Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), who was having trouble projecting his voice. None of us was expecting to be called to share our thoughts with the House so soon, but I will make quick progress. I begin by paying warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for having been successful in obtaining a high placing in the private Members' Bills ballot and for his generous, sincere and erudite speech. He outlined the progress of the 2007 Act through the House, and he took a cross-party, consensual approach to it and to his Bill. It is appropriate for me also to pay tribute to all the Members who were responsible for the original Act, including the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy), with whom I cross swords from time to time, the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who sometimes ploughs a lonely furrow on the Labour Benches, and of course my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), whose Bill became the 2007 Act. As has been said, the Bill is straightforward. It would require the Secretary of State to invite local authorities to submit a further round of proposals to be considered under the 2007 Act, and publish regulations regarding the future process, and the extension of the qualifying organisations that make proposals under the Act beyond local authorities. It would be apposite briefly to look at the main parts of, and the process and rationale behind, the 2007 Act, which was made up of 10 sections and a schedule. The Act added the word "sustainable" to the term "community strategy" and put into legislation the duty for local authorities to consider the long-term sustainability of the communities they serve, which was already central to their thinking, and how local services and plans contribute to that sustainability. Specifically, it created a duty for the Government to produce a local spending report that details for each local authority area the amount of public money spent by all relevant central, regional and local agencies on services and projects in a given period. The idea, as initially proposed in the Conservative party policy document, "The Permissive State", was that local authorities would be allowed to make recommendations on the allocation of any relevant spending in their areas by drawing up a local spending plan, but the Act is more circumspect, albeit a similar outcome could be achieved through section 3, which invites""local authorities to make proposals which they consider would contribute to promoting the sustainability of local communities"" and states that""a proposal may include a request for a transfer of functions from one person to another"" following consultation with partners. The Act also states that the local authority must""establish or recognise a panel of representatives of local persons"" to be consulted on a proposal. It would be remiss of me not to mention the wider context of the Act. My party, if elected to government, is committed to legislating for a power of general competence, which was promised by Labour before and after the 1997 election. That power synthesises with the ethos and philosophy of the Act and the Bill. There is consensus on the Government's piloting of, and strong support for, Total Place—it is supported not least by the Treasury. Total Place ties neatly into local spending reports and the philosophy behind the Bill and the Act. It is important to see the Bill in that context—it is not necessarily a partisan issue. I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire on the public meetings that have been held. My meeting, which was extremely well attended, was held at the Great Northern Hotel in Peterborough in April last year. There was lots of interesting debate and argument—and good will—and a willingness and strength of feeling on the part of the community to facilitate action by my local authority, Peterborough city council, and to get the maximum number of people involved. My note of caution is that I am not entirely convinced that every Government Department is as committed as it should be both to the Act and to Total Place. I shall name a guilty party: the Department for Work and Pensions, which spends a significant amount of public money at local level, is not necessarily fully on message with that agenda. With that caveat, I shall make some progress. As my hon. Friend said, local policy proposals have been extremely successful. There are a few concerns, but the Local Government Association is generally considered to have been successful in its important role as a national selector, assessing and shortlisting councils' proposals. That function has been successfully carried out and has drawn support from the four major party groups in the LGA. We know that the LGA reported on 5 August 2009 that nearly 300 proposals had been submitted by some 90 different councils. My hon. Friend mentioned the comments by Councillor Keith Mitchell, chairman of the selector panel, which were very positive. According to the LGA, the next phase of implementing the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 will start in earnest in the next few months. The Government are required to reach agreement with the LGA as selector on which proposals to implement. The DCLG has not yet formally announced the format and timetable for this process, and a parliamentary answer on 4 February 2010 revealed:""The Government are consulting the Local Government Association in its role as selector under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 and are seeking to reach agreement on which of the 199 short-listed proposals should be implemented. Many of the proposals are complex and raise significant practical issues but the Government are anxious to make progress as quickly as possible on those proposals that offer practical benefits and new ways of meeting local needs."— [Official Report, 4 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 531W.]" The LGA is lobbying for two key commitments. The first is for the process to be completed in a timely and effective manner, and the LGA would like the process to be completed by the Easter recess. The second is that the process should provide genuine opportunity for dialogue and negotiation. We would like a process that involves face-to-face dialogue at both senior official and Member/ministerial level. It might be appropriate for the Minister to address that particular point when she responds to the debate. We have heard of the excellent community-based initiatives and proposals put forward by a wide range of councils, and I shall not detain the House by rehearsing all of them again. They include authorities as varied as South Hams district, Hackney borough council, the excellent Conservative council in Hammersmith and Fulham, Southampton city council, Herefordshire county council and Bristol city council, which have all put forward eye-catching, forward-looking and progressive proposals. We have also heard about the organisations that have been responsible for driving forward the political will through the sometimes complex layers and checks and balances of our legislative and political system to get this on the statute book and get these proposals taken seriously. The proposals will have a demonstrable impact on the quality of life for many thousands, if not millions, of our constituents, so I pay tribute to those organisations. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire mentioned the early-day motion tabled by the hon. Member for Stroud in November last year, and it is worth mentioning that very few early-day motions attract so much support. All parties share a commitment to the issue, because it affects not only rural and suburban areas, but urban areas such as my constituency. The advantage of the legislation is that it is flexible and can be adapted locally. It is also dependent on the policies, strategies and behaviour of local councillors, who are directly responsible. So not only is there top-down pressure from the legislation and the responsibilities on local authorities, but community-minded people will put gentle pressure on their elected councillors to facilitate this progressive change. As we know, 346 hon. Members have signed the early-day motion. The LGA is concerned about the proposed measures allowing the Secretary of State to publish regulations on the procedure for making proposals. Such regulations are likely to set out increased prescription around consultation, engagement with parish councils, and petitions, as well as cause confusion over the form, content and timing of proposals. According to the LGA, the resource implications for local authorities of participating under the Sustainable Communities Act should not be underestimated. Many authorities have set up new consultation panels, run events and commissioned work to ensure that communities were genuinely involved in the process and to give hard-to-reach groups an opportunity to have their say. In addition, significant officer time is used to research and develop proposals to the level of detail required for them to be considered viable. The LGA argues that increased prescription would, first, threaten to derail the innovative practice that has emerged under round one around community engagement and consultation and, secondly, risks tying the process up in red tape. One of the strengths of the current process is the implicit acknowledgment that local councils are best placed to determine how best to engage with local communities and determine the content and form of proposals. To summarise: let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater and be too prescriptive in establishing a national template on what is best for everyone in terms of consultation and engagement with local community groups, and let us trust local authorities to be responsive to local community groups in respect of that consultation. We must work on the basis that they all want to achieve the best end result and objective. Of course, in the less than benign financial situation in local government at the moment, anything that puts cost pressures on local authorities from a top-down Whitehall perspective cannot be a good thing. I am sure that the Minister would not argue with that. Finally, I shall make some brief comments about my own party. We will be supporting the provisions in the Bill, and again I welcome the comments of other hon. Members. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) will bring to bear his expertise on this issue, if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye in the next few minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker. In our local green paper, "Control Shift", published in February last year, we wrote:""The main purpose of the Sustainable Communities Act is to enable local governments to identify money spent in their area by central government agencies and then (after consultation with local people) to recommend ways in which it could be spent better by redirecting it to local priorities. The next Conservative government will work not just within the letter of this new law, but also within its spirit"." It also stated that""we will operate the system set up by the Act to ensure that, when local people have a particular priority, central government money is directed towards fulfilling that priority wherever possible."" We also support the extension of the Sustainable Communities Act to parish councils. The Bill is commendably short, but it is extremely important and builds on the solid and firm foundations that we established in the 2007 Act. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire touched on the important—almost existential—point that to rebuild the faith and trust of people in this country in their elected representatives, they must believe that their views, thoughts and priorities can be translated into real, progressive and forward-looking change. This Bill plays an important part in that process, and on that basis, Her Majesty's Opposition are delighted to give it their strong support.