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Parliamentary Bills
Local Government
Chronicle - January 2007
Parliamentary bills on local government do not come along very often, so when two come along on successive days it is a matter of note. Bill No 1 was received with near universal enthusiasm from every corner of the House of Commons. Bill No 2 was met with what can best be described as polite applause from its backers and dismissal ranging from weary contempt to vociferous indignation from its opponents.
Bill No 1 is doomed. Bill No 2 will pass into law. The first bill is the Sustainable Communities Bill, a private member measure which has garnered support from everyone from the Campaign for Real Ale to the National Association of Women’s Institutes. It claims to claw back power to the local community by requiring government to follow the priorities set by local people in spending all money not earmarked for genuinely national programmes. Its supporters claim it could be the instrument for saving local stores, post offices, community hospitals and small family farms. It has the support of the Tories, Liberal Democrats and half the Parliamentary Labour Party.
It has, on the other hand, a very simple problem: the Government does not like it. However eloquent its sponsor, Tory MP Nick Hurd, the bill will die. There can be few more chirpy hangmen than Local Government Minister Phil (Mr 5 per cent) Woolas, but he was wearing the black cap at the despatch box despite his mellifluous reasonableness. Death
by amendment. Just wait and see.
Bill No 2 was, of course, the Government’s local authority bill, described by Ruth Kelly as a radical transfer of power, a claim which should wake up trading standards officers if no-one else.
It is not that there is anything particularly pernicious in the bill though Tories accuse the Government of wanting to destroy by re-organisation successful Conservative-run upper tier authorities. The problem with this thesis is the number of Tory upper tier authorities queuing up for just such a re-organisation in defiance of the party’s commissars. The bids are now in and the “narrow window of opportunity” has slammed down. I suspect the Government itself does not quite know what it wants in this area. Miliband’s momentum towards the creation of unitaries has drained away and even Kelly’s crush for directly-elected mayors has lost some of its passion. What’s left looks like the only alternative to walking away from the policy entirely.
But there are some important and potentially far-reaching measures in the bill. Two stand out. The first is the winding down of the best value regime to reduce the current 1,200 national targets and indicators for local areas to 200 indicators and 35 targets plus existing education and child-care targets. The oppressive gendarmerie of the command and control culture has long been due for de-commissioning. The big question now (not answered in the bill) is whether the Government really will take the plunge and focus on broad outcomes not mechanistic performance.
The second central feature of the bill is the increased role councils will be given in putting together of local area agreements reinforced by the requirement on public service providers to co-operate in their construction. The key partner here is likely to be the primary care trusts, many of which, after the recent re-organisation, cover far larger populations than councils. There are bound to be demands for more providers to be brought within the scope of the agreements- the health trusts or housing associations for example. But if the plans are not to suffer from unmanageable ambitions and structures it is sensible to begin with more limited parameters. In any event it is likely that finance in support of such agreements will surpass revenue support grant funding in relatively short order.
These two issues are, perhaps, bureaucratic- much less fun than re-organisation or having a bash at the about-to-be-redesigned Standards Board. But if the Government means what it says about the bill being the first step along a long road towards devolution they are much more fundamental stepping-stones than playing around with management structures, issuing bye-laws or putting councillors under pressure to endorse community calls for action.
Pity about the Sustainable Communities Bill: the bureaucratic death is even now being arranged…
© Local Government Chronicle
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