Localism Bill

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Hazel Blears

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Not for a moment would I seek to miss out something that I believe has been of great assistance in empowering local communities. Success has many parents and the Bill contains some things that I support, but I want to make one central point this evening: I believe that there is a deep schism at the heart of the Government between those people who genuinely believe in this agenda and want to make the most of the skills and talents of local people, and those who see it as a convenient step in an intense political strategy to shrink the state, slash costs and provide respectability for the transfer of assets from the public sector, possibly into the private sector, using the guise of social enterprise as a respectable halfway house.

I have great concerns about that. The Secretary of State for Health is on the record as saying that what he regards as social enterprise is anything other than the public sector. That is a very wide definition, and I say to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whom I am pleased to see in his place, that I would welcome the Minister giving a cast-iron commitment in his summing up. I would like the Minister to confirm that, under the expressions of interest part of the Bill, the Secretary of State will not be using his order-making powers to change the framework to allow commercial organisations simply to bid to run services and take over assets, and that there will be a genuine commitment to real social enterprise, with asset locks, stewardship and community ownership at its heart. It is vital that we get that on the record.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that an additional element in a community takeover of assets is its having the agency to do so and the resources even to get near those assets in the first place? Does she think that the Bill fulfils the promise of communities taking over assets in a way that that might be possible, bearing in mind the finances involved?

[Hazel Blears]

Not by any stretch of the imagination could this Bill genuinely be said to be about empowerment. If people are to be given rights, they need the means to take up those rights. The Bill does not contain the back-up, support, funding and guidance necessary genuinely to give people the sense that they can take on these services.