Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

No. We have seen the danger. It is time to take some risks and restore trust and discretion. Our opposition to the Bill, our support for the Sustainable Communities Bill and our continual objection to nationally driven targets and agendas is hard tangible evidence of that, against which there are only sweet words, with hidden meanings, from the Government, and the tough experience of thousands of public servants who have heard this talk of devolution so many times. This Government now suffer from two fundamental flaws, each of which is enough to kill them. One is a failure to understand a shift in the political bedrock and to work with it. The second is that few any longer believe almost anything they say or any statistics they produce in their own interests, such has been the devaluation of the relationship between the Government and the people in this country. The Bill is a fig leaf to cover the Department’s inadequacies. How will it help the local government funding crises, so often the result of the Treasury and the Chancellor loading responsibilities and taxes on the local taxpayer and evading the rap for doing so? How will it help the taxpayer who knows that he will have to bear the costs of any reorganisation and see any potential savings eaten up by the Chancellor, filling the gap with new taxes and ensuring that there is higher pay for executives as a result of reorganisation, as was highlighted by the newspapers this weekend? Will reorganisation build another house, provide another care bed or a new carer for the elderly? There is no doubt that taxpayers in all areas, male and female, will feel the burden. The Bill should have been about listening to the people and devising some serious adjustments to power that would have delivered what they really need. Instead, we have a Bill that has at its centre as crass a piece of naked power grabbing as we have seen, even from this Government. The Bill should have been about restoring the democratic balance by bringing back under the democratic control of local authorities the powers over housing, transport and planning that were taken from them and given to unelected regional bodies. Instead, it is an increase in central Government command over an agenda that is fast losing the sense of being local and is leaving the people behind.