Localism Bill

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was distracted by something in the Chamber more interesting than my speech, but I have already dealt with that. I politely pointed out that in previous, much smaller Bills introduced when the Labour party was running these matters, the proportion of delegated legislation was much higher. I am here to be helpful.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

As a London Member of Parliament, I welcome the part of the Bill that delegates considerable extra powers to London government across the board. We tried to bring in many of these things during the passage of the Bill that set up the Greater London authority in the first place. Will the Secretary of State continue, over the course of this Parliament, to take the attitude that, where possible, we can continue to devolve power both to regional government, which is what the GLA is, and to local government?

[Mr Pickles]

I wish that my right hon. Friend had not used the R-word, but it is certainly my intention that this is part of a continuous process of devolution. He is quite right. There was a lot of cynical suggestion that the London councils and the Mayor would not be able to reach an agreement, and it is to their credit that they have managed to do so.

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[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House, whilst affirming its belief in the important principle of devolving power to local people and their elected representatives, declines to give a Second Reading to the Localism Bill because the proposed devolution of power to local authorities is undermined both by the extent to which the Bill hands powers to the Secretary of State to over-ride those devolved powers and by the extent of powers of the Secretary of State to direct local authorities in their governance arrangements, and because the community empowerment and neighbourhood planning sections of the Bill, which have been put together hastily and without adequate consultation with important stakeholders, would cause the planning functions of local authorities to become incoherent and ineffective and create new costly and complex systems of service procurement and would reduce the effectiveness of local authorities; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by both fuller consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”

After all the delays, the false storms, the spin and the briefings, finally we have the Bill where it should be—before the House. It is a Bill that we will demonstrate over the coming weeks will not, I am afraid, revolutionise local politics, empower the masses to shake up their town halls or reinvigorate local democracy. It is a Bill that the Business Secretary rightly described as “not thought through”. Above all, the Bill empowers one person: the Secretary of State. We believe in devolving power to local communities and giving people a real say in how their local area is run: we believe that power should rest in the hands of the many, not the few; and we are optimistic because we have faith that there are few problems so intractable that local communities do not ultimately have the answer.

We would welcome and support a Bill, therefore, that genuinely devolved powers, which is what the Localism Bill was meant to do. We were promised a radical redistribution of power from central Government to people —a new dawn for people power and a groundbreaking shift in power to councils and communities. We were told that this would be the first Government to leave office with much less power in Whitehall than they started with. Today we see that that is just another broken promise. If page 1 of the Bill gives local councils the power to do whatever they like to improve their local areas, why do we need a further 405 pages?

This Bill fails to live up to its name. For all the Government’s talk of localism, the Bill does nothing to convince us that it is anything more than a smokescreen for unprecedented cuts to local communities up and down the country. All those warm words about devolving power and empowering communities ring hollow when, at the same time, local councils face cuts that go deeper than in almost any other Whitehall Department; cuts that fall heaviest in the first year; cuts that hit the most deprived communities the hardest. There is nothing localist about that.

Let us nail the myth that local councils can spare front-line services simply by cutting executive pay, trimming waste and sharing backroom functions, because they cannot. I know that maths is obviously not the Secretary of State’s strong point, because last week he was telling the newspapers about how good the Tory canvass returns were looking in Oldham. We support greater transparency in the pay of senior officials in the public sector and the measures to increase pay accountability in local government, and the right hon. Gentleman does not need a calculator to work out that cutting executive pay and streamlining administration will not help a single council to avoid cutting front-line services.

[Simon Hughes]

The right hon. Lady produced some wry smiles when she said how strongly Labour had been in favour of devolving to local councils. I would like her to be honest, at the beginning of the debate, about her own legacy. Was the previous 13 years of central power and no devolution a mistake that she now greatly regrets, or do all local councils and everybody else have some sort of fallacious memory? Have we all missed something, because that is not their view on the ground, whatever colour they are?

[Caroline Flint]

I think that what we can see is a steady devolution to local government. I can see—[Interruption.] Interestingly enough, I can see how clauses in the Bill build on Labour’s record in local government. The problem occurs when the right hon. Gentleman tries to suggest that the Localism Bill will shape the future of local government. I am afraid that what will shape the future of local government and how it operates with its partners in the voluntary and private sectors are the cuts, which are doing such a large amount of damage to some of those great partnerships. I refuse to accept from those on the Government Benches that somehow they invented localism or opportunities for communities to take control of assets and have a say. That is just not true.

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[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

This debate is extremely important. For those of us who stood on an election manifesto of more power for local people, this is an important and welcome day. I say to the Secretary of State and his colleagues that people throughout England and many local councillors and council officers will be grateful for the Bill.

Over the past 13 years central Government held on to far too much local power. As I listened to the speech by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), I recalled that her leader said in his conference speech:

“We need . . . local democracy free of the constraints we have placed on it in the past and free of an attitude which has looked down its nose at local government.”

If she and the Labour party are now signed up to that, that is welcome. It is a conversion because it is not what was happening when I was sitting on the Opposition Benches and she and her colleagues were sitting on the Government Benches.

One of the tests is whether there is confidence in local government, and whether people think local councils have powers. The signs, as she and House know, have not been good on those indicators. People feel that they have had less power, not more, and less influence, not more. Confidence in local government has dropped in the past decade, rather than risen. One of the tests for me will be whether, by the time the Bill has passed through both Houses and been amended to improve it, confidence in local government is improved.

I agree with the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) that one of the welcome small but important changes is that local councillors will in future be able to vote and speak on the things that matter most to their electorate. It was always nonsense that they had to say they were disbarred from speaking on the planning application round the corner in the middle of their ward. We can speak, as we should do, on local matters, and they should be allowed to speak on local matters too.

[Mr Raynsford]

It is an interesting principle that the right hon. Gentleman has enunciated. Can he tell the House whether he believes that his colleague, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, should have been moved from his current brief to a different Department because he spoke about something in which he had, potentially, a quasi-judicial interest?

[Simon Hughes]

Tempting, but completely irrelevant to the Bill. I will talk to the right hon. Gentleman about that on another occasion.

The Bill has six substantive parts and one additional part which is about EU fines, a slightly esoteric subject about which I know there is controversy. I shall deal briefly with what seem to me to be the good things and make the occasional plea for the Government to go further.

On local government, the power of general competence is welcome, but I hope the siren voices suggesting that there should be frequent exceptions are resisted. We need to make sure, as I have heard the Secretary of State say, that we give councils the power to act except when the law says they cannot. That is what the measure should be about. Getting rid of the Standards Board is popular and right. Introducing a better system for making public how senior pay is decided will raise confidence among local communities. The right of councils to choose their own committee structure is welcome: many councils will want to go back to a committee system to involve their back benchers more. Making sure that councillors play a full part is especially welcome.

One thing about which we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have some concern is the shadow elected mayor proposal. I know what the coalition agreement says and I know that the coalition is committed to holding a referendum in the 12 largest cities outside London. I am not dissenting from that, but we ought to allow those cities to have that debate and then, if they vote for directly elected mayors, so be it. There are arguments on both sides.

On local government finance, the Government are starting down the right road. I welcome the fact that there is to be a much greater power of discretionary relief for businesses, and a new power for small businesses. Those are important matters. The big change has not yet happened and is far too controversial to be hidden away in such a Bill, but eventually I hope we will come to a much better form of local government finance generally. The Secretary of State knows that my colleagues and I believe that something like local income tax and, for land, something like site value rating, will be a much fairer system. I realise that that is too much to bite off and chew in the first Bill, but progress is being made in the right direction.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

One more time, then I will press on to the end.

[Mr Carswell]

I do not wish to intrude on that celebration of the Bill’s sound localist credentials, but might the Bill be more effective—and offer more real localism, rather than lip service to it—if it offered to devolve control over revenue, something that has been Lib Dem policy for many years? Does my right hon. Friend not agree that the Bill should disperse power over local government finance to the same extent that it does the power over planning?

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[Simon Hughes]

I of course support my party’s position, which we will say something further about this year, but, having spoken to Ministers, I know that during this period of government the plan is for a much larger transfer of powers for councils to raise and spend their own money. To put it bluntly, the Government could have not dealt with that in a year, but it is on their agenda and they are starting the reform of local government finance. I welcome their commitment to that, although we cannot do it yet. When we do it, we have to get it right—and be radical about it as well.

I welcome the really important part of the Bill, on community empowerment. I am really pleased that, for example, the community will have the chance to say, “We want to keep this shop, or this pub, or this other community facility.” It is really important that the community will be able to say, “We don’t want that parade to end up all off licences or betting shops. We want there to be a greengrocer, a fishmonger or a baker.” To be able to be involved in the process is really important. It is important that we build up the real engagement of people locally in the planning process, and I welcome the moves to do that.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No, I will not, only because we have so many constraints on time—understandably.

It is important that in the end decisions are taken accountably. There is a danger, which the Secretary of State is aware of, but we must not allow local decisions to be hijacked by a vocal minority with the qualities, the education or the ability and time to run their own campaign. We have to make sure that decisions are taken on behalf of the whole community and not the vested interests. Sometimes the nimby argument can prevail over the right one and we have to ensure that that danger is resisted.

I welcome the community infrastructure levy, and I shall seek clarification in the winding-up speeches on whether it gives the local authority the full freedom to spend the money on, for example, the housing estate next door to the planning application site, either to do it up or to build more housing. There ought to be maximum freedom.

I also welcome the abolition of the Infrastructure Planning Commission and the return to a planning system whereby the ultimate decision will be taken by a Minister accountable to Parliament. In Greater London we have just had our consultation deadline for responses to the Thames tunnel sewer, and there is a huge proposed mains sewer site in my constituency. We are perfectly happy to go through the consultation, but I have argued very strongly that the final decision on the planning application for such a major scheme should be taken by someone accountable to Parliament and not by a body accountable to no one.

I welcome the fact that national planning statements will be revised, and I welcome the community right to buy. That is a very important additional power, which I am sure will be very well used. My little request to go further was reflected in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell): I think there is a good case for what has come to be called the third-party right of appeal. I heard the answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), but, respectfully, I do not think that it was a persuasive one. We have to balance the developers’ power, influence and money with the community, and at the moment there is not a balanced appeal system.

On housing, the deadline for responses to the Government’s consultation paper was a minute or two ago. The Housing Minister will have had my response and, as he can imagine, it was robust and clear and committed to the continuation of the maximum amount of social housing in my constituency and throughout the country. It is really clear to me that we must get those housing provisions right. I understand and respect the argument for localism, but it has to be localism within parameters guaranteeing that we build and increase the number of social homes, and at prices that people can afford. I will reserve my comments on the detail, because we will have other opportunities for that, but we absolutely need to deal with the queue of people who are not being adequately housed.

I welcome the London provisions, which are very gratefully received by those of us in London.

I shall end with two points. Do the Government envisage that someone will have the job of promoting local democracy, given that it is being taken away from local councils? We need to encourage people to participate and not to reduce participation. Lastly, this might sound an esoteric point on which to end, but we have to do away with the nonsense whereby, because of different rules, people can be charged ridiculous amounts for burial if they have moved from the place where they originally come from. There are little things to improve, but it is a good Bill, and I hope that it is even further improved in the next few months.