Queen’s Speech
Lord Tope Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Tope
I am not sure whether my noble friend, who started his local government career on the same day as I did, although it did not last nearly so long, was saying “shame” because it has gone on for so long or because it is coming to an end. However, it is too late at night for us to indulge in our familiar repartee.
It is customary at this stage of the debate to say that it has been wide-ranging, and indeed it has been. However, all the subjects covered today—business, the economy, transport, and, dare I say, standing immediately behind the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, even the European Union—are matters that are crucial to local government. Indeed, good local government is crucial to the success of each of them. Long gone are the days when business and local government viewed each other from a distance with mutual suspicion and distrust, at a time when the only contact that most businesses had with their local council was with its regulatory services, and not always very positive contact at that.
Local growth is now top of the agenda for pretty well all local authorities of all sizes throughout the country, and it can be achieved only with a positive and dynamic partnership between the business community and the local authority. When that happens, it is a powerful driver for growth in the local economy. The roles of local enterprise partnerships are crucial to that, although I have to say that I think they are rather a mixed bag and it may be time to review the effectiveness of some of them.
A good transport infrastructure, both locally and nationally, is vital to the local economy everywhere. I say to my noble friend Lord Glasgow that I have waited nearly all my adult life for Crossrail in London. Now, at last, it is happening. So, in respect of HS2, I say to him to hang in there because I am sure that it will happen and that it will reach Glasgow one day.
On Europe, I tread carefully. It is calculated in the European Union generally that something like 70% of EU regulation has to be implemented by local or regional government as appropriate. That is crucial to local government. The say that local government should have in the preparation of that regulation and in getting rid of unnecessary regulation is extremely important and very often overlooked. I am conscious that the Minister who will reply to this debate was, like me, for many years a member of the EU Committee of the Regions, the voice of regional and local government in the European Union. Indeed, I recall that our third speaker today, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, joined me in the first term of the Committee of the Regions.
Turning now to the gracious Speech, I am quite sure that if local government had been asked what it wanted to hear in the Queen’s Speech, it would generally have echoed the words of my noble friend Lord Razzall earlier in this debate. The words it would most have wanted to hear are, “My Government propose no legislation”. The world would really have changed if that had been accompanied by a commitment from the Secretary of State and some of his Ministers to a prolonged period of silence on matters that should properly be the sole concern of local authorities and their electors in a true spirit of localism. But that is fantasy world and it will not happen. The Government will continue to legislate and regulate because that is what they do, and some Ministers inevitably will continue to make unnecessary and often ill-informed comments on matters that should not be their concern, although I exempt from that totally our Minister in this House, who has long since known better than to do so.
My noble friend Lord Shipley has already referred to a number of the Bills of significance to local government. Next week, we will debate two Bills of considerable significance—the Local Audit and Accountability Bill, and the Care Bill, which is not a subject for today’s debate but which has great significance to local government and, particularly, to its residents. We will have ample opportunity to consider them both in detail in the weeks to come, so I will save my comments on both of them until then.
However, of even greater significance to local government will be the spending review to be announced next month. The past three years have been a period of unprecedented challenge and opportunity for local government. The challenge has been implementing 33% budget cuts in only two years. The fact that they were front-loaded in the four-year review was a very unwelcome and unexpected surprise. Some Ministers, although never the noble Baroness who will reply shortly, have sometimes given the impression that that was easy—that all that was needed was to get rid of a few chief executives, cut the pay of the rest, share a few services and the job would be done. At the other extreme, local government representatives gave the impression that the world was going to collapse. Both of these, of course, were considerable exaggerations.
On the whole, local government has managed these major budget cuts very well. However, they have been just that—cuts—and the threat of more cuts in the next spending round is an even greater challenge. They will not be achieved just by reducing back-office costs and a few more salami slices. They will need real transformation in the delivery of local services and the expectations of local residents of what they should receive from their local authorities—a real behavioural change. Behavioural change and transforming services and the way in which they are delivered takes time and needs a climate that encourages creativity and innovation. That is very difficult to achieve when all jobs are under threat and the future is far from clear. It needs good, strong local leadership.
That is the challenge, and it is a big one—but what of the opportunities? Despite the rhetoric of some Ministers to which I have already referred, this Government have made some welcome changes to reverse the trend towards more and more centralisation which has gone on throughout my time in local government. It is not enough and is not fast enough for my liking but it is nevertheless real movement which has sometimes been overshadowed by some of the other measures and some of the other comments.
In his opening address the Minister referred to city deals. These provide real opportunities for the cities concerned and involve real power being devolved to them, together with the requirement, quite rightly, for those cities to take much greater responsibility. So far the two rounds of city deals have been confined to cities. I hope that the Minister can reassure us when she responds that the next round will be targeted largely at rural areas. No doubt it will have a different title but one hopes that it will have the same intentions and the same effect. However, we still need to move faster. We need more devolution of that power and responsibility.
My noble friend Lord Shipley also referred to whole-place community budgeting. I echo what he said. I would also add something that is even more exciting and interesting—namely neighbourhood community budgets as distinct from whole-place community budgets. As my noble friend said, huge savings have been suggested by the implementation of community budgets. Whether those estimates are accurate we will know only if and when we do it. However, even if they are only half-accurate they will achieve huge savings. Even more importantly, that will be done not by reducing services but by targeting those services more effectively on the people who are receiving them and worrying less about who or which organisation is delivering them.
Two Sessions ago we spent a long time on what is now the Localism Act, but that legislation will not implement itself. It gives local authorities the opportunity to do things differently, to innovate and, above all, to devolve power and responsibility to their own local communities. Local government faces a period of continuing challenge but also of great opportunity. My plea to Ministers is to trust local government and to let it get on with it. My plea to my colleagues in local government is to stop moaning and demanding more from central government. Rise to the challenge and make the most of the opportunities.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Tope Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I intend to speak primarily about local government so must start by declaring my interest, as I always do, as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton and a member of its executive, if only for the next five days. On Monday, Sutton Council will use one of the many opportunities afforded by the Localism Act, on which we spent so many happy hours last year, to abolish its executive/scrutiny split and establish a committee system that will reflect local government in the 21st century and not be simply a reversion to the service-based committee systems of the previous century.
The subjects for today’s debate are agriculture, business, the economy, energy, environment, local government and transport. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Bradshaw said that he would cover six of the seven in his speech. I can probably claim that I am going to cover all seven of them because all seven are of real importance to local government, and perhaps even more importantly local government has a vital role to play in the success of each of these issues.
Inevitably, much of today’s debate has concentrated on the economy. The days when business and local government regarded each other from a distance with mutual mistrust and misunderstanding are long gone. Each has learnt from the other, each has come to appreciate the better points of the other, and all over the country there are now strong and successful partnerships delivering real benefits for their local communities.
This is a success story on which we need to build. Our next opportunity to do so will be the Local Government Finance Bill, which will be with us in a few weeks’ time. Like the Localism Bill, it comes to us with some room for improvement, not least in that part of the Bill to which my noble friend Lord Shipley referred so eloquently. The other part of the Bill, dealing with the so-called repatriation of business rates, offers the prospect of local authorities providing incentives for real economic growth and working with their local business community to achieve that but to mutual benefit.
If we are really to build on this success, central government must demonstrate that it really trusts local government. It must show that it recognises that elected councillors have their own democratic mandate and are themselves accountable to the people who have elected them, which has usually been done in a far more direct and audible way than elsewhere in government.
The Localism Act made a good start, but it will not implement itself. It provided opportunities for local government, and local government needs to create the space and time to make the most of these opportunities. That would be a challenge at the best of times, and these are hardly the best of times.
Local government is living through a period of unprecedented change and challenge. Those challenges include: the rapid growth in the number of academies and in pupil numbers, particularly in London; local authorities’ imminent and very welcome acquisition of responsibility for public health; the coming of police and crime commissioners, which will inevitably affect the relationship between police and local authorities, which again has improved dramatically in the past 20 years; the changes to welfare and the cuts in benefit; and the huge demands placed on adult social care, to which many have referred today; and so on. My noble friend Lord Shipley referred to the cumulative impact of legislation on local authorities, which is huge.
All this change and challenge is happening at a time of cuts in council budgets of unprecedented size and speed. Budgets are reducing dramatically, staffing is reducing dramatically, but the demands on both are increasing at least as dramatically. Doing more for less demands innovation and ingenuity. That is not easily achieved when the greatest demand is to maintain morale among staff worried most about their own jobs and futures. If ever there was a time for those in the public sector to be working together to ensure the most efficient use of its budgets, surely this is it, yet progress on community budgeting, known by the previous Government as Total Place, seems to have ground to a halt—indeed, if it ever really started.
It may be understandable that, in times such as these, organisations become even more protective of their own budgets, but that is manifestly not in the public interest. All central government departments should take the lead in this and require their local bodies, where appropriate, to do the same. It is the responsibility of Ministers individually and collectively to make this happen.
As I have said, councils already do a lot to promote economic growth, working in partnership with business, the third sector and other parts of the public sector, but they are ambitious to do more. City deals with the core cities are very welcome, even if distractions such as elections and referendums have made slower progress than some of us would wish, but we need to do more and to do it faster so as to establish “local growth deals” in areas beyond just the core cities.
I referred earlier to some of the challenges facing local government, yet I take heart that, throughout history, it has been the times of greatest challenge that have produced the greatest change and innovation. I remain optimistic.