Localism Bill

My Lords, like many in the House, I warmly welcome this Localism Bill and the desire to empower communities and shift power to local communities. Many of us will be aware of the feeling of collapse of community and the undermining of democracy through apathy and non-engagement. This is a very timely measure to try to empower the local and I want to offer a very brief view from the ground; because if we are talking about empowering the local, we need to know who constitute the local and how people can be drawn into these processes and take part in the ordering of local society. The clue comes in the language. The Bill uses the phrase ““community empowerment””. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, talking about Athens and Pericles, you might just about imagine a community in Athens, which was, I think, about 5,000 people. You might also have a sense of community in a medieval town, with its segments of people living in different crafts. However, since the rise of 19th-century industrial cities, modern cities and now the mobility of people in rural areas, the physicalness that created community has disappeared largely from people’s lives. The Bill recognises this, in that although it talks about communities and community empowerment, it majors in its solution on the notion of neighbourhood, which is rather different. It talks about neighbourhood forums, neighbourhood plans and referendums—mechanisms for a neighbourhood to try to help community happen. But there are very important informal elements that create community and give people a sense of well-being and direction in life which need to be taken account of if these neighbourhood mechanisms are going to be inhabited as the Bill envisages. I would like to share the results of research by the Church Urban Fund, which has looked at 232 faith-based projects working in the 10 per cent most needy areas of our country. It would seem to me that the test of any localism is how you include those normally excluded. This research looks at the 10 per cent of those in the most needy areas and the projects working with them. Sixty per cent of those projects report an alarming collapse in their capacity to engage with this local agenda—partly through the withdrawal of grants and partly through the collapse of the capacity of local government to be an agency in making communities. That is a very serious picture. If one test of localism is how we involve the most easily excluded, we have to think carefully about inhabiting this Localism Bill and how it can really work. The danger in the way the Bill is couched is that neighbourhood mechanisms will most easily be inhabited by those who already have economic and social capital. There is a great danger that assets and services could be taken over and controlled by private finance and particular interest groups and not really draw on the local community. Research that the Church Urban Fund has done in my own diocese showed the struggles of a family centre trying to create families with stable lives and, in youth work, with trying to bring young people into society. We have to invest in these things. Besides trying to create the opportunity and structures that the Bill highlights, you will empower people’s participation only if you give them the resources to do it. There is a tremendous resource deficit, particularly in the most needy communities. There must be some joined-up thinking in government if we are really going to make this Localism Bill operate. It is a thing of its time and a very wise proposal, but it must be substantiated by serious investment—not just in the mechanisms and opportunities but in the resources to local communities. I ask the Minister to consider very seriously the litmus test of localism, which is including those most easily excluded. Can that be somehow taken very seriously in working the proposals further, with neighbourhood mechanisms being developed so that they can reach out to community life and help community life happen more seriously?