Sustainable Communities Bill

Yes, that is the consequence. It is one of those rare examples where the law and common sense are the same. Let me make a point about the production of a local spending report that identifies the money that is spent locally—such as the Kent £9 billion, although it was £8 billion when this was first explained to me, so it appears to have increased by £1 billion since then. I think that it actually has increased by £1 billion since then. Let me explain one of the advantages of the Bill. First, at present most of the £2.5 billion that is Kent’s is in fact mine—it is ring-fenced. Secondly, some of the remainder is within the control of Kent at the margin, but most of it is not. There is also the crucial point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho). I urge Members to trust the processes set up in new clauses 1 and 2 because what they do is square the circle that devolutionists always face between equity—the point that my hon. Friend addressed—and devolution, which the Bill addresses. The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood put his finger on it when he said that it is the judgment of the outcome that matters. How unemployment is reduced in Kent or elsewhere is not the fundamental issue. The fact that it is reduced is the important thing. Under the framework of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill and the comprehensive area assessment, it is up to a local authority and its partners to decide on the setting of local targets. Where it is clear that a function is failing, the local authority should be given the right to make a representation to transfer the function so that its objectives can be met. That proposal can come from anywhere, not just from the local spending report, under new clauses 1 and 2. The example of the youth club given by the right hon. Member for West Dorset is important. Another example has been given to us by the hon. Member for Kettering. Let me give the House a further example. Among the schemes that aim to reduce reoffending among young offenders who come out of borstal, the most effective that I am aware of are provided by the fire service. Crudely put, if we put a young bad lad in the fire service, two weeks will sort him out. The non-offending rates from those programmes are remarkably successful. However, it is not the job of the fire service to reduce offending. That is something that it does out of partnership, common sense and good spirit. It is extraordinarily difficult, under the present arrangements, for the local probation service and the police to give money to the fire service to provide that facility, even though the benefits from the work of the fire service result in savings to police budgets. I shall give one more example before I come to my argument about why new clauses 1 and 2 are better than new clause 6. Within the local government family, there is the brilliant example of the Blackburn slipper. We discussed this in Committee, and I apologise for repeating myself. The purchase by social services of new pairs of slippers for pensioners in Blackburn resulted in a reduction by a half in admissions to the local accident and emergency hospital for broken bones caused by falls. For the cost of a new pair of slippers, the local hospital saved a fortune, yet the local hospital is not allowed to give money to social services for those purposes under the present arrangements. I believe that new clauses 1 and 2 make more sense because they deal with a process of proposals from communities and individuals relating to the decisions of local authorities, set against the framework of their own objectives, not ours.