Localism Bill

Lord Wade of Chorlton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I think that the slight difficulty arose because the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, got up to speak before I had a chance to get in. I apologise for not speaking before he wound up on his amendment.

I come with no practical hands-on experience in local government but I want to reinforce the points that my noble friend is trying to make. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that there was widespread frustration, as indeed there is, from parish level up to district level and beyond. I hope that the Bill will in some way resolve some of the difficulties that my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding spoke about. We have a great opportunity to try to simplify things and ensure that local communities can act in a manner that is in their own best interests. If we are promoting much more involvement of local communities through the big society, it seems a shame if the Bill is not going to ease some of the situations that different tiers currently find themselves in. I hope that my noble friend will have a chance to reflect on this. If the wording is not right—often it is not exactly what the Government of the day wish—it is the thrust of the amendment that is important. It is trying to ensure that local authorities and local tiers take on that responsibility and do so in the proper, accepted manner. It is also trying to ensure that, where there are disagreements, there should be discussions between the tiers, whichever tiers they happen to be. I commend my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Wade of Chorlton]

My Lords, listening to this discussion, I am prompted to remind the House that in 1994 the then Conservative Government established an ad hoc Select Committee of the House of Lords to reveal the relationship between central and local government. I was privileged to be a member of that committee. We took a great deal of evidence at the time from local authorities, government officials and Ministers to review whether the top-down control of local government was in everyone’s interests. The recommendations that we came up with looked closely at the establishment of the cabinet system and the establishment of mayors, and we looked at how local government should not necessarily be thought of, as it was then by central government, to be all the same.

We recommended in our report—it is a long time since I have looked at it—that we should see local government evolving as it was decided by the local community rather than by the centre. I remember that we were struck, when we took evidence from the principal secretaries of the departments, by the fact that they were anxious to see uniformity within local government and not to allow local people to establish different ways of governing as it suited them—indeed, they were anxious to prevent that. That applied to planning, development and local government’s relationship with all sorts of services.

When I first saw the detail of the Localism Bill, I thought that it was another step forward in accepting the recommendations that we had made and that it gave an opportunity to local government to be different and respond to what local people needed rather than to what central government needed. However, I am rather concerned, from the way that this argument is going, that the views expressed in the Bill are not going to provide the freedom that we recommended way back in 1994. Many of those recommendations have now been accepted by central government, but I feel that this might be a step backwards rather than forwards.

[Baroness Hanham]

I think that I replied earlier because I had not realised that other people were going to take part in this. I hear what is being said by my noble friends Lord True, Lord Howard, Lord Jenkin and now Lord Wade. When we look at the measures in the Bill, I think that most of them will turn out to be liberating for local government. It gives them a general power of competence and greater flexibility in what they can do. On some of the areas that we are legislating about now, we think that it is appropriate that there should be some regulations about how things should be done.

I worry a bit about my noble friend Lord True’s amendment. It asks the Secretary of State to prescribe a route along which the noble Lord and others have been telling us that we should not be going on any other matter, so it does not quite follow. I think that we have discussed across the Chamber before that there are not always good relations between the three tiers of government, particularly if you start with a parish council, but I am not sure that that poor relationship is something that this Government should try to prescribe a route through.

There are many changes taking place in the way in which local government is run. Many new arrangements are having to be made, as I said earlier, about management, about sharing chief executives across councils and districts and about sharing services, all of which ought to make it much easier for local government to avoid the elephant traps that my noble friend is talking about. In the light of the concern that there is, I will reflect on this issue before the next stage. I do not think that I would hold my breath that we will be able to accept my noble friend’s amendments, but I certainly hear the sentiments that have been expressed in the House today.