Local Democracy in the United Kingdom

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, we have had an excellent debate and I am delighted that so many participants on all sides have taken up my noble friend Lord Shipley’s challenge to reach beyond the concept of “local administration” to “local democracy”; they are not identical. And not least I welcome the contributions from the three maiden speakers, to which I will return in a moment. All three were not only thoughtful, but very thought provoking.

What is particularly striking has been the breadth of experience in local government that exists within your Lordships’ House, and in particular, I would like to claim, on these Benches. Over the years, Liberal Democrats built up their parliamentary presence by really getting to the heart of local communities and building a base in local councils. We led the argument during the last Parliament for a general power of competence to be introduced so that, instead of waiting for permission, councils could do anything they wished for their communities, within the law.

During my experience as a Member of Parliament, I was very appreciative of the contribution of town and parish councils, which has also been a thread today from a number of Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House, including my noble friend Lord Greaves and, in particular, the Bishops, who I thought were extremely interesting. The genuine subsidiarity of trying to take decisions as close as possible to the people who are going to be affected by them goes right down to the lowest level of devolution. I will come back to that theme in a moment.

The general power in the Localism Act, which, as we know, my noble friend Lord Stunell had such a very important role in developing, was a real step forward in the coalition Government. It was one of the few decentralising moves by any Government over the last 50 years. Listening to a number of my colleagues today, I remember that I was elected a county councillor more than 50 years ago. Over that half-century, all Governments have tended to centralise. It was real step forward when the previous Government went in the opposite direction. The recent experience of others in the House has demonstrated that we are in danger now of slipping back on the objectives of that Act. I was very taken with the concept, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord True, of the prefecture approach—I fear that all Governments tend to slip back into that.

As we have heard so much during the debate, the coalition’s intention was to give councillors and councils power and responsibility for the destiny of their areas, along with full accountability to local people, but now the trend seems to be for responsibility without power and power without accountability. Local government has been known to be the best part of the state when it comes to finding savings. It did so in droves following the 2010 election, assisting the coalition in rescuing the ailing public finances it inherited from the previous Administration. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said earlier that local councils found £20 billion in savings during that period.

My colleagues and I have argued that those cuts should have been back-loaded so that transition in terms of staff and other resources should be best managed. The then Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, was adamant that the savings must be front-loaded, meaning that big, in-year cuts were made at local level. It is testament to the leadership of local authorities of all parties that they managed to do this without making substantial cuts to front-line services. I think, now, that the Government have pricked up their ears to the sound of pips squeaking in local authorities. It is not reasonable to expect this level of governance to take on more responsibility and, at the same time, to manage disproportionately large cuts on a far greater scale than central government departments.

I am very struck with the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Porter of Spalding, made not only today but also in the leadership of the LGA. In recent months and years, it has been remarkable that the local government community, through the LGA, has spoken with one voice and has said very clearly to Ministers that, for councils,

“there is limited scope to keep protecting services by making further efficiency savings”.

I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s response to that. I hope that he will go back and reflect on today’s debate with the Secretary of State for Local Government and with the Treasury. That is what local government, across parties, now expect of him.

What about what central government expects of local government? It is telling, is it not, that not a single one of the Whitehall devolution deals is with a two-tier area? It makes me think that there was some worth in the pain that we went through in my county of Cornwall in 2008, when we created the unitary authority out of six districts and one county. Liberal Democrats argued—it was not popular—that moving to one layer would mean a fairer hearing for Cornwall, from the then Labour Government, in getting a devolution settlement. Of course, we still support a full Cornish assembly for the Duchy.

However, if it is this Government’s view that no two-tier authority can be trusted with devolution, they will find a great deal of offence taken in the local government community. I was very interested in the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, from Wiltshire, and the noble Lord, Lord Porter, from Lincolnshire, both of whom have a direct interest in what is going to be available from Whitehall in terms of devolution to counties like theirs. Ministers need to explain and justify what exactly their position is. If they are dead set on pricing two-tier councils out of our local government structure, let them say so and we can have a debate.

Whatever the outcome, I would hope that we could agree across the House that devolution to local government should always mean more accountability and not less. That is why I think that my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Storey were absolutely right to question the move towards elected city and metro mayors. That would seem to be centralisation without effective accountability. Even in London we have better mechanisms for holding the mayor to account than is likely to be the case in the new combined authorities.

I do not have a problem with a patchwork of devolution. Inevitably, some areas will want to take more and would be capable of doing so. But Liberal Democrats have long argued for an overarching framework, conferring rights to a set range of powers, to be enshrined in a devolution-enabling Act. This is the way forward for English devolution, which we recommended in response to the coalition Government’s White Paper, The Implications of Devolution for England, followed by discussions led by the noble Lord, Lord Hague.

At the time of that White Paper, there were many calls—they still exist today—not least from the LGA for a full constitutional convention. We have heard it echoed again in today’s debate. There were calls to bring together all the issues of English governance and the relationship of the different parts of the United Kingdom. I would still welcome such an initiative. The work that has been led by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, which again was referred to by the right reverend Prelate, would effectively feed into that convention. It could enshrine the vital principle of subsidiarity, to which I referred earlier, in every part of our constitutional arrangements. It is in the relationship between Westminster, the devolved institutions and local government in England, and the relationship between devolved institutions and lower levels of government within Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I have tended to concentrate on England and Cornwall, but Scotland is very interesting in this context. Over the past seven years, in Scotland the SNP Government have systematically and categorically stripped powers away from local councils north of the border. Indeed, the 32 Scottish councils now set their council tax rate—the most fundamental of local decisions—at the behest of Scottish Ministers. If that is not centralisation, I do not know what is.

Therefore, local democracy across the whole United Kingdom is at risk. In England, it is at risk from swingeing cuts, which pile more responsibility for public finances on to local government than on any other part of the public sector. In Scotland, it is at risk from a nationalist party which sees the nation as the best and indeed the only level of governance, eschewing the benefits of subsidiarity and local control, just as they do with the increased influence and power which comes with membership of the United Kingdom.

I and my colleagues are not enjoying perhaps the best days at the moment, but ours is a party which always has built itself up, bottom up. We will rebuild again, working with local authorities and local communities which have so often relied on us to represent them. As we do that, we will play our part in rebuilding United Kingdom local democracy from the bottom up, too.