Localism Bill

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I begin by saying that a family bereavement this morning means that if the House sits much longer than the estimated rising time I may have to leave to return to Norwich. I hope that that will not be necessary, but I apologise to the House if that proves to be so.

There have been frequent pleas from these Benches over the years to listen to the voice of local communities, so the overall aim of the Bill is certainly to be welcomed. Widespread disengagement from the political process is often linked with a feeling of powerlessness, and there is a need to restore a belief that the structures of our public life are not too complex to navigate or framed wholly in favour of those who already have power or wealth.

The Bill goes some distance in its effort to counter that widespread impression, and so wins my heart. It is my head that needs more convincing, because the Bill’s 400 pages—I see that they have grown to 500 pages according to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said—are so complex. Will the very complexity of what we are being offered undermine the Bill’s good intentions? Will the politically literate, the well resourced, be likely to make the most use of its provisions; and do we need quite so many separate powers to regulate this, guide that or control the other?

As I attempted to navigate my way through the proposals, one of the episodes of “Yes, Prime Minister” came to my mind. Your Lordships may recall that, for a short time, Jim Hacker toyed with the idea of taking power away from the local government machine and returning it to the people. The proposal was to create city villages, each with its own little council, a sort of Hackeresque neighbourhood forum. At the time, Hacker was locked in almost mortal combat with a glamorous left-wing council leader, Agnes Moorhouse, but they eventually found common cause when they realised that plans for truly representative local democracy would entirely undermine the party-political machine. I could not help wondering whether some elements of the complexity of the Bill were not driven by a similar dynamic. Only about 35 per cent of the population of England live in areas where there is a parish or town council. The bulk of the population of this country, urban as it is, lives in unparished areas, as many noble Lords will know. Intriguingly, the only genuinely parished organisation is the Church of England. More people serve on parochial church councils than parish councils.

The power of the PCC, elected bodies all, is one reason why local decision-making is still so significant in the Church of England. It is one reason why it is almost impossible to get a clear answer when asking what the Church of England thinks about anything. There are around 16,000 answers to any question. There are very distinctive differences between one neighbourhood and another. Indeed, even defining “neighbourhood” is not without its problems. It is left largely undefined in this Bill, yet there is a vast difference in a diocese like mine between rural settlements of little more than 100 people—we still call them villages in Norfolk—and city parishes in Norwich with 20,000 people.

In “The Vicar of Dibley” you can never quite tell whether it is the parochial church council or the parish council that is meeting, such is the entirely understandable overlap between village and church affairs. Yet in an urban parish of 20,000 people, which likes to think of itself as a neighbourhood, a handful of activists can be the voice of the local community or church while the neighbourhood, such as it is, feels largely disengaged from them. In a complex Bill, that real complexity on the ground is not recognised.

The positive features of this Bill—neighbourhood plans, forums and development orders, as well as any potential for further directly elected mayors and local referenda—all require lively agencies of local democracy. These have traditionally included local newspapers and, in the past generation, local radio. The dramatic decline in advertising revenue in local newspapers has made that sector very fragile. It has meant that the number of young journalists cutting their teeth in the local and regional press has been dramatically reduced. Some cuts in BBC local radio now seem inevitable with the freezing of the licence fee. Local and regional commercial radio now carries very little news at all. Only community radio, staffed largely by volunteers, beats the trend and could serve the purposes of this Bill well if sufficiently funded.

The restrictions on councils producing their own newspapers may be understandable but, if they could afford it, is there anything preventing local neighbourhood forums from publishing their own local newspaper, or would they be subject to the same restrictions? I am not yet convinced that online communication, democratic as access to it is, fully replaces these other agencies of local democracy. I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on how this Bill relates to the Government's wider policy on the local and regional media. There seems to be some distance between them.

It is inevitable that passing authority to the local and neighbourhood level will create more local argument. Individuals in neighbourhoods speak with more than one voice. We should not fear this, and I presume this is why local referenda are included as a means of resolving local disputations. A closely fought referendum, although it may decide an issue, leaves a lot of losers. There may be some healing of wounds to be done in local communities if the good purposes of this Bill are fulfilled. The role of our church communities and their clergy and other community groups in the healing of such wounds might well be needed. However, we ought to recognise that more localism may not mean more harmony and unity in society. If we do not recognise that, we will be doing all the purposes of this Bill and the people it serves a disservice.