Local Government Bill [HL]

I shall speak in support of Amendments 5 and 6. They must surely meet with the Government’s approval, making, as they do, for transparency, accountability, equity and localism. Mr David Cameron, setting out Conservative Party policy in November 2009—before he was Prime Minister—said: "““We will require the people and organisations acting for the state to be directly accountable to the people they are supposed to serve ... Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we can give people power over the services they use, over the way their tax money is spent, over how their local area is run””." It is surely self-evidently right that people in Exeter, Norwich, King’s Lynn and Yarmouth and people across the whole of Devon and Norfolk should have the right to know how the county council’s resources are being spent, district council by district council, across the range of service areas: social care, children’s services, highways maintenance, culture and libraries. I have a report from Exeter that is rather different from the report that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has just received from her friend on Devon County Council. I am advised by a very senior person in Exeter that, as in Norwich, they simply cannot establish with any accuracy or confidence how much the county council spends on services in Exeter or what its performance in delivering them is. We recommend from Norwich that, by 30 September each year, Norfolk County Council should be obliged to provide a detailed analysis of the money that it has spent and the services that it has delivered in each district council area in the previous financial year. Moreover, I propose that, when the county makes its budget for the year to come, it should equally set out in detail what money it proposes to spend on what services in each district council area. It would not be difficult for the authority to produce the financial information in that form. If it were to do so, that would cast light on whether Norfolk or Devon has been in good faith in claiming to be equally committed to the good of all the communities in the county, with their greatly varying needs, and how effective these counties have been in addressing those needs. We will see, for example, what progress the counties have made in tackling inequalities in educational attainment and in ameliorating social deprivation. Such issues are enormously important in themselves but are particularly so in this context because, in rejecting the case for unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter, the counties, supported by the Government, claimed that they could deal with these problems better. Taxpayers and citizens are entitled to see the evidence on that as it emerges. This clarity of accounting would also better enable productive partnerships between the districts and the counties. We believe that there should be a Norwich City Council scrutiny committee with the responsibility of scrutinising Norfolk County Council’s policies and spending in the area of the city. It is remarkable, as has been mentioned before in our debates, that not one member of Norfolk County Council’s cabinet lives in or represents any part of the Norwich City area, yet that cabinet routinely takes decisions that have major impacts on the lives of people in the city. My noble friend Lady Hollis explained to the House just now the fatuity of the Norwich area committee. Does the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, defend this lack of accountability? Having unitary authorities would have dealt with this problem. These are the last amendment of the afternoon and this is her last chance to accept at least these amendments.