Local Government White Paper

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, although I offer only some personal thoughts. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to devolve more decision-taking powers to local government and to offer more flexibility, freedom and local choice. It has hitherto been a curiosity, and a rather unsatisfactory one, that the Government’s enthusiasm for devolution to the regions has not apparently been matched by much enthusiasm for devolution to local government. I very much welcome the radical approach that my noble friend has described. However, that still leaves the looming question: how are the RDAs and other regional satrapies to be made more democratically accountable? Can my noble friend cast any light on that? Can she say how the Government’s policies in that regard would relate to their encouragement to authorities to put themselves forward for unitary status, which is extremely welcome? It must be right that our important historic cities and boroughs should be able to be self-governing and take responsibility for the delivery of the full range of local services. If we are to strengthen our democracy as a whole, which we surely need to do, must we not nurture democracy at local level? If enough people of real ability and ambition for their communities are to be attracted into local government and—who knows—thence into national politics, is it not necessary to provide scope for them to exercise responsibility commensurate with ability and ambition? Does that not apply to all elected members, not just the leaders of local authorities? Is not this fundamental issue more important than those about particular forms of local government, whether elected mayors, executive cabinets or local authority leaders on long leases? Can my noble friend tell us whether the very welcome reduction in targets that she has announced means that the Treasury really means to let go, to allow elected local authorities to raise and spend money, free from the stultifying oversight of central government, instead being accountable to local people as citizens and electors and, indeed, possibly to local calls to action? Has the Treasury finally rid itself of the paranoia which possibly had some justification in the 1970s but has been absurd in an age of global financial markets—its fear that an increase in local government borrowing over and beyond what the Treasury decreed as appropriate would cause a rise in interest rates and crowd out private investments? Are we now to allow grown-ups in local authorities, as in private life, to judge what they can afford to borrow? The phrase ““earned autonomy””, which I was glad not to hear from the lips of my noble friend—I think I did not—has expressed too much a post-war view, of which we have learnt to be thoroughly sceptical, that the gentleman in Whitehall really does know best. Can my noble friend assure us that we have now moved beyond that patronising view towards a real respect for local people and local democracy?