HL Deb 09 March 1970 vol 308 cc602-15

2.58 p.m.

Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Tuesday last by Lord Kennet (on behalf of Lord Shackleton), That this House takes note of the White Paper, Reform of Local Government in England (Cmnd. 4276).

LORD ILFORD

My Lords, I suppose I should do as other noble Lords have done and first disclose the interest I have in this matter. I have never been certain how far our practice about disclosing interests extends to interests that are not financial, but it is, I think, usual for noble Lords to disclose, and I must therefore confess that I have been for five years President of the Association of Municipal Corporations, a Vice-President for very many years and that I am still a Vice-President. Subject to those qualifications I propose to say no more about it.

This While Paper, and the Report of the Royal Commission upon which this White Paper is founded and which we are invited to note this afternoon, is really the latest phase in the controversy which has raged around local government for nearly a quarter of a century. Indeed one could date the beginning of the controversy from Mr. Neville Chamberlain's Act of 1929, the end of the old Poor Law and the winding up of the guardians system. It is something like half a century since this controversy really began.

After the war, in 1945, the Government of the day set up a Boundary Commission of which my noble friend Lord Silsoe was the Chairman. They did their work and they presented a Report. The Government of the day considered that the Commission's Report was outside their terms of reference, and accordingly it was packed up and put away and nothing more was heard or seen of it.

Then, in 1958, came the second Boundary Commission, the Chairman of which was Sir Henry Hancock. They set to work in a meticulous and careful fashion. Certainly they were not very rapid in the conclusions they came to, but they did their work well, and I have no doubt that, if they had been allowed to live, a satisfactory solution would have been found to the troubles of the local authorities. But that did not happen. There were rumours that the Commission was to be wound up. The Minister declared that he was going to scotch these rumours; but within a few months he had changed his mind, and the Commission was brought to an end. Now we have the Royal Commission over which my noble friend Lord Redcliffe-Maud has presided with such immense skill and industry. And whatever we may think of his conclusions, we shall all be most grateful to him. As I say, for something like a quarter of a century local authorities have lived in this atmosphere of uncertainty, criticism and un-sought advice. Whatever the result of our consideration of this White Paper and of the Bill which will come, that state of affairs ought at least to be brought to an end as soon as possible. I hope that that, at any rate, will be one of the results of the controversy which is going to rage around this White Paper.

I turn now to the White Paper itself. Before I begin to discuss the details of the White Paper I think it astonishing that we should be asked to consider this White Paper without being told what the financial resources of these proposed new authorities are likely to be, or indeed before we are told anything about the financial and economic position which will arise under the proposed new set-up. We shall not know what will be the finan- cial effect of these proposals, or what the financial position of these all-purpose authorities is likely to be, until we know a great deal more than we know to-day about the financing of this scheme. I know that there is to be a Green Paper. But we ought to have had this Green Paper with this White Paper. It is essential that we should consider the financial aspects of this matter before we make our conclusions. Unfortunately, that has not been done. I want to ask the Minister whether any estimate is being made of the financial burden that is likely to fall upon these new authorities by reason of the change to the all-purpose authority. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us an assurance which, when we come to debate the Green Paper, will enable us to consider the matters that we ought to be considering to-day.

To come to the White Paper itself, the overriding question of principle to which the White Paper and the Report of the Royal Commission give rise can be shortly stated. Are we here to end the organisation of local government upon what is called the "two-tier system", as it exists at present, and as it has existed in local government since the year 1894? The two-tier system has been a remarkable piece of administration. It was originally a device to enable expensive services to be provided in areas where the resources of the local authority were not sufficient to pay for them. It spread responsibility over a much wider area, and for more than half a century it has worked well and has made possible the extension into areas which are not well off of services which are really beyond their means. The question is: are we going on with that system, or has the time come to change it and to introduce something else?

The alternative would be to have what is called the "all-purpose authority". As the county boroughs are responsible to-day, so the all-purpose authority is responsible for every local government service, both financially (except in so far as the burden may be eased by grants) and administratively; and in the county boroughs it has been found to work well. Most people with experience of local government administration point to the county boroughs as a more expeditious and readily understood system than the two-tier system. The real question of principle at the basis of this controversy is whether we are to depart from the existing two-tier system, and in its place adopt a system of all-purpose authorities.

The Royal Commission have come down on the side of the all-purpose authority. They have, I think boldly, set to work to carve up this country into areas which would be suitable as areas of all-purpose authorities and, with one or two exceptions on which I shall say something in a moment, it is proposed to extend the all-purpose authority system to the whole of this country. In Scotland and Wales it has already been decided to adhere to the two-tier system. But in regard to England it is proposed that this momentous change should be carried out.

The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, in his speech on Tuesday last, gave a most fascinating account of the menial processes by which the Royal Commission came to their conclusions. They started by all being in favour of the two-tier system, and then, as they listened to the evidence about the administration of various services, it became clear to them that the all-purpose system was easier administratively, more effective and less productive of delay and frustration than the two-tier system. Accordingly they decided in favour of the all-purpose system. The question your Lordships will have to decide one day is whether that decision can be supported, and whether we should change from the two-tier system which we now have to the all-purpose system. I am bound to say that I think the Royal Commission, in recommending the all-purpose system, are recommending a view of local government administration which is widely held by those who are highly experienced in local government work. Naturally, as a spokesman for the municipal boroughs, I like the all-purpose authority. Undoubtedly, from an administrative point of view it is an easier and more satisfactory system of administration.

The Royal Commission have retained the two-tier system in the big conurbations of Manchester and South-East Lancashire, of Merseyside, and of the West Midland Area around Birmingham. They propose to retain the two-tier system there because they considered that the metropolitan area authority was too big to give a satisfactory service and that it was essential that what are called the "environmental services" should be in the hands of a larger authority and the personal services should be in the hands of the smaller authorities. They then proposed that the metropolitan areas themselves should be divided into district areas, with separate district councils— indeed, the form of government they recommend is very similar to the form of government which was adopted in Greater London.

I should like to say first of all about the district councils within the metropolitan areas that, in my view, they are not necessary. They are an added complication and will contribute little to the efficiency of the administration of the services. I think that the Royal Commission were unduly apprehensive about the size of some of the areas. They were always concerned to make sure that the areas were not too large. I think it is more likely that the areas will prove to be too small. I feel doubtful whether an authority with a population of only a quarter-of-a-million will be able to support all the local government services for which they will be responsible as an all-purpose borough. I suggest that something like half-a-million would not be too high a figure.

Is it necessary that the personal services should be administered by a smaller authority? After all, the old London County Council administered all these personal services. They administered them with a very high measure of efficiency, and the size of the area over which the service was administered made very little difficulty and very little difference to what was done. I should have thought that the apprehension that the Royal Commission appear to have felt about the size of the metropolitan areas is without justification and we ought to adopt a higher figure altogether.

The Royal Commission and the White Paper, in the apprehensive fear that the new authorities seemed to be too large, introduced what seemed to be an astonishing device: they proposed to set up round the new unitary authorities (as they are called in the Royal Commission's Report) district councils. These district councils were to have no executive functions at all, except that the Royal Commission recommended that they should be allowed to join in the provision of certain local and relatively unimportant services. Apart from that, their function was not an administrative function at all; it was a purely critical function. They are there, as the Royal Commission point out, to bridge the gap between the members of the unitary authorities, the area authorities or all-purpose authorities, and the local populations they serve.

I am quite sure that that is an arrangement which would not work satisfactorily. I do not like setting up bodies which have no administrative responsibility at all. They are simply critics, and. as critics, they will be in the way of the unitary authority without adding very much to its influence over the local population. I very much hope that the Government will take the view I am putting to them now and refrain from setting up these local councils on the heels of the all-purpose authority. The Government have gone a step beyond that. Although they advise that the local councils should be entitled to join in the carrying out of works of local amenity, and so forth, as the Royal Commission recommended they should, they recommend that the councils should be set up and that they should have this co-operative function with the unitary authorities.

In addition to the councils, they pro-pose that there should be set up district committees to whom may be designated some of the powers of the unitary authorities. In local government we have had a good deal of experience in recent years of district committees; they are a very common instrument in most counties' administration. They are not a satisfactory instrument. They are not satisfactory either to those members of the unitary authority who are members of them, or to the members who are appointed by the local councils. They are bodies in which there is a great sense of frustration. They have to carry out a policy which is not their own, and often a policy in which they are not particularly interested. I hope the Government will not persist in this proposal for district committees. My experience of divisional committees as they exist at present, in planning, in education to some extent, in transportation—and indeed, I think all the experience of local government—is that they really do not fulfil the purpose which those who set them up had in mind.

In conclusion, I should like to say a few words about the economic planning councils. The economic planning councils have done most useful and valuable work, but they are not part of local government; they are agencies of the central Government and have no real link with the local authority at all. The history of all these advisory committees is that as they get older they get more ambitious. I am afraid that has happened in the economic planning councils, and proposals are being put forward for elected members. I think it is no disparagement of the principle of democracy to say that election is quite out of place in the case of these economic planning councils. The councils are formed for the purpose of giving certain advice, not to the local authority but to the central Government, and there is no guarantee that on an elected body like the county council, or an elected body like the new provincial councils, if they are set up, the persons who are qualified to give the advice which the Minister desires to have will necessarily be elected, or will necessarily be members of the provincial council.

I hope that the Minister will accept the position which he accepted a short time ago: that these bodies are agencies of the central authority and are not part of the local authority. I know that was the Minister's view a few months ago, and I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, if he will tell us whether it is still the Minister's view, or whether, when the proposals for the provincial areas are formed, there will be some proposals for integrating these economic planning councils with the top tier of the local authorities. I am quite sure that if we do that, the economic planning councils will lose much of the authority and much of the ability which they possess to-day. It does not by any means follow that persons who are qualified to give the advice the Minister wants will be willing to stand for the provincial authority, and unless they do stand the Minister will not get the advice which the Council is set up to furnish him with.

If I am not repeating myself, may I say that I hope that this White Paper and the Report of the Royal Commission will mark the end of this period of uncertainty for local government, and that the local authorities may be able to go forward into the future working a system which they and the public accept and which frees them from the criticism and uncertainty in which they have worked for so many years. Indeed, it surprises me sometimes that men and women can be found to serve local councils either as elected persons or as officials, in the atmosphere in which the local authorities have had to do their work. I hope that, whatever sacrifices we may have to make and whatever steps we may have to take, which are not always entirely in accord with our own wishes, your Lordships will ensure that local authorities may go forward into the future properly reinforced with an accepted constitution.

3.21 p.m.

LORD TANGLEY

My Lords, when the present pattern of local government was formed, housing outside the administrative County of London was not a local government function; education was not a local government function; the first town planning Act had not been passed, and the modern conception of town and country planning had never been dreamed of. One can lengthen almost ad infinitum the list of new functions which have been reposed in local authorities since the present pattern was created. Even where one had the rudiments of local government functions in those days, they have developed to such an extent that they are hardly recognisable to-day. I wonder what a local government member or a local government officer of 1906 would think of the Seebohm Report on the personal social services. I do not think he would recognise the world which was being inquired into. So, my Lords, we have reached a stage where it is not merely undesirable that the present pattern should continue; we have reached a stage where existing local government functions cannot be efficiently dealt with by a local authority of the size and area of many of the local authorities to-day.

But that is not all. The face of England has changed in those years. Then, industry was still largely anchored to the coalfields as its source of fuel, and the railways brought in, as they always had done, the raw materials from the ports to the factories and took the products of the factories to the ports and the markets. To-day that has utterly changed. Electricity, the main source of power, costs pretty much the same in every part of the country, and every part of the country is accessible by road, so that to-day it is the proximity of labour forces and the proximity of markets which dictate the location of industry. That is the reason for what is quite wrongly termed the drift from the North to the South-East. There has been no drift from the North. It is simply that the South-East and the Midlands have developed much more rapidly than the North, and that in its turn has greatly widened the geographical scope of the area over which local government powers and responsibilities, such as planning, have to be exercised.

I have noticed in the course of this debate that there is no real question as to whether local government must be reformed. The only question I know of is: How? I believe that everybody— and among "everybody" may I include my colleagues and myself who studied London government for so long—is agreed on certain principles, and the first principle I think is this: that, where possible, local authorities should be responsible for all local government services. Where they are split between authorities there is constant danger of overlap or gaps or duplication. As an example, I remember one instance of a disabled person who needed housing and a wheel-chair. The local authority looked after the housing, and the chair came under the jurisdiction of the county, as welfare. But there was no machinery whatever for ascertaining that the door of the house was wide enough to admit the wheel-chair, and ad hoc machinery had to be set up to deal with that problem. That is a tiny instance, but there are many of them, of the necessity of combining all services in one authority when one can.

The second principle that I think we are all agreed upon is this: that a local authority should not be too large so that a sense of identity is lost. When I say "too large", I mean partly in terms of population and partly in terms of geographical extent, because the two are related to one another. There may be one area where it is relatively easy to find half a million people gathered together and capable of supporting the full range of local government services. In another part one may have to bring in many miles of town and country in order to collect your quarter-of-a-million, which is the minimum suggested; and there, I think, geography may be just as important in losing a sense of identity as actual numbers. Then the third principle is this: that where there must be a very large authority a two-tier system is inevitable. When one gets to the million mark or beyond, then the authority is too big. One cannot have a sense of identity. The authority is remote, and one must have a second tier nearer to the people whose services one is providing.

The fourth principle, which is perhaps the most important of all, is that when one has a two-tier system it is essential to have a clear-cut distinction, a clear-cut allocation of responsibility between the two tiers. We must have no ideas of delegation of one to the other. It has been tried and it can be done, but it takes a legion of angels and archangels to make delegation work in a two-tier system. And legions of archangels, or even angels (I speak in the present of the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Guildford) are in very short supply— at any rate, in this world of time and space. So I think that those principles are pretty clear and generally accepted. It is when we come to the application of them that the difficulties arise and there is room for division of opinion.

Of course, for a unitary authority we must have fixed an upper and a lower limit of population. There the difficulty is that different levels of population are required for different kinds of services. This is absolutely irreconcilable in principle and in logic. All one can do is to have a compromise and, in my humble judgment, the Royal Commission and the White Paper have made a very sensible compromise in choosing for their unitary authorities a lower limit of 250,000 and an upper limit of one million. Contrary to the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, I would incline to the lower figure rather than to the higher one, wherever one can. I say "wherever one can" because one cannot always do it. But I am suspicious of Whitehall. They keep on "upping the ante". When I started in London I was told that 100,000 was the limit for administrative efficiency; by the time we had finished our work I was told it was 200,000; now it has gone up to a quarter of a million. Of course, it is easy for Whitehall to say that sort of thing, because it is so convenient to have to deal with as few authorities as possible. So I approach the matter with that slight air of scepticism; and, for myself, I should think that, on the whole, without being rigid, it is best to tend to the lower rather than to the higher limits.

Another point I would make in the application of these principles is that we must not let education rule the roost. I hope your Lordships will not misunderstand me, but I have got into the habit of regarding education as the rogue elephant of local government administration, for this reason. We have a State education policy, but we have no State schools except borstals and reformatories (to give them their old name), and, having studied this matter very thoroughly in London—and I think the lessons we learned there are of general application— I am certain that you cannot devise a perfect fit for education in any form of local authority authorisation or any form of local authority organisation.

That means that any way in which you fit education into any local authority system is bound to be subject to criticism. In London, my Royal Commission suggested a modified two-tier system, which was rejected, and I think rightly rejected, by the Government. Then the Government put forward the suggestion that the lower-tier authorities should be the education authorities. That was rejected in Inner London, at any rate, in favour of the Inner London Authority, so as to maintain continuity between the original London School Board, which was inherited by the London County Council, and then the Inner London Education Authority. I do not quite know how best to fit education into the local authority world—I think you can criticise any way of doing it—but I am inclined to think that in the White Paper the Government have got it about as near right as one can expect to get it.

There is just one general point more that I want to make on the application of these principles, and that is this: how to reconcile size, both geographical and in terms of population, with the sense of identity. In the metropolitan areas it is proposed to deal with that by a two-tier system, and I think rightly so, inevitably so. In many of the areas it is proposed to deal with it by a unitary system, and I think rightly so. But I am wondering whether it is necessary to be quite so rigid in the distinction drawn between the unitary system and the metropolitan system; whether there are not a few borderline cases where one could not have with advantage a two-tier system outside these metropolitan areas. I think this applies particularly where two sets of circumstances exist: one is the difficulty of collecting a sufficient population without a great geographical spread, and the other is where historical roots are very strong.

In many areas historical roots are not strong. I know that if one is studying local government, as many of your Lordships have done, one finds that the evidence of every local authority goes back to at least Saxon times, and it comes as a bit of a shock to find that this noble borough is the result of a forced marriage of two or three rural or urban districts about 25 years ago. But there are many areas which are older in their governmental systems and in their governmental habits than central Government itself. One can think of places like Norwich, Bristol, the County Palatine of Lancaster (the case for which was so movingly put before us when this debate was first started) and various other parts of the country where the historical roots are very real; where were bred the people who have made government in this country; communities where they learned the art of living together and the art of self-government, which is the same thing, and from which they came and, with that knowledge behind them, established the procedures which made Parliament, in both its Houses, an effective body. Where one can avoid cutting these historical roots, where one can avoid too great a geographical spread, I think it would be worth while to consider whether one must be rigid and say that one is not to have a two-tier system except in the metropolitan areas. I believe it is possible, my Lords, to offer up too much on the altar of administrative convenience.

I want to mention only two other points. The first is this question of the provincial councils. Now I have been in two minds about the Government's decision to postpone this question. If it is genuinely a question of postponement and not a postponement to the Greek Kalends, then I believe it is a wise decision. I believe that these councils are absolutely necessary and that the necessity for them will certainly appear as time goes on. But I have been frightened lest they should be regarded as a substitute for some regionalisation of central Government. I believe it is just as important to draw as clear a line of distinction between the functions of central Government and the functions of local government as it is to draw a line between the functions of an upper and a lower tier body of local authorities.

Now if we had before us proposals for some form of regionalisation of central Government, so that central Government held out its hand which could be grasped by the hand of local government stretched out through the provincial councils, I should be happy; but merely to stretch out a hand from the local authority world into a vacuum is a dangerous thing, because it could be mistaken for the real thing, and it might be grasped by those hybrid creatures, the regional development councils, which are neither one thing nor the other nor something of both. I would certainly beg the Government to give very serious consideration to the necessity, if one has a provincial council, to have alongside it some appropriate regionalised organ of the central Government with which it could work. Otherwise, there must be a growing amount of confusion and difficulty.

My last point is with regard to the provincial councils. Here, I am afraid, I part company with the noble Lord, Lord Ilford. I believe that these councils have a useful part to play. I ask the Government just one question about this: am I right in thinking that a rural district council is automatically disqualified from being one of these local councils? I gather that a borough or a county borough or an urban district might be, or a parish or a group of parishes; but I cannot see anything in the Report or the White Paper which suggests that a rural district council of itself could be a local council—and, if not, I wonder why not. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and I have the felicity to live within the confines of an exceedingly effective rural district council. It has been doing marvellous work in preserving an area of exceptional natural beauty; an area which is particularly vulnerable because it is so near to London. The new unitary authority will inevitably fall into the hands of the "townees" and the "suburbanites", the way it is drawn on the map, and I should feel much more happy being protected by my old friends the rural council than by a newly jumped-up body of two or three parish councils joined together. I would wonder why it is—if I am right in thinking so—that rural councils are apparently disqualified from being local councils.

My Lords, I have no more to say except this. It is perhaps a relief to your Lordships to hear one who has not had to declare any interest in this matter. It gives me great pleasure to add to what has been said in praise of the work of the Royal Commission. I have been through it myself in London; and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, and his colleagues on the fact that they did not have to deal with the L.C.C. But indeed they have done noble work, for which we are all very grateful. I should like to finish by thanking Her Majesty's Government for giving us the opportunity to discuss this matter, which I think of great importance, while policy is still to some extent at a fairly malleable stage.