Localism Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I was not referring to parish plans. I have met representatives of parish and town councils, and one of the questions that they have raised—fairly, in my view—is how parish plans might work in relation to neighbourhood development plans, and which would take priority. I am sure that we will examine such issues in Committee in order to ensure that we do not end up with over-duplication.

I know that parish and town councillors do a fantastic job. My constituency contains many parish and town councils. However, we need to ensure through neighbourhood plans that it is not possible for a few people who are not elected representatives to create a forum in which they can impose their will on others in various ways because of their clout and their finances. We need to ensure that the plans allow communities to be represented fairly. We also need to consider the implications for councils in terms of the cost and the additional responsibilities that will be expected of planning officers and others who service the neighbourhood plans. It is not that the idea is necessarily wrong, but we shall need to establish how it will work in practice, and whether it actually amounts to much. Is it all that meets the eye? That is what people want to know. They do not want to be led up the hill only to be marched down it again. That is not the sort of politics in which we should engage.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady think it better for planning decisions to be made by unaccountable regional quangos or by local people?

[Caroline Flint]

I do not think that the answer should be more powers for the Secretary of State, for a start.

What I have said also applies to the community right to challenge. We are in favour of empowering front-line staff. In many instances, not just in local government but in the health service and elsewhere, our staff should be at the forefront in coming up with ways of improving services. Those on the front line often have better answers than some managers. Many councils of all political persuasions already engage community organisations and voluntary groups in the delivery of local services. That is not new, and we think that it should be encouraged. However, those organisations need support. Given that their resources are being cut throughout the country, and given that there is no provision other than the right to be considered, we remain to be convinced that this part of the Bill will mean much in practice.

The Secretary of State tells us that this Bill is the centrepiece of what the Government are trying to do to shake up the balance of power in the country fundamentally, but perhaps what is most striking about it is what it fails to deal with. Across every community in the country people often feel that they do not have enough of a say about what happens in their local area, whether in local bus services, community policing, the district hospital, or in the jobcentre’s tackling unemployment. This Bill says nothing about that; it offers nothing to remedy that. Giving elected local representatives the power to summon people before their committees much as we do in the Committees of this House would be one simple, practical thing to give local communities a real say in the services that they use, but the Bill fails to do that.

In turning to the proposals—[Interruption.] Well, I understand from reading the Bill that scrutiny committees can summon an officer of the council, but they can merely invite someone from another organisation. There are no summoning powers over representatives of the utilities, for example, or over the district commander. That is what we are talking about: proper accountability, and proper powers for scrutiny committees.

On the Bill’s proposals on housing, it is again difficult not to be disappointed. For some homeless households, a home in the private rented sector may be a better option than social housing if that avoids long waits in temporary accommodation and provides greater flexibility of location than social housing, but that should be a choice for the household involved, so we will not support a proposal if it allows the most vulnerable members of our communities to be forced into unsuitable accommodation.

What else is missing from the Bill? There is a complete absence of reforms to the private rented sector—the Bill does not even touch on the subject—and we remain to be convinced that there is sufficient quantity of decent homes in the private rented sector to house those in need.

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[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

In my maiden speech last May I spoke about the important principle that where services are delivered mainly locally, they should be decided mainly locally, so I strongly welcome the Bill. I was a councillor for 13 years before coming to this place, the last seven of which I was leader of West Sussex county council, so I have seen at first hand the top-down, centralised control from Whitehall that the Labour party exerted. It was determined to treat every part of the country the same—from the City of Westminster to the county of West Sussex and from one end of the country in Cumbria to the other in Cornwall—and its demand for compliance stifled localism and local communities.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the general power of competence in the Bill, which has been much derided by the Opposition, signals that local government will no longer be an arm of central Government but will be able to pursue and develop its own policies and services?

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. That is precisely what the Bill does and that is why the reforms represent a radical change. It is interesting that the two parties of the coalition Government are coming together not only in the national interest but in the local interest on principles of individuality, community, libertarianism, greater accountability and democracy.

In my experience as a local authority leader, three things got in the way of true local government, and our role was more about local administration than government. The first of those things was the local government finance system, and I am delighted that there will now be a chance for referendums on council tax and that there will be a greater link between local taxation and local representation.

[Tristram Hunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for showing such respect to the Chamber, unlike some of his colleagues.

On local government financing, why not go the whole hog? What is the Government’s weakness? Why do they not return the business rate that the Tory party took away from local government?

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[Henry Smith]

We are about to do just that in the Bill. The Government have not waited for legislation and have already un-ring-fenced a lot of the budgets that were constraining local authorities’ ability to spend money according to local priorities.

The second thing that has kept down local governments in the past 13 years—and, to be fair, in previous times as well—is the seeping of authority and power from directly elected local government, often to regional and unelected quangos. Again, I am delighted that the coalition Government have made an early start in that respect as well.

The thing that I particularly want to highlight as having stifled local government’s ability to represent the needs of local communities is the unbearable regulation and the bureaucratic tick-box exercise that local government was forced to go through. When I was a local authority leader, I asked my officers to put an audit code next to every item of expenditure that related to that bureaucratic tick-box exercise and at the end of the financial year I was astounded and shocked to see that my local authority had spent more than £1 million just on going through an unnecessary exercise that often had little relevance to the needs of my local community. Not one penny of that £1 million went to provide a book in one of our libraries. [Interruption.] My Conservative local authority has just opened a new library and I am delighted about that. Not one penny of that £1 million went to provide a personal computer on a desk in one of our schools or to provide a home care package for a vulnerable or elderly individual. Not one penny of it was spent on fire service call-outs or any other front-line service that the local authority for which I was responsible wanted to deliver.

The Bill represents a radical shift and a turning around of priorities. Instead of top-down, Whitehall control, there will be bottom-up control whereby individuals, local communities and democratically elected and accountable local government can provide those services. Where government is more transparent and more accountable at all levels, it is more efficient. Given the disastrous economic situation we have been bequeathed by the previous Government, that is something we need to achieve.

One issue that I would like Ministers to clarify is the way in which European Union fines for air pollution, for example, may be divided up. My constituency and local authority include Gatwick airport—the nation’s second-largest airport and the world’s busiest one-runway, two-terminal airport—as well as a significant section of the M23. As a former local authority leader, I am once bitten, twice shy when it comes to local government formulae and I am interested to know how the formula for dividing such fines will operate so that it does not militate against local authorities with national assets such as airports and other facilities in their area.

Broadly, the Bill is to be greatly welcomed. It has often been said that when this country gave up its empire, Whitehall, in an effort to find things to do, simply turned its attention inwards and decided that instead of administering Nigeria or India it had better administer Norwich or Ipswich. The Bill represents, for the first time, a freeing up of control and greater self-determination for our local communities in the same way as other nations achieved self-determination at the end of the British empire. I appreciate having had the House’s time, Mr Deputy Speaker.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is an effect of localism. That is why national standards, particularly in areas such as social care, access to pre-school education, and education in general, are so important for everyone in our society. People should be cautious of what they wish for from the Bill.

The Secretary of State, in introducing the Bill in a particularly inept and rather unsensible speech, went on to describe how Islington was not going to develop a nuclear bomb. That got a good laugh, I am sure, but it was a particularly silly thing to say. His Government are cutting £300 million from Islington’s budget over the next four years. We are one of the poorest boroughs in London and we come in the top eight poorest communities in the whole country, with high levels of homelessness, high levels of dependency and relatively high levels of unemployment. A newly elected Labour local authority has taken over from the Liberal Democrats, who spent most of their time in control of Islington council on a fire sale of valuable local authority properties. So they have form in how they behave towards local government and local authorities.

My main concern in respect of the Bill and in general is about housing. The legislation enacted at the time of the first world war, and the Public Health and National Health Service Acts of the post-war Labour Government have done more than anything else in this country to eliminate bad housing and homelessness. The Bill destroys that thread of public provision of good quality housing at an economic and affordable rent. Instead, it requires local authorities to force people into unregulated, expensive, badly managed, badly maintained housing provided by private sector landlords.

[Henry Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman concede that in the past 13 years we have seen the lowest amount of housing built in this country since 1924, and the lowest amount of social housing as well?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I understand what the hon. Gentleman says. He was not in the previous Parliament. I was one of those who frequently demanded much more building of council housing. In the latter days of the Labour Government, more council housing was being built, and is still being built in my borough. To be fair, the Government inherited a massive bill for unrepaired estates and bad community areas, and put a great deal of money into the decent homes standard. The Labour Government should be commended for that.

The Bill undermines the principle of public provision of housing for those in desperate housing need. Instead, as I said, it requires local authorities to put people into the private sector. Imagine the situation when a homeless family appears before the local housing authority, which fulfils its duty by encouraging the family to accept a two-year, or perhaps shorter, tenancy in a private sector flat. That is the end of its responsibility. If, at the end of that minimal period, the landlord increases the rent to an astronomical level, that family will become homeless as a result of being unable to afford it, and then, according to my reading of the clauses, they will not be eligible for any further assistance from the local housing authority.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) talked about rising homelessness, which is a major concern and, I think, one of the consequences of the Bill, so I urge Government Members to think very carefully about that. We have a whole generation of children growing up in inner-city areas, often in overcrowded council accommodation and sometimes in overcrowded housing association accommodation. Increasingly, however, they are in very expensive private rented accommodation, paid for by housing benefit, where the landlords do not do the repairs and there is no security of tenure. Those families are the most vulnerable people.

What is the effect on those children of sharing a bedroom with three or four siblings, of heating that does not work, of windows that are not repaired, of a gas cooker that is dangerous and of a fridge that does not work? They grow up with a sense of shame, cannot bring friends home and do not grow up the same as all the other children in their school. We have a national responsibility and duty to invest more money in housing with economical, responsible and affordable rents, and that is best achieved by investing in council housing, which has done so well for so very long in this country.

My final point on housing is that we spend billions of pounds of housing benefit on subsidising the private rented sector. The Government’s solution is to cap and limit housing benefit, thereby forcing people out of what they describe as the “high-cost areas,” such as those that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and I represent. The people being forced out will move somewhere else, and as a result communities will be damaged. Other countries regulate, control and operate the private sector far better, far more efficiently and far more humanely. It works in Germany and, to some extent, in the United States, so why can we not do it here? We cannot because of the Secretary of State and his Ministers’ obsession with market solutions to all problems. There are no market solutions for homelessness; there is social intervention, community investment and public operation. That is what can deal with homelessness, and that is what can lift the life chances and opportunities of some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in our community.