Local Authorities (Cumbria)

Debate between Robert Neill and John Stevenson

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

I am happy to do so. It is a perfectly fair point; we cannot look purely at narrow structural issues in isolation from the impact that a local authority has on the wider community and economy or the national and sub-national considerations that flow from it. I therefore agree with that proposition.

The Government do not intend to instigate centrally imposed local government reorganisation, but reform and change are necessary. We should concentrate on how local government works and delivers the services that residents need. That is where we could fruitfully apply our minds and our time, and it can best be delivered in today’s circumstances of dealing with economic growth, with the financial constraints facing us and with the pressure on public finances. That points clearly to councils working closely together when that makes sense, as it often does. I accept that the boundaries may often be somewhat artificial when looked at in the economic context or in terms of the practical geography of delivery for some types of service. It is not necessary to change the boundaries and the names on the map to achieve such aims.

We should encourage local authorities to work more and more together, to pool and share their staff and their buildings and to discharge their functions jointly with other councils and other public service providers. Much work has already been done on community budget pilots and how a multi-agency approach can deliver better public services for us.

[John Stevenson]

I understand the Minister’s argument, and I sympathise with it. If councils work together, savings can undoubtedly be made and local government can be more efficient, but what happens when councils do not agree and are unwilling to co-operate?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and John Stevenson

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and information on the matter will be published very shortly. I point out that this Department was the first to publish online all spend over £500, so our record bears comparison with anyone’s.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

T2. The Department is currently consulting on changes to building regulations. In order to help to reduce energy costs for home owners and to create a proper market in renewables, will the Minister consider making solar panels compulsory for all new builds?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and John Stevenson

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not pleased that his Manchester constituency grew at about 6.9%, as opposed to a national average of 5%. He might also like to take on board the fact that a baseline will be set for all local authorities that takes into account their needs and resources at the beginning of the scheme, and that they will thereafter be protected by the top-ups and tariffs that flow from the baseline being uprated in line with the retail prices index.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the localisation of business rates will result not only in local councils taking a greater interest in the activities of local businesses, but in local business people taking an interest in the activities and performance of their councils? Does he agree that that will help deprived areas as well as others?

[Robert Neill]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The proposal has been welcomed by the Local Government Association, and—the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) might be interested to know—by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. It was of course one of the recommendations of the Lyons inquiry, which was set up by the previous Government, and then ignored by them.

Elected Mayors

Debate between Robert Neill and John Stevenson

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

As I am a localist, I genuinely do not want to impose a blueprint on those local authorities, but the hon. Gentleman, who was himself a strong leader even before the term was invented—he was a very effective leader of Leicester city council under the previous powers—will be aware that arguments can be made in that direction. There is an opportunity for the case to be made by local authorities if they wish. Equally—this is the point that we are stressing—the decision should rest with the local people.

[John Stevenson]

The Minister touched on the point about the petition by local people. At present, 5% of electors must sign it if there is to be a referendum, but does he think that that is a prohibitively high proportion? It is quite difficult for a group of people in a locality to get together to obtain 5% support. Would not it be better to reduce that figure and thus encourage local people to petition for a referendum?

[Robert Neill]

I will consider my hon. Friend’s point. I point out that 5% would be about 4,200-odd people in Carlisle, but my hon. Friend knows the area better than I do, and I stand to be corrected. It is a moot point whether that would be an impossible threshold to reach. It is legitimate that there should be some form of threshold to provide at least some evidence of a genuine desire among the population to go down that route. There are some costs in a referendum, although that is not the biggest issue involved, so before embarking on one there should be some evidence of public support. It is possible to argue either way about the matter, and I shall think about my hon. Friend’s point.

However, it is important to be careful. There must be some safeguards in the process. I mention that in the context of the referendum in Tower Hamlets and the mayoral election there, which I believe everyone in this Chamber would agree was not the best advertisement for the mayoral model. The concern that I draw to my hon. Friend’s attention, and to the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who made a point about the unlikelihood of extremists being elected—I broadly agree that the electorate are generally sensible enough to see through them—is that there can be a risk of manipulation of the petition for a referendum without some proper safeguards.

In Tower Hamlets, there were some 17,000 names on the petition, easily beating the threshold, but some 6,000 were ruled invalid by the returning officer because of various blatantly fraudulent devices that had been employed to get signatures. That may not be the situation in Cleethorpes, but in some parts of the country there is a risk of pressure from individual sections of the community that may propose a petition for not entirely cohesive ends. We have to have some safeguards, but I think we can keep an open, practical mind as to the best way of dealing with the matter.

A question was raised about the important issue of mayoral powers. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle made a fair point on that. It is important that elected mayors have all the powers that they need to lead and enhance the prestige of their cities. Mayors need to be able to make real improvements to the lives of those who live and work in their city, and to make an impact on the city’s economy and its capacity to act as an engine of growth more widely.

One of the reasons, but not the sole reason, why we proposed the 12 largest cities is that it so happens that they are all unitaries. Unitaries are not necessarily the only model, but it may be convenient, particularly at an early stage when people are not used to elected mayors, to have elected mayors in cities where the mayor has the whole range of responsibility for local government services; in that way, things could be more naturally concentrated in one person’s mind. We want to strengthen mayors’ powers, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out the kind of powers we meant in a speech during our party conference. The hon. Member for Derby North helpfully quoted what he said, so I need not repeat the kind of areas at which we are looking.

We envisage that mayors will work closely with neighbouring council leaders on issues such as transport, the strategic approach to planning, and wider economic priorities. Of course, it is important to remember that all the great cities do not live in isolation from their hinterland, whether in economic, social or simply spatial terms. Whatever happens, mayor or leader, there has to be a system such that cities can work sensibly with neighbouring authorities. The alternative would involve exactly the kind of upheaval due to further local government reorganisation and changing boundaries that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had in mind when he referred to the armaments industry, if I can put it that way. We want to find sensible ways for mayors to work across boundaries.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle is a strong proponent of decentralisation, as was evidenced in his maiden speech to this House. He argued strongly that in order to improve local economies and education, we must decentralise, take decisions back to communities and allow local people to make local decisions—in simple terms, return power to people. I endorse those sentiments wholeheartedly. They form a vital part of the Government’s localism agenda. I would go further and say that creating mayors in our largest cities is a key vehicle for facilitating that much-needed decentralisation. The hon. Member for Leicester South, and my hon. Friends the Members for Carlisle, and for Cleethorpes, were hoping that the Government would endorse the idea of mayors. The Government have clearly indicated that, in the right place—it is for the people to choose what is the right place—directly elected mayors can indeed make a significant difference.

Several hon. Members raised the important issue of accountability and scrutiny. With power comes responsibility, and a crucial element of the elected mayoral model is strong and effective scrutiny of the elected mayor and his or her actions by elected councillors. Effective scrutiny will provide the means for ensuring that the electorate have detailed knowledge of their elected mayor’s policies and activities. Direct accountability and scrutiny will be enhanced by stringent transparency requirements. The Government have already announced their intentions in respect of publishing online any spend over £500. Clearly, that has to apply as much to mayor-led authorities as it does to any other authority.

The hon. Member for Leicester South made a point about the role of the back-bench councillor and ensuring that scrutiny is effective. I have a great deal of sympathy with his comments about the need to give back-bench councillors a real role in the system. I have heard from councillors of all political persuasions and none that they can feel—and perhaps, in effect, be—excluded from the decision-making process. That can happen under the leader-and-cabinet model as much as it can under a mayoral model. Whatever the system, we need to find some means of addressing that.

It is important, too, that scrutiny is genuinely effective and moves beyond post-event, post hoc scrutiny, which can be rather meaningless at the end of the day. It is important that, wherever possible, we give elected members the chance to have input in the decision-making process before decisions are completed. That is why, in the spirit of localism, we are saying that local authorities should have the ability to choose whether they stick with the leader-and-cabinet model or with a committee system. That is for them to choose, but either a leader-and-cabinet or a mayoral model can be made to work, provided they properly involve councillors. My London borough of Bromley, for example, calls its scrutiny committees “policy development and scrutiny committees”, which more closely mirrors what should happen, in terms of trying to involve members at an earlier stage of the process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle mentioned councillor numbers and asked whether we would seek to reduce the number of councillors in areas where elected mayors are in place. Once again, I refer to the comments of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in response to a question on that issue. He stated:

“Decisions on the number of councillors in any local authority are handled by the independent Local Government Boundary Commission, in which process I have no role.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1116.]

That is the case; Ministers do not have any role in setting either the boundaries or the number of councillors under our current arrangements. If councils wish to open up the matter of the number of members that they have, they can ask the Local Government Boundary Commission to review the authority’s ward boundaries and number of members. They do that by direct application to the commission; the process does not involve the Government, and it is probably right that there should be independence in that regard.