HC Deb 23 March 1998 vol 309 cc153-60

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Allen.]

10.56 pm
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West)

When I first applied for this debate, it was to be a celebration of the start of the passage through the House of the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill, which has been promoted in the other place by Lord Hunt and in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead). However, I understand that that Bill was opposed on Friday by the Conservative Whips, so this debate is more in the nature of a lament for opportunities denied, or at least delayed.

Local government in the United Kingdom, unlike that in most European countries, has no separate or independent constitutional position. The powers, functions and financing of local authorities can be altered by statute, and the Crown in Parliament could abolish them altogether.

Under the previous Government, it sometimes appeared to those of us who were then in local government that abolition was the ultimate agenda. The previous Government increasingly controlled the finances, both capital and revenue, of local councils, stripped away their ability to provide affordable housing and, through compulsory competitive tendering, tried to end the role of councils as direct service providers.

Under the previous Government, there was an increasing number of areas in which local government was simply made an agent of central Government. The expansion of the quango state removed whole functions from local government. In spite of all that, local government—predominantly, although not exclusively, Labour local government—began to reinvent and modernise local democracy.

The key features of most progressive Labour councils were their commitment to quality services, to working in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, and to making democracy in their localities more participative. They concentrated on making public services high-quality and user-friendly. For example, York council pioneered the citizens charter, which was taken over by the previous Government. Councils also pioneered customer guarantees and tenant consultation and user panels and, instead of the paternalistic provision of monolithic services for people, developed the provision of flexible services with the people.

Councils pioneered partnership, developing a facilitating role with the other players in community governance. They increasingly saw themselves not only as service providers but as facilitators and advocates for local communities, using their democratic legitimacy to take a leadership role. They also pioneered a variety of forms of more participative democracy, using citizens' juries and representative panels of citizens such as the Kirklees talkback scheme, neighbourhood forums with delegated budgets and tenant management co-operatives.

The council in Milton Keynes runs a health forum that brings together local NHS providers, the council and the voluntary sector to plan health services. The council

consulted young people in Milton Keynes before the unitary council came into effect, to ensure that it provided the services that young people wanted and identified a need for. It set up a benchmark survey of more than 1,000 local residents, backed up by citizens' panels, to consult on its budget priorities. It also set up a scrutiny committee, chaired by the main opposition group on the council, the Liberal Democrats.

Since the general election, the atmosphere has become distinctly more promising for local government. Unlike their predecessor, the new Labour Government are committed to renewing local democracy. There have been important symbols and signs of the new approach. The Government signed the European charter of local self-government, which recognises the independent democratic legitimacy of local government. They have brought into being a central-local concordat which recognises that central and local government are mutually dependent and sets out meetings at least twice a year between the Deputy Prime Minister, Cabinet and other Ministers, and leading members of the Local Government Association. The Government are committed to giving local authorities new powers to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their communities.

Lord Hunt's Bill was part of the new approach. It would have allowed councils to experiment with more effective forms of internal decision making, enabling them to give much greater clarity of direction to their programmes while retaining proper accountability to the local electorate. It was permissive, not prescriptive, and would have allowed councils to experiment in the way appropriate to them by developing cabinet-style government, decision making by lead members, or an elected mayor. I leave my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test to talk in more detail about the events of Friday's Second Reading.

Many councils have already started to develop improved internal arrangements of the sort that would be permitted by the Hunt Bill. Several London boroughs have well-developed plans, including Hammersmith and Fulham, Barnet and Islington, as have several metropolitan boroughs and unitary councils such as Bradford, Kirklees, Southampton and Leicester.

Milton Keynes unitary council was also hoping to exploit the opportunity of the Bill in two particular ways. Milton Keynes is a city with a young population. The council had attempted to set up an innovative departmental structure that split children's from adult social services and then brought together all services relating to children. Children's social services, education, leisure, and arts and museums were to be brought into the same structure, to deliver proper, comprehensive services to meet the needs of children and young people. Unfortunately, the current rules for social services committees demand complex management arrangements that add nothing to service delivery.

The second way in which Milton Keynes council had hoped to use the opportunities of the Hunt Bill was to introduce a cabinet system that would have simplified the complex committee structure set up by the unitary council, and allowed councillors to concentrate their time and resources on delivering services rather than on keeping the committee system going. I am sorry to have to say that some of these sensible measures are being opposed by some Liberal Democrat councillors. I am particularly sorry because I know that, when the Bill was discussed in the Lords, it was supported by several Liberal Democrat—and, indeed, Conservative—peers.

I should like to quote from the speech of Baroness Maddock on 17 December. She said that she shared Lord Hunt's desire to make local government much more accountable; much more accessible, particularly for constituents; and more attractive so that people will put themselves forward as councillors to serve their communities."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 December 1997; Vol. 584, c. 693.] Some peers expressed concerns about the need for effective scrutiny of the new proposals, but those concerns were addressed in amendments before the Bill completed its stages in the Lords. I hope that those Liberal Democrats in the Lords and in the Local Government Association who support the Bill will use their power to persuade their colleagues on Milton Keynes council to stop opposing the Labour administration's attempts to modernise and simplify local democracy.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will join me in regretting the steps taken on Friday to delay the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill. As I understand it, those steps will prevent the Bill from progressing to Committee stage, where genuine concerns that Opposition Members might have about the detail of the Bill could have been addressed. It would be helpful to all those progressive forces in local government that wish to bring local decision making into the 21st century if the Minister could say what steps the Government are proposing to introduce the sort of changes outlined in Lord Hunt's Bill, so that the proposed experiments can go ahead.

11.5 pm

Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test)

I should like to add my support to the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). I was delighted to be able to pick up the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill when it came to this House from another place. It went through that other place with all-party support; indeed, several concerns expressed earlier in the Bill's passage were alleviated on Report, when all parties participated in drafting amendments to ensure that the Bill reached this House in a form that commanded a wide range of support, and that was genuinely innovative in terms of local government.

The Bill is permissive, as my hon. Friend said. No local authority is forced to undertake the measures contained in the Bill, yet it allows local authorities, if they wish, to experiment with different—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin)

Order. It may be helpful to the hon. Gentleman if I tell him that he cannot speak in detail about a Bill that is going before either this House or the other place. He can speak about the topic, but not about the Bill in detail.

Dr. Whitehead

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try to make my remarks more general.

The Bill was significant because local government has historically thrived on local innovation, not only because local is best in many areas of policy, but because good practice is best spread by example and local government needs to learn by its own experience, not by experiences imposed on it by others.

The problem of local government over the past 20 years is that central Government have all too often reacted to the problems that are sometimes thrown up by local government practice by exercising their prerogative to second-guess what local government is doing and by passing legislation, often in minute detail, to prescribe what local government can and cannot do. That has led to an atmosphere and a feeling prevalent in local government that it is always second-guessed and subject to decrees from above, and that its energies, innovation and experience are all too often ignored.

We must resolve not to do that again: it is bad for local government, and bad for democracy as a whole. If people believe that voting in local government is a waste of time, it is hardly surprising if their cynicism spreads to national politics.

I welcomed the recent comments of the Leader of the Opposition when he spoke to Conservative local councillors at Kensington town hall. I did not agree with everything he had to say, but I detected a welcome change of heart. He said that he considered local government to be important and that what it had to say was relevant for local and national purposes. He declared, on behalf of his party, a new beginning in the relationship between the centre and the local in the realm of local government.

For all these reasons, I was dismayed when my private Member's Bill last Friday was objected to by a Conservative Whip. Local government of all party persuasions wants that Bill on the statute book. It wants the freedom to do the things suggested in the Bill, and it wants to make a new start of the type that the Leader of the Opposition suggested at Kensington town hall was on offer. This House, regardless of party, should not deny local government that opportunity.

I have set the date of 24 April for another attempt at a Second Reading for the Bill. That provides a month for mature reflection. I hope that the Government tonight will give the assurances that the Opposition need to allow the Bill to proceed. I also hope that the Opposition will prove big enough to allow the Bill to go into Committee, where we can discuss the details that need discussion, to ensure that the Bill gives local government the opportunities it deserves.

11.10 pm
The Minister for Local Government and Housing (Ms Hilary Armstrong)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) on securing the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on supporting her.

This evening marks a rather remarkable event. It is some time since the House, in an Adjournment debate, has considered innovation and the future shape of local government, and whether central Government should allow experimentation in that area. It is also some time since so many Members attended an Adjournment debate on such an issue. That signals the importance of the subject to Members of this Parliament, an unprecedented number of whom served in local government before coming here. That experience drives them to recognise that central Government have, for far too long, tried to shackle local government and not allow it to develop in response to the aims and ambitions of local people.

The Government are now pushing forward their agenda to enable local government to change its relationship with central Government, and with local people. For far too long, local government has had to look to central Government for its legitimacy, its opportunities to act, and approval for what it can spend money on.

This Government came to power on a manifesto making it abundantly clear that we are committed to democratic renewal in local government. That is why we recently published a consultation paper on local democracy and community leadership, as part of modernising local government. It is why we have been keen to encourage councils to begin to plan for change in a structured way that emerges from the all-party discussions of the past five or six years. Those discussions were reflected in the Bill that recently passed through the other place.

However, we do so not because we believe that it would be good for our party, but because we believe that it is healthy for democracy and better for local government, and therefore, in the long-term, better for government as a whole. The more we have a revived and a living democracy at local level, the more people become involved and interested in what government is up to at other levels, which is very healthy.

The issue of experimental arrangements for democratic renewal in local government has always been a cross-party one; I urge that it should not now become a partisan issue. We have been pleased, therefore, that cross-party initiatives have guided the way in which the topic has been handled.

In July 1993, a report of the working party on the internal management of local authorities in England, entitled "Community Leadership and Representation: Unlocking the Potential", said: the Secretary of State for the Environment should take powers to allow, in consultation with local government, experimental changes to their internal management arrangements proposed by individual local authorities; legislation would allow approval of experiments subject to suitable safeguards. That working party existed during the previous Parliament and under the auspices of the previous Administration.

Following the working party's report, a Select Committee on Relations Between Central and Local Government was established in the other place, and in July 1996 it published its report, "Rebuilding Trust". The all-party Select Committee in the other place took the view that local authorities need to be allowed to experiment on the lines of the Scandinavian free commune system. This would include the freedom to experiment with ideas such as elected mayors and local referenda and new approaches to the provision of services and other responsibilities. In November 1996, the previous Administration responded to the report, and welcomed that part of it. They welcomed the Committee's examination of the subject, identifying the report as an important contribution to the debate about the nature of local government in Britain.

The Government's response at that time was: on freedom to experiment with internal structure and voting arrangements, the Government accepts the general principle of the Committee's recommendation that local authorities should be able to experiment with internal working arrangements. In other words, the idea that we are discussing tonight was specifically welcomed by the previous Administration, and I know that they were committed to finding time in the House to introduce legislation.

As you can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, this topic, which led to the introduction of a Bill in the other place, has developed in a cross-party way over several years, so the Government were keen to support progress on the topic.

It is not unusual for topics such as this to be introduced by the private Member's Bill route. For example, the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 was introduced as a private Member's Bill by a Conservative Member, Mr. Robin Squire, who was then a Back Bencher. No Government time was provided for the Bill. The Government did, however, support it in the way that the present Government have supported the developments in the other place.

To demonstrate the degree to which we wish to support this initiative, we should be prepared to see much more cross-party involvement, not only in the development of the Bill but in its implementation, should it proceed through Parliament.

Therefore, I would first like to offer to have cross-party consultation on any guidance that legislation of this nature would produce, with all parties closely involved in its drafting in order to ensure maximum cross-party support. Throughout the preparation of any guidance that would attach to such legislation, we would wish to involve parties other than simply the Local Government Association, academics and so on.

For example, we shall invite the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs to provide input into the content of any guidance. We believe that that is the best and most appropriate way of involving Members of Parliament from all parties in the preparation of such a document. I propose that because I want any guidance to reflect all-party support for the legislation, which is imperative if we are to renew the political culture in local government. The House must approach the matter in a manner that is more mature than folk outside are used to seeing. We must consider what is in the best interests not of central Government but of local government.

Secondly, I propose to build in all-party participation when considering any submissions in which local authorities set out their plans for experimentation, which legislation of this sort would facilitate. It will be necessary to involve more than hon. Members in this place: it will be important to involve organisations such as the Local Government Association and the Audit Commission in consideration of such proposals. I shall invite the Select Committee to consider applications for inclusion under the provisions of any such legislation prior to a final decision being made by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

I have written already to the Chairman of the Select Committee inviting the Committee to consider this role. It is interested, and will discuss the matter in early April. That is another important step in developing the principle of all-party involvement in any arrangements of this nature. I believe that the proposals allow for cross-party involvement not simply in the passage of legislation but in its implementation if such legislation were to become law.

I believe that this is an important issue, which the House must consider carefully. I understand that all parties are seeking to re-establish important relationships—as well as

establish new ones—with local government during this Parliament. They view those relationships much more as a partnership arrangement. The process began in 1992, with the review of local government initiated by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). That review was undertaken to replace the poll tax and to examine the internal, external and financial arrangements of local government.

I believe that it would be an opportunity missed if the House were to act in its own interests and say, "We shall not consider these issues any further." It would also be a great disappointment to the Local Government Association and to many local councils—including Conservative councils—that are keen to experiment with their internal democratic arrangements. That is why I am bringing forward a unique package of cross-party involvement in legislation. Government have gone the extra mile. 1 strongly urge all hon. Members to do the same.

In the remaining few weeks, we can all become persuaders for experimentation in the way in which local authorities order their business to involve local people more effectively and to renew local democracy. I know that hon. Members from all parts of the House support the right of local councils to reform themselves and experiment with democratic innovation. I urge all those hon. Members to join us as persuaders to take the matter forward in the House, and to make sure that the House does not once again let local government down.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock.