The Government’s new proposals for local government sound like decentralisation. Councils will get the power to create their own by-laws, and public services will get more scrutiny from the public.
But on closer inspection, it’s the sort of decentralisation one would expect from Labour. Without a reform of local government finance, Westminster still plays the tune as it pays the piper. The by-laws are spun as a new way to fine people for anti-social behaviour, as if Labour haven’t realised that enacting more and more laws is not as effective a way to curb crime as better policing of the laws we have.
Without a more dramatic shift in the way public services are delivered, the scrutiny of police and hospitals is meaningless. Hospital and police bosses, as they stand, are public officers, not politicians. While their ultimate responsibility is always to the public, democractically-elected politicians, at a local level, should get the power and responsibility and be the ones directly scrutinised for their management of those services. As things stand, offering NHS managers to the public is a shield for the fact that our Health Secretary is ultimately responsible for the whole service, but only her own consttuents will ever have the opportunity to hold her to that responsibility.
Equally, Labour’s obsession with directly-elected mayors is a key mistake. As good liberals know, power should be both as accountable and far-spread as realistically possible. Centralising so much power in a single executive is unhelathy and prone to greater abuse than a Leader held in check by a Full Council. Mayors actually signify a centralisation of power, not its dispersal towards local communities.
This isn’t the double decentralisation we were promised by David Milliband; it’s double talk. Localism is not the same as decentralisation, and most of Labour’s proposal aren’t authentically localist anyway. They still don’t get it.
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6 Comments
I don’t share your hostility to elected mayors in general, although I would certainly accept that the system that Labour have set up is pretty indefensible.
Personally, I see a great benefit in having a directly elected executive, wholly seperate from the legislature. It means that the need for party loyalty becomes less pressing. It means that, in the case of no party having overall control, deals will be done in the chamber rather than in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms (at least, to a greater extent).
There are two key problems with Labour’s mayoral system however. Firstly, these ridiculous two-thirds rules, which effectively means that a mayor elected by just 55% of the popular vote can trump a group of councillors representing around 60% of the popular vote. It makes a mockery out of accountability.
Secondly, and you’d expect me to say this, in everywhere apart from the GLA, the system has been introduced without PR. That means that the council cannot be said to properly represent the local electorate and the mayor can always claim to have a greater mandate.
In short, what could form the basis of a sound model of local, even national, government, has become utterly discredited. But I do worry that in opposing it, the Lib Dems have become infected by the vested interests of councillors and in the process thrown the baby out with the bath water.
Perhaps I’m a vested-interested councillor on this issue, but I don’t think so. 😉 Ultimately, I think the direct election of the mayor is less of a guarantee than a collegiate council system. I am not convinced that “party loyalty” is stronger there, and it is certainly the case that the executive can be more easily curbed by dissent. Ultimately, the diffusion of power is a good thing, so far as possible with retaining direct accountability.
Just to add fuel to the perception of criticism as a councillor conspiracy, here’s a snippet from the LGA’s critique which I just got e-mailed:
“The paper will not introduce a fair voting system: crucial for effective democratic renewal
It will not propose the abolition of the Council Tax and not introduce Local Income Tax: essential for fairness
It will not return Business Rates to local control: not freeing councils up to bolster their local economies
It will not return government centralised power and budgets to Town Halls: instead of double devolution it will be double cross
It will bring in “enhanced leaders and enhanced leader powers”: Mayors by the back door, and without public consent.”
Glad to see the “double” jokes coming hick and fast. 🙂
*thick
Apart from a few not very important eye-catchers (parish council by-laws!) it’s not decentralist at all. It is about centralising power inside councils (the idea of all executive power residing in the leader/mayor is appalling), within counties and nationally.
For the moment I will leave you with what I said (or what Hansard thinks I said!) in the Lords yesterday:
My Lords, the key words in the Statement which the Minister has kindly repeated are “strong direction nationally”. There are many words suggesting this is about devolution and decentralisation but I think that most of the proposals—although there are some useful relatively minor things—are about greater central direction; they are authoritarian, centralist and will lead to greater uniformity.
I am a member of a borough council in Lancashire. What got me laughing about the chart on page 37 is that it sets out what any good councillor has been doing almost every day of their life for the entire time they have been on a council—in my case for much of the past 35 years—and I am not quite clear why it needs legislation to tell councillors how to take up issues on behalf of their residents.
I shall focus on the emphasis in the White Paper on local area agreements which, from the perspective of a district councillor in the very large county of Lancashire, are neither local nor agreements; they are, very substantially, imposed from the centre. The negotiations to which the Secretary of State referred earlier in the House of Commons are very one sided. They are conducted on the basis of, “Do this; do it this way and you will get the money. Don’t do this; don’t do it this way and you won’t get the money”. A very large county such as Lancashire runs the risk that if you start including matters such as housing, leisure and so on in local area agreements, you end up with a uniform policy—a one size fits all—for a hugely diverse county, from the Fylde coast, to north Lancashire, to central Lancashire and Preston, to the east Lancashire towns and all the rural areas. There are many such counties where local area agreements are a means by which central government impose their policies, their targets and their wishes on local people.
I do not see much in the White Paper about the right to be different—not the right to be different because needs are different but because different places have similar problems, different solutions are surely relevant. If local people democratically want different solutions, surely that is what local democracy is about. Does the Minister agree that what is in the White Paper militates against that kind of local democratic diversity?
(What I actually said was “different places, similar problems – but different solutions” – the Hansard people obviously found it hard to understand such revolutionary stuff!)
Tony Greaves
Sorry, I declare an interest as an NHS manager, but, the NHS must not continue to be used as a political bargaining tool. Clearly any serious political party will have policies reagrding the nhs, but every system of traffic lights, targets, etc that has been brought in has been a total disaster for the real patient on the street. Patients are people, not statistics. Patient choice is a total misnomer. Tergaets are a fallacy. Some clinicians still act as if cost is no object (and I am afraid it is), but it is doctors, not managers who must decide who is in need of urgent treatment.
“…but it is doctors, not managers who must decide who is in need of urgent treatment.”
Sorry, but decisions about the prioritisation of limited healthcare resources cannot be left to people with no democratic accountability.