is obvious that much of the order was conceived in more prosperous times before the recession and the era of staggering financial deficit and severe restriction on public expenditure that now engulfs us. Indeed the Aberystwyth report to which the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, referred, which set out proposals to enhance the role of community councils in Wales, dates back to 2003. The National Assembly’s positive response and commitment to strengthen these councils to deliver a wider range of services dates back to 2004. I recall quite vividly the discussions that we had on establishing community councils in Wales during the passage of the 1972 Act. At that time, the country suffered from a superfluity of small, often ineffective local authorities. The thrust of the reform was to reduce their number and to create bigger, more efficient units at county, district and borough level. The concept of community councils, unique to Wales but corresponding to parish councils in England, was developed to ensure that communities had a voice on local issues that would be heard by the higher authorities. The councils were deliberately not given many powers and were financed by precept levied at district level. The outcome is that we have some 730 community and town councils, half of them with a population of fewer than 1,000, eight with more than 20,000 and Barry, the largest, with 45,000. There are 8,000 councillors in all. The pattern is very variegated. What this order proposes and will lead to potentially is an extra tier of executive local government. While this may have been demand-appropriate to the more prosperous times gone by, it is and will be an increasingly questionable proposal in the years immediately ahead, bearing in mind the costs that are implicit in various provisions of the order related to remuneration of councillors, direct funding by the Assembly Government and so on. It is worth reminding ourselves that Wales moved to a unitary local authority system in the early 1990s and now has 22 authorities that combine the powers of county and district councils. If they have a subsidiary tier to perform some of their functions at a local level, it is likely that this will be permissive rather than obligatory in nature, if only because of the great variety of community councils in size and innate strength. The powers to promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of their area present a novel opportunity for community councils and may well be much in demand. Again, the issue of the availability of resources is bound to arise and there may well be a case for direct funding by the Assembly Government of local projects that fall into this category. While there is a prima facie case for saying that this order promotes local democracy—it enables the Assembly Government to empower community councils—and is therefore to be welcomed, as my noble friend Lord Glentoran said, there is another side to that coin: this order gives additional powers to the Assembly to be more closely involved and to intervene at the very local level at which community councils operate. Everything depends on how these powers are exercised. "Power to the people" sounds good and is right, but "power over the people" is not so—a single word makes all the difference. We can only hope for the best.