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12.9 pm
Ms Hilary Armstrong (North-West Durham): The debate has been interesting. I was astonished at the speech of the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn). I assumed--naive as it may have been--that in an Adjournment debate on the review of local government, he would want to talk about his constituency and the wishes that he had expressed during the review for the future of his constituency and the unitary tier. However, he did not mention Dartford or the review of local government in Kent. The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) mentioned that subject. I know that he and the hon. Member for Dartford have disagreed about the way forward for Dartford and Gravesham, so perhaps that is why the hon. Member for Dartford did not raise the subject.
Today's argument has supposedly been about the review of local government. In the debate, most Conservative Members have attacked local democracy. They do not seem to like the fact that the people have spoken--
Mr. Jacques Arnold:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Armstrong:
No, I have only a short time in which to make my speech.
The people have left this country with only13 Conservative-run councils. There could not possibly have been 20 Tory authorities on the list of 20 authorities that the hon. Member for Dartford held up because there are no longer that many Tory authorities in the country. He seems to be concerned that the people of Britain have voted Labour at local level and that that stark fact leaves him with no arguments about the future of local government.
As I have argued from the Dispatch Box on several occasions, the Government have landed us with a more centralised system of government than any other country in Europe. We hoped that the Local Government Commission would attack that state of affairs--we have tackled the issue when debating regional assemblies. Conservative Members seem to forget that there has been a considerable devolution from Government of functions, but not of accountability and democracy. We have a strong regional tier of government: it comprises civil servants who operate within the regions with considerable powers and with responsibility for vast sums. They decide on single regeneration budgets and on the money that comes from Europe. They have incredible powers and are accountable only to Ministers, who have little time to spend in those regions or to deal with problems there.
I thought that in today's debate hon. Members from Kent would want to raise an issue that involves the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban
Regeneration, the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who is not here today. He is the Minister with responsibility for the Medway towns, but he has also had to make decisions about the Local Government Commission and take responsibility for them. There may be a conflict of interest there.
We have a strong regional tier of government that is simply not accountable. I do not believe that people in this country want money to be spent without any accountability and without their being able to have a say locally. The hon. Member for Dartford's most telling point was when he railed against regional proposals.He hit the nail on the head when he said that there was no support from Back Benchers and that he could not detect any support in the Chamber or, thankfully, from Government. Regional government is not meant to make life easier for us in Westminster; it is meant to represent effectively the people in the regions.
The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) and I "share" a village. I represent one street in the village of Blanchland and he represents the rest of the village, which is north of the Tyne. People there feel that they are not adequately represented in Whitehall and Westminster. Decisions are being made in which they want to participate and they want a clearer understanding of how money from Europe is distributed and topped up. When villagers in my constituency do not benefit from RECHAR because the Government have pushed the money into other regions, they want to know why the Government take decisions centrally that do not reflect the way in which money from the European Community should be distributed throughout the regions. The Government are far too centralised; strategic decision making occurs at regional level, but there is no accountability for it.
The hon. Member for Hexham is new to the region in comparison to some of us oldies, so I shall explain what happened in the early 1980s. The Confederation of British Industry in the region, the Trades Union Congress in the region and local authorities in the area came together and recognised the need for a regional response to the de-industrialisation of our area. I moved the resolution at the Labour party conference and the regional TUC conference to set up the Northern Development Company. We set it up ourselves; it eventually won support from the Government and now receives backing from them. It has played a significant role in attracting inward investment to the north and in ensuring that the north has been able to fight back against de-industrialisation and its consequent heavy job losses and depopulation. The region recognised that it needed a coherent voice and a strategic arm. The company has always recognised--as would the proposed northern regional assembly, which is also to be set up on a voluntary basis--that there should be a more accountable voice working alongside it, which is what our regional assemblies are designed to provide. We have proposed a referendum to bring such voices into the process.
Such matters do not involve serving politicians or servicing the needs of politicians; they involve responding to the needs of people locally.
Mr. Jacques Arnold:
The hon. Lady said that the issue should not involve serving politicians. Does the Labour Front-Bench team support the serving politicians--the Labour leaders of Kent county council and Gravesham
Ms Armstrong:
I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to ask that question. We have never moved from supporting, in principle, the idea of unitary authorities--
Mr. Arnold:
In north-west Kent?
Ms Armstrong:
In north-west Kent or wherever there is local support for it. Our complaint, like that of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel), is that the Government set up the review in such a pathetic and ineffective way that they have ended up with another dog's breakfast.
Local government is sick of being tinkered with and local people are sick of never being allowed to work out a solution that meets their needs. If the Government had identified the functions and decided the size of authority that they wanted, we should not be in the present position and the people of Kent would not be in their present position. Lack of clarity from the start is the reason that the problems have not been solved. [Interruption.]
It is no good Conservative Members trying to blame us. We have not been in government. Conservative Governments have landed local government and local people with the mess, and it is about time that they recognised that they must work more effectively and democratically.
Signs in the past week have given no cause for hope that the Government are recognising people's crying need and demand for proper democratic accountability. Tragically, the Government move daily away from that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir Paul Beresford):
The debate has been much more interesting than I expected. It has moved from one side of the country to the other and from Scotland to the far south--indeed, I thought that we would cross the channel at one point. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) must be thanked for initiating the debate and for broadening it.
There was not much discussion of the review, which I believed was the theme of debate, but the debate became much more interesting. As hon. Members are aware, there was an opportunity for my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) to argue the case for his area, which has been argued with some force during the consultation period. I note the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) returning to the Chamber; he made a similar case.
The consultation period has just ended. Decisions will be taken and an announcement made soon. I suspect that debate about that will continue for some time and that the
hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) will continue to whinge, as he has today, with little opportunity to gain anything from it.
The hon. Member for North-West Durham(Ms Armstrong) was slightly caught out because she seemed to be hurt by the two-minute speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) and concentrated on him.
There was some mention of the fact that Labour-controlled and Liberal-controlled councils are slightly more numerous than previously. Of course, local elections will go that way, but local people are learning that that is an expensive option. It means increased and high regulation and high interference. People must learn that classic lesson to help them assess the merits of the argument made by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), who sought more centralisation of local government and greater control. I shall return to that.
The hon. Member for North-West Durham spoke about Government offices. Government offices are in the regions so that we achieve closer contact and a closer feel, but the hon. Lady views that in a paranoid way. The old saying that she always perceives the light at the end of the tunnel as an oncoming train is appropriate. She must recognise that the siting of those offices gives Ministers the opportunity to obtain useful local information from people working in the area, but ultimately decisions are made by Ministers.
The most interesting, and the major, part of the debate was about centralising local government and inserting another managerial tier. I have a natural tendency to support the idea of unitary authorities because I suffered under the Greater London council and the Inner London education authority, and I emphasise that we did suffer under local and central government in those days.
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