Community Cohesion

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson]

My hon. Friend and I worked together a lot on this issue with Durham county council. Many of those private landlords are absentee landlords, and a lot of them live abroad, so what do they care about what is happening in the villages of Sedgefield or elsewhere in the country? It is an issue that needs to be tackled nationally and, if need be, internationally, too. I say that because if you are not careful what you will have in these areas is not a big society but a non-society, because the community spirit will be taken out of them.

If we really want a big society to flourish, and if we are “all in this together”, we must look internationally to secure a future for our communities that is protected from unstable international financial systems. We need a big society that is not underpinned by abolishing the future jobs fund or the education maintenance allowance, and by the Prime Minister basically reneging on his pledge to send back to the drawing board any Minister who came up with a proposal that affected the front line.

Finally, I want to leave you with this example of the kind of society—

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. I came along because I was intrigued by the title of the debate, “Community Cohesion”. Obviously I have listened to what you have said. I believe that our Localism Bill very much embeds all the charities and all the volunteers within what we are trying to do, whether it is HealthWatch, the Work programme, community groups or community centres. The big society is everything that you are talking about, just seen from a different viewpoint, and I have people coming to me locally and saying, “Thank goodness we’ve been liberated to go forth and develop what we want, rather than having a top-down state approach.” So I hope that you welcome this way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I came to listen to the debate and perhaps make an intervention, but I thought that what I had to say might go on too long and you might ask me to sit down, Mrs Main. Therefore I thought I might say something near the end of the debate if there were time.

When I saw the title, “Community Cohesion”, I thought, “What an admirable debate.” Is that not what everyone, on both sides of the House, is looking at in order to see how we can work in our communities? Is that not what MPs do? We try to figure out the solutions to problems and work together. We have to work within the set budget to take that forward, but, at the same time, I have found in my local community a desire to explore the capabilities of individuals and communities, and I have felt a bubbling up from the ground for people to take control of what they are doing.

Big society may be two small words that mean a huge amount to different people, but when the idea was introduced, the people of Wirral West grasped it. When shops closed on the high street, they came together and asked, “What can we do?” They did not want to see that in their little villages and towns, of which they are very proud. Art shops and places for children and families may have opened, but when people saw council-owned pieces of land, such as allotment areas, they wanted to expand on that and have some more, so that their sons could go there with their dads—and mums with their daughters—to understand what a root vegetable is and what fruit and vegetables are, rather than buy them from a supermarket. All those things were bubbling and building up.

There were also asset transfers. The local community centre was not doing so well, so people living in the area thought, “We know what’s best,” and they have taken it on board and are working together. Even bigger schemes started to bubble up, too. They asked whether first-time buyers could afford local housing and thought about what they were going to do about social housing. They are now looking to develop a plot of land that will be affordable for first-time buyers, and an eco-environment, which we would desperately like in our area.

We are all looking for community cohesion, which is why, when I read an article in The Observer last week which cited ideas on the Labour big society, based on local loyalties, family and common good, I thought that that was not so far removed from the Conservative big society. My example of the allotment is about the family, and my example of the community centre is about the common good for the local area, which is also the case with affordable housing.

The big society must be explored by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and we have to work within the set budget. That is why I welcome the Conservative party’s proposals for a £50 million community first fund and a £10 million voluntary match fund, as well as the piloting of the national citizen service and the £100 million transition fund. All those things must come together.

I am delighted to hear about community cohesion, which is something that we are all trying to achieve, and I will be delighted to hear from the Minister not just about what else we are going to do that will work in places such as Wirral West, but about what would be an enabler in places such as Sedgefield, which may have very different needs.

Direct Democracy Initiatives

Esther McVey Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s clarification.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for this debate. Engagement with the public is vital, particularly now. We need to know that we can hold our elected representatives to account. In respect of the recall mechanism and direct democracy, is there not a need for greater sanctions within the establishment as a whole so that the public can see what goes on in the House and in their councils, and whether they are being correctly dealt with internally, as well as externally?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. I referred to the standards regime and one reason why we will sweep that away is that we do not believe that it works adequately. The Secretary of State said that if councillors are guilty of illegality, sanctions and a system exist to deal with that. If they are guilty of political foolishness, the ultimate sanction is that electors can throw them out. That is why we will change the conduct regime, and we are considering how to do so. I am not sure what my hon. Friend is proposing on specifics, but that is why we will change the system.

In the few minutes remaining, I want to touch on the local referendum issue, which is a little closer to what my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park was talking about. We want to give citizens much more say in terms of local referendums than at the moment. We have made a commitment to give local residents the power to trigger local referendums on local issues. That was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery). The issue must be local and the local authority must be able to do something about it.

We intend to include the necessary legal provisions as part of the Decentralism and Localism Bill, which was announced in the Queen’s Speech. That work will be taken forward by the Minister with responsibility for decentralisation. The measures will set out the nature of local referendums and whether and in what circumstances they will be binding.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park touched on the extent to which authorities will be bound by the decision. This is a significant step forward. At the moment, local authorities can have referendums, but they, not local people, decide whether to have them. Clearly, my hon. Friend will engage in that debate and consider the Government’s proposals when they are published later this autumn.

Something else that we will do—this was set out in the coalition programme for government, and my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton touched on it—is to ensure that any petition that secures 100,000 signatures will be eligible for debate in Parliament. The petition with the most signatures will enable members of the public to table a Bill that will be debated and voted on in the House.

I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said about how we should deal with the details of that proposal to ensure—this will be music to the ears of the Deputy Prime Minister—that measures that are brought forward are liberal rather than illiberal. We will announce details of that proposal in due course; they are currently being worked on. I will share the views of my hon. Friend with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House. We will think about them as we develop our proposals. That is a positive step forward.

My hon. Friend knows that the coalition Government’s programme includes a commitment for open primaries. I heard what he said about how he would like them to operate, and I have taken careful note of that. I will pass on to the Deputy Prime Minister his thoughts about how the debate on what is in the freedom or great repeal bill could be more liberal than the way in which the Government are undertaking it.

My final point picks up on the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley about local government and its scope. I hope that he will be pleased that, to promote devolution of power and greater financial autonomy, we have made a commitment to have a review of local government finance. That is a brave undertaking, given the history of local government finance reviews, but we want to do it because it is clear that unless local authorities are given more control over revenue and money, we cannot shift more power in that direction.

The Government have said that they will have a serious and wide-ranging examination of local government finance and its powers, I hope that my hon. Friend will welcome that. It is an important measure to give local authorities more power and responsibility, and will make the ability to have referendums and to engage local people in what local authorities do more meaningful. It is meaningless to have local referendums if the local authority cannot do much in response.

The coalition Government’s package of political and constitutional measures that come under the heading of direct democracy, even if they do not go as far as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park wants, are a step forward in reconnecting this House and this Parliament with the country and getting the public to feel that they have more ownership of how we do politics.