Sustainable Communities Bill

My Lords, I join in thanking my noble friend Lord Marlesford and congratulating him on carrying the Bill into this House and submitting it to your Lordships. I declare a personal interest which has a tincture of family pride. I know that there are other families—at least two—who can boast, as we can, of four generations in direct descent serving in another place, but I think that it is rare for a new Member of Parliament to steer a Private Member’s Bill through all its stages in the Commons in this way. Certainly neither my grandfather nor my father nor I ever attempted such a feat, so perhaps I am allowed humbly to congratulate the honourable Member for Ruislip-Northwood on what he has done so far. This Bill fits into the pattern of localism which, as my noble friend says, now runs through the thinking of all our political parties. The Government has announced, as the noble Baroness has just reminded us, plans for giving local people greater say over local government spending. However, this is a complementary concept which fits neatly into the general puzzle by proposing to give local people greater knowledge through the local spending reports and greater say in stimulating and guiding spending in their locality, including spending by central government. I would like to make two general points about this movement towards localism. I hope that the Government are gradually weaning themselves away from identifying localism with regions, and I hope that the definitions in the Bill may help them in this direction. I know the bureaucratic attractiveness of thinking in terms of regions, and I know the European dimension. However, in most of England, regions are still an artificial concept and will remain one, achieving neither recognition nor loyalty. They do not act as the stimulus for local energy, which is what this Bill and many other efforts are about. Secondly, we need to accept a consequence—that greater local knowledge and influence over what happens, and how money is spent, will lead to a greater variety of practice and priorities. The fact that people receive different levels of service in different areas depending on where they live will in the end no longer be regarded as a reproach—a postcode reproach—but as a justifiable fact, a necessary consequence of greater local democracy and a necessary incentive to experiment. Having been Home Secretary and therefore in charge of perhaps the most naturally centralising of government departments, I have come to believe that experiment—and that means local experiment—is crucial. One consequence of this Bill may be increased local experiment in sector after sector. My caveat—a caveat that we must all have—is that this needs to be within a commitment to the values and integrity of one British nation, a commitment to values that must exist regardless of ethnic background or origin. We all recognise and lament the fact that our democracy is going through an apathetic stage. However, there are reserves of enthusiasm and interest which derive not from our activities in this Palace but from the interest that both speakers have stressed—an interest which naturally exists locally, for local thinking, local initiative and local decisions. Harnessing that interest—which to some extent is still dormant—to the cause of our general democracy is not just a good cause, it is an essential one.