Local Government Bill [HL]

We come to the final pair of amendments today, Amendments 5 and 6. That brings us back to the issue raised by various noble Lords, including the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, which is that there are alternative ways to proceed through partnership arrangements which would have the same effect. The Bill states that it comes into force on the day that it is passed. Amendment 5 would instead allow the Secretary of State to determine when that should happen, and Amendment 6 specifies some requirements that we believe should be in place before he does so. Why are we suggesting that those pre-requirements should be in place? Back in 1994-95, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, will well remember, when Norwich narrowly failed to become a unitary authority, a strong argument was then put by Norfolk County Council that partnership arrangements could do all that was required to bridge services and increase scrutiny and accountability. That was the argument in 1994-95. Lots of promises were made. As far as I am aware, not one of those promises has been delivered. Those promises of collaborative partnership and structural arrangements were empty air. The sense of betrayal in the city was profound. Now, we read in on page 1 of the summary of the impact analysis: "““It will be for councils themselves across England to work together, as many already are, to benefit from e.g. joint working … This approach, driven by the councils themselves, will help to reduce costs and improve coordination between different tiers of local government””." In her letter of 8 July, the Minister says that the savings envisaged by unitary status should be achievable, "““through the working together more closely with the other councils in their areas””." In other words, the Minister is essentially recommending partnerships in lieu of structural reform, a point made several times by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. Fine words repeated twice. How will the Minister ensure that? She argues that joint working is an appropriate alternative to unitary status. We were told that in 1994-95, but nothing happened. The Minister has argued strongly that despite the fact that the status quo is poorer value for money than making Norwich and Exeter unitary, none the less, partnership arrangements can achieve the value for money she wants. How will she ensure that this time around? In particular, how will she ensure that the two county councils are required to provide the essential information about services, costs and clients that the two district councils need, when those same county councils have refused to divulge much of the necessary information required under previous orders? If the Minister really means what she says about joint working—I am sure that she does—she will take seriously the push for detail in Amendment 6, because if she does not, as in the previous round in 1994-95, we are back to empty platitudes, which the Minister and the department are willing to utter but not deliver. What is called for in Amendment 6? In all three examples which I have given, it calls for arrangements for intelligent partnership between county and city, but it is a partnership that must be informed. That means that the relevant information that the county holds must be available to the district councils on the effect on their services. Without that information about the cost of the services as carried out in those two district councils as measured against service delivery, those words about joint working are worthless. To say that it is up to the good will of the local authorities will not do. That was said in 1994-95, but nothing happened. If the Minister means what she says—and I am sure that she does—she needs to come in behind that request to ensure that the county is required to engage with the district councils of, respectively, Exeter and Norwich, to establish constructive partnerships. She cannot use the localism argument to deny the city’s unitary status, on the one hand and, on the other, to refuse to help us to construct intelligent partnerships, which the counties do not particularly want. The first proposition in Amendment 6 is that district councils should be able to scrutinise the county’s spending plans and financial statements. That information is not difficult to disaggregate from county totals on a district basis. It cannot be unreasonable to have that information made publicly available to sit alongside parallel information from the city councils, so that, for the first time, the residents and council tax payers, as well as the local authorities, can have a coherent and holistic analysis of combined local authority policies, priorities and expenditure. As it stands, the counties are under no obligation whatever to tell the city what they propose to do in the city, even when it affects the delivery of the services that the city, as district authority, is responsible for. For example, Norfolk has reorganised the geographical areas for children's services by brigading Norwich, the most deprived district in Norfolk, with one of the more affluent, the wealthiest, South Norfolk. Unless we can disaggregate the statistics between those two authorities about service needs, service delivery and costs, the result of putting the two together—the poorest and one of the wealthiest—is a fudged mean average, and Norwich children will fail to get the services that they need. Incidentally, the district council, as a housing authority, will not be able appropriately to help vulnerable families with vulnerable children. Even more urgently, the coalition Government propose to replace regional development agencies with local enterprise partnerships. I do not express a view about one or the other at the moment, but that is currently under consultation, and will probably be in operation by next April. They are to be local authority and business-led, covering a natural economic area. That makes perfectly good sense. In the south-west, that would probably embrace Devon and Cornwall in one new partnership. At the moment, district councils are finding it very difficult to be allowed to engage in that. The counties and, in Devon, the two existing unitaries, seem to be the only bodies that count in the new partnerships. If Norwich and Exeter cannot be unitary, yet at the same time they are the key drivers of economic development and jobs in the counties, surely they should be represented on those bodies as of right. Will the Minister give guidance to that effect? In one field only, as a city council in Norwich, we have been able to disaggregate the statistics for the city, as opposed to other district councils. I refer to education. That shows that the city is underfinanced by £12 million a year to cross-subsidise small rural schools. I support keeping small rural schools open—it is a way to keep vibrant local communities—but not at the expense of stripping out education services from some of the most deprived council estates in the eastern region. The alternative is to impose a proper precept to pay for it, not to asset-strip the city. Had we become unitary, we would have had a recalculated grant formula which would have rebalanced spending. We now need that same information to press for fairer spending across the county. To do that, we need the statistics for the districts. That must be a reasonable request, but we are resisted at every stage. Although we were promised some such response in 1994-95, it never happened. It will be very interesting to know whether, similar promises having been made to the Boundary Committee by the counties, we will get it in future. I doubt it, unless we have the help and support of Ministers. The citizens of this country and the council tax payers in the relevant cities are entitled to know that information if they are to be active members of their community. The county has set up a Norwich area committee—this relates to the second part of the amendment—but it meets just twice year, has no senior members on it and is powerless. We need ways of ensuring that Norwich city councillors and Exeter city councillors can properly air concerns on behalf of their constituents. For example, on urban planning, when the city of Norwich and Norwich businesses wanted to pedestrianise a central shopping street called Westlegate—we pioneered pedestrianisation in the city of Norwich in the 1960s under the late planning officer Alfie Wood—a county committee with no Norwich members vetoed it, presumably because they wanted to drive their cars through a shopping street which business wanted pedestrianised. They would not move in response. In the next two years, as the noble Baroness, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, know, all the street lights in Norfolk and Norwich will be turned off at midnight. That is great in the Fleggs and the rural areas, and I have no problem with it, but, unless they can obtain and afford a taxi, Norwich residents, including me, will not be able to take the 10 o’clock train home from London because most of the walk home will occur in total darkness. The risk of mugging and assault is real for anyone, and the perceived threat, I fear, is even greater. How many people, especially women, who, unlike me, have no car or who, unlike me, cannot afford a taxi, and for whom there is no public transport, will have to risk attack in the city of Norwich before the county understands that what makes sense for a Broadland village, which I respect, is nonsense in the city. Would the Minister, who is a former leader of Kensington and Chelsea, tolerate that in her borough? Norfolk County Council, as in 1994, recently said to the Boundary Committee recently that it would set up a Norwich area board which would include a dedicated portfolio holder—a member of the cabinet with special responsibility for Norwich—and that it would devolve certain powers. Will this proposal be taken forward as given in an understanding or commitment to the Boundary Committee? Has it been taken forward? You must be joking. There is a litany of empty promises, vacuous promises and broken promises, and then the Minister is surprised when the Boundary Committee recognises how poorly served Norwich is by the present county council arrangements. I understand and accept that senior members of the county council, because they are Conservative, do not live in or represent Norwich. That is the democratic will of the people. What I cannot accept is their apparent arrogance and indifference to the city’s needs, even though it is the powerhouse of the county. They say repeatedly that they did not want Norwich to become unitary because it would rip the heart out of the county, but they treat Norwich not as its heart—if they did, they would pay rather greater attention to it—but as something like an appendix, which may grumble occasionally, but is irrelevant to the county body’s functioning. Finally, the same issue and arguments apply to the police. Norwich has just one representative on a police authority of nine members, even though a third of all crime in Norfolk is in Norwich and even though there are double the number of incidents of anti-social behaviour per capita in Norwich than in the rest of the county. Equally, on the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority, the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 2,000 and two constables, has a seat, but Exeter, with a population not of 2,000 but of 125,000, does not. Yet in Exeter, the police rate is huge—it is larger than the precept that the district council makes on its own citizens—and Exeter has no right to a voice on the police authority. That simply cannot be right. Why is it that there is more crime in cities? We know that it is drugs and drink and the people who come into the city: the unemployed, the young, the homeless, the transient, the disturbed and the distressed. That is true of most cities, and it is before we get to the rowdiness of young people wanting a good time. Yet not all of this is understood by rural councillors or by a police authority whose members live miles away. As a result, we get rural policing standards imposed on a city. When we were unitary, we had a joint Norwich and Norfolk constabulary, which balanced views and needs on a proper partnership basis. Even after unitary status was taken from us in 1974, in the later 1980s, during the miners’ strike, when Kent miners wanted to come to Norwich to block foreign coal being imported on to our quays, as leader, I could go to the Norwich chief superintendent, and we could sort it out. There was no trouble; neither the foreign coal nor the Kent miners found it wise to come to Norwich. That sort of partnership is no more. Despite the best efforts of the police operationally—this is no criticism of officers of the police force—the county police authority has no understanding of city needs because there is no appropriate, proportionate presence on it. This amendment would help to rectify that. To conclude, Amendments 5 and 6 effectively call on the Minister to make good her words today and ensure that the partnership that she is praying in aid in lieu of structural reorganisation is delivered. I simply ask her whether she means what she says—I am sure that she does—and will she therefore help to ensure that her words are taken forward in the practices of county and district councils? Her reply to this amendment will tell us, I hope, what we need to know. I beg to move.