Queen’s Speech

Lord Tope Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I intend to speak primarily about local government so must start by declaring my interest, as I always do, as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton and a member of its executive, if only for the next five days. On Monday, Sutton Council will use one of the many opportunities afforded by the Localism Act, on which we spent so many happy hours last year, to abolish its executive/scrutiny split and establish a committee system that will reflect local government in the 21st century and not be simply a reversion to the service-based committee systems of the previous century.

The subjects for today’s debate are agriculture, business, the economy, energy, environment, local government and transport. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Bradshaw said that he would cover six of the seven in his speech. I can probably claim that I am going to cover all seven of them because all seven are of real importance to local government, and perhaps even more importantly local government has a vital role to play in the success of each of these issues.

Inevitably, much of today’s debate has concentrated on the economy. The days when business and local government regarded each other from a distance with mutual mistrust and misunderstanding are long gone. Each has learnt from the other, each has come to appreciate the better points of the other, and all over the country there are now strong and successful partnerships delivering real benefits for their local communities.

This is a success story on which we need to build. Our next opportunity to do so will be the Local Government Finance Bill, which will be with us in a few weeks’ time. Like the Localism Bill, it comes to us with some room for improvement, not least in that part of the Bill to which my noble friend Lord Shipley referred so eloquently. The other part of the Bill, dealing with the so-called repatriation of business rates, offers the prospect of local authorities providing incentives for real economic growth and working with their local business community to achieve that but to mutual benefit.

If we are really to build on this success, central government must demonstrate that it really trusts local government. It must show that it recognises that elected councillors have their own democratic mandate and are themselves accountable to the people who have elected them, which has usually been done in a far more direct and audible way than elsewhere in government.

The Localism Act made a good start, but it will not implement itself. It provided opportunities for local government, and local government needs to create the space and time to make the most of these opportunities. That would be a challenge at the best of times, and these are hardly the best of times.

Local government is living through a period of unprecedented change and challenge. Those challenges include: the rapid growth in the number of academies and in pupil numbers, particularly in London; local authorities’ imminent and very welcome acquisition of responsibility for public health; the coming of police and crime commissioners, which will inevitably affect the relationship between police and local authorities, which again has improved dramatically in the past 20 years; the changes to welfare and the cuts in benefit; and the huge demands placed on adult social care, to which many have referred today; and so on. My noble friend Lord Shipley referred to the cumulative impact of legislation on local authorities, which is huge.

All this change and challenge is happening at a time of cuts in council budgets of unprecedented size and speed. Budgets are reducing dramatically, staffing is reducing dramatically, but the demands on both are increasing at least as dramatically. Doing more for less demands innovation and ingenuity. That is not easily achieved when the greatest demand is to maintain morale among staff worried most about their own jobs and futures. If ever there was a time for those in the public sector to be working together to ensure the most efficient use of its budgets, surely this is it, yet progress on community budgeting, known by the previous Government as Total Place, seems to have ground to a halt—indeed, if it ever really started.

It may be understandable that, in times such as these, organisations become even more protective of their own budgets, but that is manifestly not in the public interest. All central government departments should take the lead in this and require their local bodies, where appropriate, to do the same. It is the responsibility of Ministers individually and collectively to make this happen.

As I have said, councils already do a lot to promote economic growth, working in partnership with business, the third sector and other parts of the public sector, but they are ambitious to do more. City deals with the core cities are very welcome, even if distractions such as elections and referendums have made slower progress than some of us would wish, but we need to do more and to do it faster so as to establish “local growth deals” in areas beyond just the core cities.

I referred earlier to some of the challenges facing local government, yet I take heart that, throughout history, it has been the times of greatest challenge that have produced the greatest change and innovation. I remain optimistic.