Welcome to the third in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.
Traditionally Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have far from seen eye to eye over local government with devolving liberals and centralising conservatives taking fundamentally different approaches. However, this policy area offers a classic example of Cameron’s move to take his party towards a liberal centre-ground creating some genuine overlap in outlook where very little existed before. Large parts of the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto on devolving power could have been taken from previous Liberal Democrat policy statements and with a minister for decentralisation there’s a fighting chance that the talk will turn into reality.
So this part of the coalition document contains much that Liberal Democrats will be happy with – but with a significant financial caveat.
“Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy” is promised for local government. Part of this vision is fleshed out in more detail with Regional Spatial Strategies being axed and powers returning to councils, more power in the planning system going to communities, the Government Office for London being abolished, more power for communities to save local services by taking them over and a general power of competence for local councils.
A mix of green policies are thrown in – protecting the Green Belt and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), measures to bring empty homes in to use and implementing the Sustainable Communities Act. Housing also gets a quartet of other pledges: more protection against bailiffs and repossession, more shared ownership scheme, easier creation of housing trusts and an encouragement to turn farm buildings into homes.
The Conservative obsession with directly elected Mayors is played out again, with referendums promised in the 12 largest English cities. At least the policy is to have referendums, rather than impose them, so the public will get to decide. On the up side, councils will be given the option to return to the committee system and the Standards Board regime gets the chop. Changes to local government in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon are also halted.
More controversial are the financial proposals because, despite the general pledge for increasing financial autonomy, the agreement also says that “we will freeze Council Tax in England for at least one year, and seek to freeze it for a further year”. Add to this the cuts in local government funding announced yesterday and the outlook for council finances looks very, very tight.
There is however a civil liberties bonus in this section: “We will ban the use of powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by councils, unless they are signed off by a magistrate and required for stopping serious crime”.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Suitably inspired, I return to Suffolk
Lord Bonkers' Diary: My new friends with the webbed back feet and scaly tails
Investment, investment, investment.
Definitely a Lib Dem conference!
Ed Davey tries to name all the Lib Dem MPs while on a roller coaster
Fraser's West End ward surgeries later today #dundeewestend
What's next?
Simon R
Nigel Jones
Roland
Joe Bourke
Matt (Bristol)
8 Comments
Speaking of Civil Liberties, don’t you find it ironic that on the day the Queen will be saying that “my government will legislate for the right to peaceful protest without fear”, long term peace protester Brian Haw is forcibly removed from outside Parliament. Will we hear Nick Clegg, or for that matter, any Lib Dem denouncing the heavy handed police tactics? New politics seems strangely familiar.
Decentralisation is good, a shame it has to come along with such tight finances.
@jayu, I wonder if any Liberal Democrat M.P.’s who do come forward and object to the heavy handling of Brian Haw will get a suitable amount of credit for it, or will they barely get a mention, while people who prefer complaining to seeing anything positive just move on to something else?
As far as I understand it Brain Haw was arrested for resisting the search of his tent.
The talk of Conservative fondness for centralisation is overstated: it was the Tories who initiated the fragmentation of our health and education services, giving us the mess of local boards & trusts that have reduced provision to a postcode lottery. Thatcher didn’t like local government because it threatened to compromise her economic programme, but after scrapping the old rates Tories soon saw the beauty of decentralisation as a vehicle for regressive tax and social policy, with councils in deprived urban areas having to charge residents ever more without any hope of delivering the wellbeing available to more prosperous and lightly-taxed ones, while central government gets stripped of some of its across-the-board responsibilities. LibDem enthusiasm for the project neatly sidesteps communities’ vastly differing economic and social resources: inviting them to sink or swim offers more of the two-nations debacle that we’ve seen in education under both larger parties. As for “more power for communities”, in the real world what decentralisation usually means is substituting one remote set of officials and party hacks for another, replacing Fortress Whitehall with Fortress Town Hall. It all looks fine on paper with the crushing material inequalities neatly airbrushed out, but in practice it leaves most of us paying more for less and the worst-off areas spiralling into decay as local resources prove inadequate to the burden.
It is quite clear to me that money is going to be tight, everywhere but the wealthiest areas are really going to notice, and yes, the Conservatives are not into redistributing wealth, but the difference between “Fortress Whitehall” and “Fortress Town Hall” is that “Fortress Town Hall” is geographically much easier for people to reach, and staffed with people you can get hold more easily.
No mmSTV for local government elections, then? Shame. It’s apparently one of our goals, according to the libdems site.
@ RCM, 25th May 2010 at 1:34 pm
“’Fortress Town Hall’ is geographically much easier for people to reach, and staffed with people you can get hold more easily.”
Mine isn’t! And there’s little point getting hold of the staff if there aren’t the resources locally to do what needs doing. It’s no use just saying local is good because it’s local: for millions of us in less affluent communities it simply isn’t. Nor do I fancy depending on a structure in which provision can so easily become subject to “who you know”.
Nor does it mean you’re that much more likely to wind up with the sort of policies you want: I’m now under three tiers of Tory-led government, and my local community (almost entirely ignored by the council as electorally superfluous) voted solidly Labour. Local communities need a say in local affairs. But offloading essential social provision onto local authorities and self-appinted neighbourhood quangos doesn’t make government any more democratic, responsive or efficient.
If all those people who spend time protesting in Parliament Square were instead to have put their energies into electoral campaigning for us, they would achieve FAR MORE. In so many places right-wing Tory and New Labour types get elected because there are not enough people to put the case for something else.
The left has totally failed this country and its people, and the fact that they regard silly demos like squatting in Parliament Square as so much more important than actually winning over ordinary people through direct conatct with them shows that.