Localism Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Baroness Bray of Coln

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). He and I had some very interesting years together on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the previous Parliament. Let me say to him in a friendly way that memory loss can be longer than 13 years and that compulsory competitive tendering was hardly the most decentralising policy that any Government have brought in.

By instinct and philosophy I am a localist, so it gives me no great pleasure to say to the Secretary of State that the Bill is a missed opportunity. I simply do not see in the proposals a coherent philosophy telling us what localism is all about. The Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into localism, and I do not want to pre-empt or prejudge its findings, but one thing that a number of witnesses have regularly asked is whether local authorities are at the heart of localism or whether they are bypassed by the Secretary of State going directly to communities and ignoring elected representatives. The answer is that the Government do not really know because there is a mixture of proposals that treat localism and local authorities in a totally different way.

The Secretary of State was dismissive when he was challenged about the number of order-making powers, of which there are 140, but it is no answer to say that there were more in previous legislation. If this is genuinely a decentralising measure, why is it necessary to have all those order-making powers and so many regulations about how local authorities should exercise scrutiny? There might be elements of genuinely good policy in neighbourhood planning, the community right to challenge and in dealing with community assets, but why is there so much prescription from the Secretary of State and Ministers about how local authorities may use their new powers? Why can we not allow local authorities to get on with the policy within a general broad framework? I am disappointed that we have not taken further local authority involvement in the remits of the Departments of Health and Work and Pensions—those are genuine missed opportunities.

I welcome some aspects of the Bill, such as the power of general competence, although I wish we had set it more clearly in a new constitutional settlement for local government—we will come back to that in due course. I am concerned about the Secretary of State’s power to revoke any council’s ability to do anything it wants to do under the power. I am pleased about the reforms to the housing revenue account, but concerns have been expressed that local authorities will not be able to keep all their right-to-buy receipts and that extra borrowing controls beyond prudential borrowing controls will be imposed on them. I do not think those measures are particularly localist or decentralising.

I welcome the transfer of powers from the Infrastructure Planning Commission so that it will be elected politicians who eventually sign off decisions on major infrastructure projects. I argued for that when I was on the Government Benches in a previous Parliament. I am pleased that local authorities will be able to return to local committee systems if that is what they want, but why can a local authority with a committee system not have the same devolved powers as an elected mayor? Why does the devolution of those powers depend on which system of governance the local authority chooses? That is not a particularly localist measure.

[Angie Bray]

Does the hon. Gentleman also welcome the abolition of the Standards Board for England? Under that dreadful, anti-democratic device, which was brought in by the previous Labour Government, all sorts of decent, hard-working local councillors were always under the threat of petty allegations being made, often for partisan reasons, undermining local authorities.

[Mr Betts]

There was a problem with the initial design of the board, but it was subsequently reformed and now works an awful lot better. My concern is that if a local authority chooses not to have one, there will be nothing between the action of pulling a local councillor up and questioning their actions in some way and taking criminal action against them for failing to deal properly with an issue in relation to which they have a registered interest. There could be a real problem there with a void in the system.

I have other real concerns. The Government are embarking on a fundamental change to the planning system in this country, which Government Members cheered because that is what they believe in. With regard to the abolition of the regional spatial strategy and the development of neighbourhood plans, my concern is that change of this kind brings uncertainty and, to an extent, a lack of clarity, and that it could bring delays and, potentially, unintended consequences.

What will happen ultimately? The Government say that their policy is to build more homes than we were before the recession. They have obligations on renewable energy and ensuring that wind farms are developed to meet them, but what will happen if the sum total of all those local decisions is that fewer homes are built and not enough wind turbines are built to meet our renewables obligations? What is their fall-back position? Is it at that point that the Secretary of State will intervene, or is it that they will accept the sum total of local will across the country and fall down on their national house-building targets and their renewables obligations? What is the Government’s position? I have not heard a coherent explanation of it.