Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill

I agree absolutely with the hon. Lady. We all recognise that terrier-like determination. All hon. Members have done some work on the ground in which we have eventually got something done that we did not expect to get done. We have had to get through layers of bureaucracy and entrenched ways of doing things. We in this House are part of those entrenched ways of doing things, but we must try to be more open to other ways of working. The subject of spending reports was raised by the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) and for Braintree. Future local spending reports will be published online in a more user-friendly format. I have used the reports for my own constituency, and for other constituencies in the east, and I understand the criticisms of them. The reports will also include a much wider range of data. Indeed, the December reports already do so. We are working towards improving the reports but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth stressed during the debates on the 2007 Bill, this is an evolving process, and part of the brake on that evolution is resource. Another part of that brake has been the simultaneous development of another strand of transparency, in the form of Total Place and the "Putting the front line first: smarter government" strategy. The hon. Member for Peterborough will know that a lot of work on this is being done in the region in which he and I have our constituencies. We have two of the 13 pilots there, but also 77 unofficial pilots. They are all aiming to find ways of making information more transparent and more accessible. Information can be written down but it can still be meaningless. Anyone who has read "How to Lie with Statistics" knows that there are huge opportunities in some of that information, and we must ensure that the statistics used are relevant and useful. Turning to deal with the current process, which many hon. Members have mentioned, those not familiar with the logistics of the 2007 Act might have found our discussion rather arcane. It might also seem odd that we are attempting to amend a Bill that received its Royal Assent only a short while ago in parliamentary terms. As happens so often when good ideas are put into practice, the process of doing so reveals ways in which that practice can be improved. What we are working with here is quite revolutionary in respect of how the British state behaves at all its levels. I believe that the Bill presented by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire represents a real step forward in making the process more responsive by making it more flexible and by streamlining it. It is necessary to do that, because the process is at present cumbersome and resource-intensive, to put it mildly. Providing the Secretary of State with the flexibility to ensure that both local and national Government can move more swiftly is a necessity, particularly if we want to engage with people, because their time scales are quite different to those of, say, a council or Whitehall. Our time scales are more elongated, when people are looking for a much swifter delivery than we have traditionally managed. I know just how much work went into the formulation of the 301 proposals received by the selector body, the Local Government Association, and just how much work was put in by Councillor Keith Mitchell and his team to make sure that the shortlisting process was fair. So many of the proposals were good that 199 of them made it to the rather long shortlist. They were sent to the Secretary of State for consideration just before Christmas. As many of us know, consideration in government does not mean looking at proposals and thinking, "That's okay, we'll have that one". Other Government Departments have to be consulted in order to achieve a collective agreement through an arcane process known as the "DA round"—involving the Ministerial Committee on Domestic Affairs, to which we have to write in to say what proposals we are thinking of putting forward and to ask what the committee thinks about them. The relevant Government Department has to go through the same process. It has taken us quite a long time to arrive at a shortlist that is acceptable to all areas of government—but I think we are there. I realise how this looks to the public and to some hon. Members, but believe you me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my officials and I have been driving this. I am deeply committed to this kind of work. I am leaving this House in four or five weeks, but I do not really want to leave it without seeing progress made on this Act. That would be a failure, as far as I am concerned: my personal commitment is clear, and Members will have heard the Secretary of State's personal commitment to it. We are not standing still; we are looking at the complex issues in detail. As I will make clear in a few moments, we have broken them down into those that can be actioned swiftly—thanks to this Bill—and others that might take slightly longer, but will still be addressed. The hon. Member for Braintree asked me whether an action plan could be produced next week. I really wish it could, but the honest answer is, "Probably not next week, but, boy, we are working on it for pretty soon". We all know that there is a cliff facing us—a cliff that I am going to walk straight off, although some Members will go down a ledge and return. As I say, I am going off it, as are some other right hon. and hon. Members, but before we drop to the bottom of the cliff, we are keen to see that we leave something verdant on the top of it. I am aware of the difficulties facing private Member's Bills, and I was a great supporter of the Cook reforms—which I urge newer Members to study—in part because I believe such Bills deserve more time than they sometimes get. I am therefore trying to make swift progress through my speech. The Bill will increase the opportunities for parish and town councils to become even more directly involved in this process in future. I have enormous respect for parish councils. Like the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I have a lot of extraordinarily active ones; our constituencies are fairly close, and the area is well endowed with parish councils. The hon. Gentleman's Bill allows us to develop that role, by taking them out of the guidance section, which is where they currently reside in the 2007 Act, and putting them into the main part of the Act. The National Association of Local Councils is an extremely important partner of my Department. Indeed, we have allocated £750,000 of funding to it for the period between 2008 and 2011, in order for it to lead a programme of activities to promote the role of the local council sector. We are consulting the association, and exploring with its members how parish councils can get the most out of the Act. Parish councils may be small, but they certainly punch above their weight, and we have seen what can be done with a bit of imagination—such as in Croxley Green, where a free bus service has been put in place for local senior citizens. That is a great example of using the powers councils already had—in this case from the Local Government and Rating Act 1997—to make a real difference to people's lives. I want to see more of that, as well as more development under the 2007 Act. We therefore intend to use a power specified in section 5 to explore how parish and town councils, or county associations of parish councils, might submit proposals in certain circumstances, to further drive the progression of local idea to national action. I want to look briefly at the Local Government Association proposals. There were 301 of them, 18 of which were joint proposals, and they came from 90 lead authorities with a further 10 district councils contributing to the joint submissions. That represents 28 per cent. of all authorities in England. As the hon. Member for Braintree remarked, not all authorities have engaged in this with the same level of enthusiasm; after all, we are talking here about 100 out of 353 authorities. The south-west submitted the highest number of proposals, with 84, or 28 per cent., followed by the London boroughs, with 45, or 15 per cent., and the south-east, with 44, or 15 per cent. The region with the highest number of lead councils submitting proposals was, again, the south-west, with 18 councils or 44 per cent. of its lead councils. The greatest proportion of proposals, however, came from district councils, with 107, or 36 per cent., followed by unitary authorities, with 96, or 32 per cent. County councils, with 18, or 6 per cent., submitted the lowest proportion of proposals. That perhaps shows that the higher tiers of government are less responsive to this grass-roots movement. The scale and range of the proposals submitted was incredibly diverse; I know that from having studied them late one evening. For instance, 43 per cent. wanted power given back to the local level through finance, decision-making powers or transfer of functions, whereas 25 per cent. wanted additional legislation, or existing law to be strengthened. On the other hand, 18 per cent. wanted the Government to raise the profile of certain issues or concerns, thereby providing both the resources and moral support necessary to have a local knock-on effect, and 12 per cent. wanted to encourage a change in the behaviour of groups of individuals through the use of incentives, while 7 per cent. made explicit reference to the reduction of legislative restrictions or barriers imposed at national or regional level. It is important to note, however, that relatively few—I was disappointed by this—proposed change that was relevant to the local area from which they originated, which is the basic idea behind the Sustainable Communities Act. Some work needs to be done at local authority level to ensure that we make such proposals a little more locally responsible. The vast majority of proposals would require blanket national reform. The Government and I have worked with the LGA, and I was very pleased on 23 December to receive the 199 proposals. However, once disaggregated, some 242 separate requests for Government action are in fact contained within those proposals, and they cut across Departments. Many of those would require changes to primary legislation, but we have not lost momentum. Officials from across Government met officials from the LGA to discuss each proposal in turn. This took time. Issues relating to individual parishes and individual people were discussed in depth in Whitehall, which is a reform in itself. This is what we mean when we say that the Act is a wonderful tool to encourage a new dialogue between local people and local and central Government. The LGA continued to challenge the Government and press us to address the issues and ideas raised by these local communities, and I will be talking to Councillor Mitchell about these proposals again next week as we try to come up with the shortlist that the hon. Member for Braintree and I are so keen to see. This has been a very interesting process for all concerned, not least for me. It shows the priorities of local people and the barriers to the delivery of those priorities. I congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire on his foresight in consulting people about how his Bill would work before producing it. That shows a real commitment to the values in it. It is clear from the many responses we and he received that it is absolutely vital that the system be reformed. I know that some Members of this House—we have heard from one today—disagree with the view that the Bill can work, but if there is sufficient will and terrier-like action on the ground, it can. However, that does require us—all of us—to be responsible citizens and to have an input into the process as far as possible. The Bill requires the Secretary of State to give notice of a further invitation, and I welcome that; we are more than happy to do it. That will give local authorities the time to prepare for the conversations that many of them have held so well, and that some have not. The Bill also gives us the power to specify other organisations that can submit proposals. The Government have a radical ambition for strong and accountable local government. Although we want to see local authorities firmly in the driving seat, free to innovate and take their own decisions, we also want to give others the opportunity to have their say. We are therefore delighted to explore how parish and town councils can submit proposals, in certain circumstances, further to drive progress of the idea of local action. The Bill is also fully in line with our belief that the founding principle of local government is that citizen should have the right to influence the decisions that affect their lives and communities. Through the petitions duty in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, we are supporting this principle. Regulations made under the Bill will promote that opportunity by making clearer the link between citizens' right to request that a proposal be submitted to the Secretary of State, and the opportunity for councils to demonstrate leadership by doing so. The role of the LGA, which is so significant in the process, remains and can be enhanced to give it more influence to press matters of real importance. Through the use of regulations, the hon. Gentleman is giving it the opportunity to help shape its role, to add real value and to cut red tape and the cost to the taxpayer. The crucial element of its role—a power and an opportunity for a body to influence the Secretary of State, with the expectation that the Secretary of State will reach agreement on what to take forward—remains in full. Although new section 5B would give the Secretary of State the power to appoint more than one person, I can assure the House that the Government do not intend to spend more in implementing the new arrangements than they do on the current system. The Government believe that the 2007 Act should be part of the architecture of local government. The Bill will strengthen the Act, reduce red tape and provide greater responsiveness to the needs of local people. I am extremely happy to report that the Government will support the Bill and to commend it to the House.