Localism Bill

There is not time, I am afraid. The Secretary of State told council leaders that they were in charge of about £38 billion each year, no strings attached. Since then, the Conservative-led Government have subjected council leaders to savage front-loaded cuts and to a stream of exhortations on what they should and should not do with their budgets. Ministers have told councils that they have a duty to preserve library services, that they should treat voluntary organisations fairly, that they have no justification to tighten eligibility for social care and that they should not issue redundancy notices immediately. Department for Communities and Local Government Ministers are telling councils to cut senior management posts, merge services with other councils and cut posts that Ministers see as non-jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith told us that senior executive pay cuts and shared service cuts each contribute only 1% of the cuts that are needed, whereas 50% of the savings will be made by cuts in adult services and children's services, including a disturbing 60% cut in funding for Sure Start—a service that the Prime Minister said the Tories would protect. My hon. Friend told us about an individual who was paid £700,000 in consultancy fees over four years, while drawing a £50,000 pension from the same council. On hearing such facts, we have to question why Hammersmith and Fulham is the apple of the Secretary of State's eye. Indeed, the Secretary of State has called any council leader who could not predict cuts of £40 million to £100 million negligent"““to the point of stupidity””." DCLG Ministers also want to direct councils on small details. They want to tell them how they should empty their bins, ban them from putting out newsletters and tell them to reduce street signs and bollards. That is the background to the 126 new secondary powers that the Secretary of State wants to take in the Bill. The general power of competence should give councils the freedom to act ambitiously on behalf of local residents, but the Secretary of State wants to take major powers to restrict how councils may use it and attach conditions to its use. He also wants the power to"““amend, repeal, revoke or disapply””" any statutory provision affecting or overlapping with the general power. That is a very broad power for a Secretary of State to ask for, and it undermines the concept of localism. It raises serious concerns, particularly because, as we have heard, he wants to direct councils on every aspect of their work, from how they manage their budgets through to what they should do about street signs. The Secretary of State wants to order 12 of our cities to change their governance model to the mayoral model, and to appoint their current leaders as shadow mayors. Furthermore, he wants the power to order any local authority to start operating a mayoral governance model, subject only to a later referendum. Where is the belief in localism in all that? The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), said in September:"““This Government will let councils and communities decide how to organise themselves. We don't presume to know more than local people about how their area should be run.””" However, the Government do presume to know more than local people, because the Secretary of State wants the power to dictate to councils exactly which model of governance they must adopt. Also, there is no level playing field for councils that opt to retain cabinet or committee systems, as they will not be able to bid for new powers in the same way as elected mayors using the new provisions in the Bill. To Labour Members, the scrutiny powers of local government are a key aspect of democratic accountability. In the context of the Government's massive and unnecessary reorganisation of the NHS, about which much has been said today, powers for local councils to scrutinise new health commissioning arrangements are more important than ever, and councillors should be given adequate such powers. It was interesting to hear hon. Members of all parties refer to that matter. Councils opting for the committee governance system will not even be required to have a scrutiny committee. We believe that to ensure accountability, those councils should have at least one scrutiny committee, in line with councils that have a mayor or council leader. The Bill proposes local referendums, a community right to challenge, a community right to buy and a duty on councils to maintain lists of assets of community value. As we have heard, Labour would welcome some of those proposals if the legislation introducing them were better thought through. As it stands, the Bill provokes more questions than it answers. It will lead to extra burdens on local councils, which are already struggling to maintain local services in the face of the Government's swingeing, front-loaded budget cuts. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) highlighted how the community right to buy, which has been tried in Scotland, is an empty gesture without funding. On local referendums, we support greater public engagement in the political process, but much more should be decided locally. For instance, we do not understand how it can be up to the Secretary of State to decide what is a local matter. The proposals on the new community right to challenge and the duty on local authorities to maintain a list of assets of community value are ill thought through. Despite there being no definition of the term ““assets of community value””, 10 powers are proposed for the Secretary of State to make regulations on those lists. The DCLG note on the extra powers proposed in the Bill, which is a fascinating document, states that the debates during the passage of the Bill will constitute the principal initial scrutiny of the scheme, and I have to ask Ministers why that is the case. There could have been pre-legislative scrutiny, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said that it cried out for it. That would have been preferable to giving the Secretary of State powers to regulate, order and specify matters that would be better decided locally. The Bill aims to allow communities a say on developments in their area through the planning system, but those measures are particularly poorly thought through. Indeed, the Royal Town Planning Institute says that work is needed on the Bill"““to remove those barriers in its drafting that deaden its effectiveness and hinder the ability of Government to achieve its own objectives””" and that"““the lack of a coherent strategic planning system combined with the complexity of the neighbourhood planning system””" that the Bill proposes will"““hinder…economic recovery…addressing climate change and enhancing the environment””." On that last point, 17 organisations in the Wildlife and Countryside Link say that the Bill must:"““Introduce…strategic planning across local authority boundaries””." They feel that the Bill risks creating a two-tier system in which"““only well-resourced neighbourhoods can take part””," which echoes the comments that we have heard from many hon. Members. The Government have made the wrong choices in their proposals on social housing and the rights of people who depend on it. On that and other proposals in the Bill, there has been scarce opportunity for scrutiny—indeed, a rushed consultation closed only today. Housing and homelessness charities have rightly criticised the desire of Lord Freud, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to weaken the rights of homeless families. The Bill proposes to strip them of the right to any say over the accommodation that they are offered. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends spoke about the fact that the Bill will mean that social tenants lose their right to social housing if their circumstances change. Families who play by the rules and improve their lot could be at risk of losing their homes. The Conservative party said in April that it had no policy to change the current or future security of tenure of tenants in social housing, but the Bill contains provisions to do that. The Government have a record of breaking their word—on VAT, on the education maintenance allowance and on tuition fees—and now council and housing association tenants will see whether the Government keep their word. If the Secretary of State were a true champion of localism, he would have proposed real freedoms for councils, rather than give himself wide-ranging new powers to direct them. He would have produced a Bill that engaged local people in planning their neighbourhoods at the same time as promoting sustainable development and protecting the environment, and he would have fought for a fair and manageable financial settlement for local councils. Had he done so, councils could work on giving their residents a real say in how their local areas are run, rather than focus all their energy on making cuts. My hon. Friends said that the Bill is the worst of all worlds, that it will set community empowerment back years, that true localism will not emerge without a fair settlement for local government, that the Bill gives rights but no resources to back them up, that it is a shambolic cover-up, that it is not fair and not progressive, and that it fools no one. I urge hon. Members with concerns about the Bill to join us in supporting the amendment tonight.