Local Government Bill [Lords]

James Morris Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I represent a constituency in the west midlands, which is some distance from my hon. Friends in Norwich, Members might wonder why I want to contribute to this debate. I intend to be brief—although I hope not in the spirit of the brevity of the Bill itself.

This Bill deals with some important principles. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), who is no longer in his place, said that he found the debate “strange”. I find it extraordinary that Opposition Members are trying to argue that they are the defenders of localism, given that their whole time in government was predicated on one of the largest centralisations of power in Whitehall and away from local government; on an obsession with regional government and structures, and with the re-organisation of local government; and on the imposition of structures. We need to get away from that if we are truly to move towards a localist future.

The restructuring that the Bill, which I support, is trying to prevent was typical of the approach of the previous Government. They were obsessed with top-down reorganisations. I think it was the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) who kicked off this whole debate—as if we needed to have these top-down reorganisations. The requirement that parliamentary approval be sought for the restructurings was introduced during the death throes of the last Parliament in a way that was aggressive and an imposition, and these claims about potential cost savings are entirely spurious.

Rather than trying to impose top-down reorganisations on local government, which were such a feature of the previous Government, we need to embrace the diversity of local government—where county, district, town and parish councils all have a vital role to play. We need to encourage collaboration across different areas and at different levels of local government in the delivery of effective services. We need to do that because we need to achieve back-office efficiencies to reduce costs in local government; to reduce bureaucracy at the heart of local government; to re-engineer some of the processes; to share management costs so that we do not have so much duplication across local government; and to encourage local authorities to work in partnership in order to deliver services at the appropriate level. But we do not need to be obsessed with top-down reorganisations arranged from the centre.

The whole thrust of the last Government’s approach to local government policy was to be obsessed with these top-down solutions, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s introduction of this Bill. We need a completely different approach. We need a bottom-up approach that, as I said, encourages local authorities at all different levels to play an active and vital role in their local communities, because they are close to the concerns of local people. There are principles at stake here. The previous Government tried to introduce this top-down reorganisation for directly political reasons—in order to divide different areas of local government.

We need to bring an end to costly restructuring, so I welcome the introduction of the Bill; we need to focus on collaboration to achieve great efficiencies and cost-savings in local government, which are vital when we are having to make cuts in local government expenditure as a result of the previous Government’s mismanagement of the public finances; and we need to move towards much more effective and democratically accountable delivery at a local level. That is why I support the Second Reading of the Bill.