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Disabled People (Benefits)
10.55 pm
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East): I want to present a petition on behalf of 342 people of Bolton who have either suffered long-term mental illness or who are friends or relatives of such a person, which seeks to protect their welfare benefits. It reads:
- The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons
1) Seek clarification from Government as to the plans that are being proposed and ask the Government to recognise the levels of concern and anxiety that the proposals have caused to people.
2) Urges the Secretary of State for Social Security to look for alternative ways of addressing the costs of the welfare state in preference to victimising the most vulnerable members of our society.
Local Government (Experimental Arrangements)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Allen.]
10.56 pm
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West): When I first applied for this debate, it was to be a celebration of the start of the passage through the House of the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill, which has been promoted in the other place by Lord Hunt and in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead). However, I understand that that Bill was opposed on Friday by the Conservative Whips, so this debate is more in the nature of a lament for opportunities denied, or at least delayed.
Local government in the United Kingdom, unlike that in most European countries, has no separate or independent constitutional position. The powers, functions and financing of local authorities can be altered by statute, and the Crown in Parliament could abolish them altogether.
Under the previous Government, it sometimes appeared to those of us who were then in local government that abolition was the ultimate agenda. The previous Government increasingly controlled the finances, both capital and revenue, of local councils, stripped away their ability to provide affordable housing and, through compulsory competitive tendering, tried to end the role of councils as direct service providers.
Under the previous Government, there was an increasing number of areas in which local government was simply made an agent of central Government. The expansion of the quango state removed whole functions from local government. In spite of all that, local government--predominantly, although not exclusively, Labour local government--began to reinvent and modernise local democracy.
The key features of most progressive Labour councils were their commitment to quality services, to working in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, and to making democracy in their localities more participative. They concentrated on making public services high-quality and user-friendly. For example, York council pioneered the citizens charter, which was taken over by the previous Government. Councils also pioneered customer guarantees and tenant consultation and user panels and, instead of the paternalistic provision of monolithic services for people, developed the provision of flexible services with the people.
Councils pioneered partnership, developing a facilitating role with the other players in community governance. They increasingly saw themselves not only as service providers but as facilitators and advocates for local communities, using their democratic legitimacy to take a leadership role. They also pioneered a variety of forms of more participative democracy, using citizens' juries and representative panels of citizens such as the Kirklees talkback scheme, neighbourhood forums with delegated budgets and tenant management co-operatives.
The council in Milton Keynes runs a health forum that brings together local NHS providers, the council and the voluntary sector to plan health services. The council
consulted young people in Milton Keynes before the unitary council came into effect, to ensure that it provided the services that young people wanted and identified a need for. It set up a benchmark survey of more than 1,000 local residents, backed up by citizens' panels, to consult on its budget priorities. It also set up a scrutiny committee, chaired by the main opposition group on the council, the Liberal Democrats.
Since the general election, the atmosphere has become distinctly more promising for local government. Unlike their predecessor, the new Labour Government are committed to renewing local democracy. There have been important symbols and signs of the new approach. The Government signed the European charter of local self-government, which recognises the independent democratic legitimacy of local government. They have brought into being a central-local concordat which recognises that central and local government are mutually dependent and sets out meetings at least twice a year between the Deputy Prime Minister, Cabinet and other Ministers, and leading members of the Local Government Association. The Government are committed to giving local authorities new powers to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their communities.
Lord Hunt's Bill was part of the new approach. It would have allowed councils to experiment with more effective forms of internal decision making, enabling them to give much greater clarity of direction to their programmes while retaining proper accountability to the local electorate. It was permissive, not prescriptive, and would have allowed councils to experiment in the way appropriate to them by developing cabinet-style government, decision making by lead members, or an elected mayor. I leave my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test to talk in more detail about the events of Friday's Second Reading.
Many councils have already started to develop improved internal arrangements of the sort that would be permitted by the Hunt Bill. Several London boroughs have well-developed plans, including Hammersmith and Fulham, Barnet and Islington, as have several metropolitan boroughs and unitary councils such as Bradford, Kirklees, Southampton and Leicester.
Milton Keynes unitary council was also hoping to exploit the opportunity of the Bill in two particular ways. Milton Keynes is a city with a young population. The council had attempted to set up an innovative departmental structure that split children's from adult social services and then brought together all services relating to children. Children's social services, education, leisure, and arts and museums were to be brought into the same structure, to deliver proper, comprehensive services to meet the needs of children and young people. Unfortunately, the current rules for social services committees demand complex management arrangements that add nothing to service delivery.
The second way in which Milton Keynes council had hoped to use the opportunities of the Hunt Bill was to introduce a cabinet system that would have simplified the complex committee structure set up by the unitary council, and allowed councillors to concentrate their time and resources on delivering services rather than on keeping the committee system going. I am sorry to have to say that some of these sensible measures are being opposed by some Liberal Democrat councillors. I am
particularly sorry because I know that, when the Bill was discussed in the Lords, it was supported by several Liberal Democrat--and, indeed, Conservative--peers.
I should like to quote from the speech of Baroness Maddock on 17 December. She said that she shared Lord Hunt's
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test):
I should like to add my support to the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). I was delighted to be able to pick up the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill when it came to this House from another place. It went through that other place with all-party support; indeed, several concerns expressed earlier in the Bill's passage were alleviated on Report, when all parties participated in drafting amendments to ensure that the Bill reached this House in a form that commanded a wide range of support, and that was genuinely innovative in terms of local government.
"desire to make local government much more accountable; much more accessible, particularly for constituents; and more attractive so that people will put themselves forward as councillors to serve their communities."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 December 1997; Vol. 584, c. 693.]
Some peers expressed concerns about the need for effective scrutiny of the new proposals, but those concerns were addressed in amendments before the Bill completed its stages in the Lords. I hope that those Liberal Democrats in the Lords and in the Local Government Association who support the Bill will use their power to persuade their colleagues on Milton Keynes council to stop opposing the Labour administration's attempts to modernise and simplify local democracy.
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