Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Amendment No. 126 in this group would tackle the problem in a slightly different way by simply removing the 85,000 limit—which is an odd historic limit anyway going back eight or nine years—and allowing councils to have what are called alternative arrangements but which I would call, following the language used in the House of Commons debates, ““an enhanced committee system””. Nobody is suggesting going back to the old systems in every detail. What we are suggesting is a system based on committees or a hybrid system. There is no reason why a hybrid executive and committee system cannot work. Indeed, many councils have one because they have area committees which take quite a lot of executive decisions. That is allowed under Section 18 of the 2000 Act. We will discuss that when we reach later amendments. It does not matter whether there is a groundswell across the country. The important thing in a devolutionary era is whether people in an authority feel strongly that they want to change the system and have the ability to change it in the way that they think will deliver the best local government. The Government sometimes talk as though they are the ones advocating good community leadership, efficient councils, good delivery of services and lots of local vision and everyone else is going back to the 19th century. There was plenty of local vision in the 19th century. It is simply a question of there being different ways of achieving the same things. Why should people on the ground in their own councils not make those decisions? We have heard so much devolutionary rhetoric but now that we are getting onto some major issues, the devolutionary rhetoric seems to be scuttling away under the floorboards. We will discuss the role of councillors later so I will not go into that now. When the word ““committee”” is raised, people talk about horses and camels—a camel being a horse designed by a committee. That may be true but what are committees for? Nobody would employ a committee to design a new house or—I was going to say transport system but perhaps that is wrong. Design is something best done by professionals who go away and do it. Then it comes back and, like the Olympic logo, you say, ““Yes, this is wonderful”” or, ““This is a load of rubbish””. If you are sensible and it is a load of rubbish, you kick it out. That is how good design is done. You would not employ a committee to design a horse. Let us look at some other analogies. What is a donkey? A donkey is a horse designed by bureaucrats. What is an elephant? An elephant is a horse designed by self-important leaders. What is a giraffe? A giraffe is a horse designed by policy wonks in Downing Street. Take that as you wish, but what are committees good at? Committees are good at discussion. We are in Committee now and we are discussing things. It is far easier to involve members of the public in council decisions if you have good functioning committees because there is a forum where people can take part in the discussion. If they are run properly, are efficient and are given or develop choices, they are actually quite good at making decisions, particularly at local level where they are acting on behalf of the community. Nobody ever agrees on everything—there are always different interests and different points of view—but a good functioning representative committee can make the decision in open session in public. People may not like it, but at least they are able to come along, listen, take part and see that decisions are being taken democratically. If decisions are made by one person, how on earth does that process happen? If there are single-party executives on councils—I have to point out that I am a member of one—it is not satisfactory. I am, for my sins, the executive member for housing market renewal in Pendle. As part of the housing market renewal pathfinder, the council gets about £9 million a year to invest in the area, which is a lot of money for an ordinary, small district council, so we wanted an executive member who was responsible for it. I said that I would do it, but only on the condition that I could have a committee. I now chair the housing market renewal committee. People can come along to the forum. If they do not like our decisions, they come and shout at us. When we have real choices to make, people come and tell us what they think. It is all done in public and the debates are reported in the local newspapers. This year, I have even insisted that we have members of the opposition groups on the committee. That is the scrutiny element of committees that the noble Baroness spoke about, which is so important. The old committee system was not wonderful in all places. In some places it worked very well and in others—such as Lancashire County Council, of which I used to be a member—it was not all that good. But a huge amount of scrutiny took place. That was the function. Far better scrutiny took place under that old system than takes place in the artificial, manufactured way in which overview and scrutiny committees work nowadays. I am not saying that all the new arrangements are bad and that they do not work in many places. They do. We are saying that people should be given the choice to do what is best for their council in their circumstances and to evolve the structures that they want. If the Government really believe in letting go, that is what they have to do.