Localism Bill

My Lords, I declare my interest as a joint president of London Councils and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that I welcome a great deal in this Bill. I particularly welcome the general power of competence. When I was Secretary of State in charge of local government, I remember addressing an audience of local authority chief executives and seeking to justify the Government’s tight control over what local authorities did. They were totally unconvinced, not least, I suspect, because I did not convince myself. So I am delighted to see this change in the law. I also support the wider use of elected mayors, which will be subject, of course, to the successful referendum by the authority concerned. What I am not convinced about, although my noble friend referred to this briefly in her opening speech, is why it should be necessary—why it should be the role of Ministers—to set up mayors in shadow form, by order, before the change has been approved by the electors of the authority concerned. My noble friend will have to do a great deal more to convince me that those proposed new clauses in the schedule are justified. I also welcome, in general, the proposals for community empowerment in planning matters, but as other noble Lords have said, the devil will be in the detail, and we will need to examine it carefully in Committee. It has been suggested, and I have heard more than a number of assertions to this sense, that it will lead to ““busybody, middle-class nimbys”” looking after themselves—one noble Lord described them as ““the articulate narrow-minded””. However, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and I served together as trustees of the charitable arm of the British Urban Regeneration Association, and he will be as aware as I am of the hundreds of projects up and down the country, of local initiatives, by all kinds of communities, to regenerate their neighbourhoods. There is huge potential out there, and as we go through the Bill, I will want to be sure that it does make it easier for things to happen on the ground. There has been a huge amount of frustration—we have heard some of it during the course of the debate—and I want to be sure that this Bill removes some of the obstacles. I also welcome the clauses on planning. For many of the changes, again, the devil will be in the detail, but I would like to take up something the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said when he spoke about the Infrastructure Planning Commission. I am in no doubt whatever—and when we debated the Planning Bill I made these points—that it is far better for the decision on major infrastructure projects to be taken by a Minister, who is accountable to Parliament, than by an appointed quango. That is the heart of these proposals. It has been extremely encouraging to see how the IPC chairman, Sir Michael Pitt, and his colleagues, have accepted that this will be their new role. They have stayed in office, and they are getting on with the job. I greatly admire the way that they are doing this. I have, however, two significant worries. I am worried by the clauses giving Ministers power to distribute EU fines for breach of directives to local councils and other authorities. Yes, of course, if a council is failing to obey the directive on the treatment of waste and of recycling, it should bear the fine. But what are individual local councils supposed to do about atmospheric pollution in London that owes itself to Heathrow airport, or to the M25? To take one particular example, Westminster finds itself as the focus of traffic congestion from all over the country, and of course therefore has a high rate of atmospheric pollution. There must be some form of independent scrutiny of the proposed allocations, not least—and this is a point which really needs to be taken on board—because the Minister is directly interested in the result. Some of the blame may lie with Ministers. They should not be free simply to shovel it out to local authorities and other public authorities around the country. It is a complete conflict of interest, and therefore there must be an independent form of scrutiny. My other worry relates to London, and a number of noble Lords have spoken about that. Most of the Bill is concerned with devolving powers down from government to local authorities and local communities. Much in London is going the other way, up from the boroughs to the mayor and the GLA, diminishing the influence of the London boroughs. I mention just one example: the Bill has powers for the mayor to establish what are called mayoral development corporations. There is an obligation in the Bill to consult the boroughs, and a lot of other people, but that does not give the boroughs appropriate protection against unwanted and damaging MDCs in their area. We must build in better safeguards to protect the boroughs. Of course, the Olympic Park Legacy Company is one of the central purposes of this, but there could well be others, and we need to make sure that that protection will happen. One final point is that the Bill contains the right for the public and organisations and neighbourhoods to challenge local authorities, with the possibility of taking over some of their services. Why has the opportunity not been taken to allow the same people—indeed, local authorities—to challenge central government over services that they deliver in their areas, much of which could be much more effectively done locally, by local people, responding to local needs and circumstances? This is another thing which I shall want to see whether we can write into the Bill. I congratulate Ministers on bringing this forward, and this House, with all its experience, must try to make this a still better Bill.