Localism Bill

From my point of view, if this provides a bit more flexibility to deal with local holidays and things like that, it is welcome, but the whole thing is still complete nonsense. The idea that local authorities need to be told exactly what the minimum or maximum periods are, or need new rules to say, ““This is exactly the flexibility you can have to increase it, or reduce it, or whatever””, is treating local authorities, as I said before, first of all like wholly owned subsidiaries of national government, and secondly like a kindergarten which needs to have its whole life organised for it by people from above. It is absolutely crazy and is typical of the entire ethos which lies behind the Bill. All the good stuff in the Bill is being ruined by this complete nonsense that local authorities have to be told what to do and how to do it in detail. I was thinking about this over dinner. I said before that it is to do with local authority cultures. Local authorities will never learn to be grown-up people who can make their own decisions and organise their own lives if this culture continues. My honourable friend Andrew Stunell, one of the Ministers responsible for the Bill, complains almost every time I see him that he goes to local authorities and they keep asking him how they are going to deal with the new general power of competence. He says, ““It is a new general power of competence and you yourselves will decide how you’re going to deal with it””. That is wonderful, but all through the Bill we have all these detailed regulations that go against that. Local authorities nowadays will not do anything unless they have such regulations. So long as these regulations continue, local authorities will lack imagination and enterprise. They will be the opposite of what we want them to be. The civil servants and the Government have to let go. Until they do so, there is no hope.