Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:
“this House, whilst affirming its belief in the important principle of devolving power to local people and their elected representatives, declines to give a Second Reading to the Localism Bill because the proposed devolution of power to local authorities is undermined both by the extent to which the Bill hands powers to the Secretary of State to over-ride those devolved powers and by the extent of powers of the Secretary of State to direct local authorities in their governance arrangements, and because the community empowerment and neighbourhood planning sections of the Bill, which have been put together hastily and without adequate consultation with important stakeholders, would cause the planning functions of local authorities to become incoherent and ineffective and create new costly and complex systems of service procurement and would reduce the effectiveness of local authorities; and is strongly of the opinion that the publication of such a Bill should have been preceded by both fuller consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill.”
After all the delays, the false storms, the spin and the briefings, finally we have the Bill where it should be—before the House. It is a Bill that we will demonstrate over the coming weeks will not, I am afraid, revolutionise local politics, empower the masses to shake up their town halls or reinvigorate local democracy. It is a Bill that the Business Secretary rightly described as “not thought through”. Above all, the Bill empowers one person: the Secretary of State. We believe in devolving power to local communities and giving people a real say in how their local area is run: we believe that power should rest in the hands of the many, not the few; and we are optimistic because we have faith that there are few problems so intractable that local communities do not ultimately have the answer.
We would welcome and support a Bill, therefore, that genuinely devolved powers, which is what the Localism Bill was meant to do. We were promised a radical redistribution of power from central Government to people —a new dawn for people power and a groundbreaking shift in power to councils and communities. We were told that this would be the first Government to leave office with much less power in Whitehall than they started with. Today we see that that is just another broken promise. If page 1 of the Bill gives local councils the power to do whatever they like to improve their local areas, why do we need a further 405 pages?
This Bill fails to live up to its name. For all the Government’s talk of localism, the Bill does nothing to convince us that it is anything more than a smokescreen for unprecedented cuts to local communities up and down the country. All those warm words about devolving power and empowering communities ring hollow when, at the same time, local councils face cuts that go deeper than in almost any other Whitehall Department; cuts that fall heaviest in the first year; cuts that hit the most deprived communities the hardest. There is nothing localist about that.
Let us nail the myth that local councils can spare front-line services simply by cutting executive pay, trimming waste and sharing backroom functions, because they cannot. I know that maths is obviously not the Secretary of State’s strong point, because last week he was telling the newspapers about how good the Tory canvass returns were looking in Oldham. We support greater transparency in the pay of senior officials in the public sector and the measures to increase pay accountability in local government, and the right hon. Gentleman does not need a calculator to work out that cutting executive pay and streamlining administration will not help a single council to avoid cutting front-line services.
Simon Hughes
The right hon. Lady produced some wry smiles when she said how strongly Labour had been in favour of devolving to local councils. I would like her to be honest, at the beginning of the debate, about her own legacy. Was the previous 13 years of central power and no devolution a mistake that she now greatly regrets, or do all local councils and everybody else have some sort of fallacious memory? Have we all missed something, because that is not their view on the ground, whatever colour they are?
Caroline Flint
I think that what we can see is a steady devolution to local government. I can see—[Interruption.] Interestingly enough, I can see how clauses in the Bill build on Labour’s record in local government. The problem occurs when the right hon. Gentleman tries to suggest that the Localism Bill will shape the future of local government. I am afraid that what will shape the future of local government and how it operates with its partners in the voluntary and private sectors are the cuts, which are doing such a large amount of damage to some of those great partnerships. I refuse to accept from those on the Government Benches that somehow they invented localism or opportunities for communities to take control of assets and have a say. That is just not true.
Caroline Flint
I will give way again in a little while.
Let us look at Islington council, of which Labour took control in May. The previous Liberal Democrat administration appointed a chief executive on a salary of £220,000. The Labour council cut that salary by £60,000—a significant sum and a good example of a Labour council delivering value for money. However, that is a drop in the ocean against the £40 million-worth of savings that Islington has to find. The Secretary of State knows that the Bill does nothing for councils up and down the country that are struggling with the most difficult finance settlement in a generation. It is not localist to cripple local councils with devastating cuts and to stop them delivering the essential services on which local communities rely.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Has the right hon. Lady noted that Moody’s, the credit rating agency, stated last week that it is only the coalition Government’s deficit reduction plan that is saving our triple A rating? If we lose that, the markets will force far higher cuts on us.
Caroline Flint
I do not sign up to the view that somehow the country was on the brink of bankruptcy. That is absolutely ridiculous. We should be asking why, given all the measures that the Tory-led Government have instigated since the general election, growth is not higher, and why unemployment is not going down more quickly. That is the question that the Government have to answer. Up and down the country, because of the devastating cuts to local government and the front-loading of those cuts, the Government are sucking the life out of local communities that are trying to rebuild and create the growth that is so essential.
Caroline Flint
I will give way in a little while, but I want to make some progress.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Secretary of State has been captured by Whitehall. In the eight months since his appointment, the Cabinet’s champion for local communities has bothered to make only six visits. Perhaps that is why he is so dangerously out of touch. To be fair, although he does not visit much, he tries to keep in touch by writing. Week after week, local councils are inundated by missives, diatribes and diktats from Ministers, lecturing them on how to organise a street party for the diamond jubilee and on the right way to celebrate Christmas, instructing them on what their street signs should look like and when to empty the bins, and telling them to axe their council newspapers even if it costs more to put the notices in the local paper. That is not localism, and nor is much of the Bill. It is no good providing a general power of competence in one clause if the next four clauses give the Secretary of State the power to curtail it.
We believe that elected mayors can offer effective local leadership. That is why we introduced the model, giving local councils and local people the power to elect a mayor if they wanted one. However, the only person whom the Bill gives a vote to is the Secretary of State.
Caroline Flint
I will give way shortly, but I want to finish this point, because the Secretary of State has made much of his devolution of powers in relation to mayors. The only person whom the Bill gives a vote to in relation to mayors is the Secretary of State. How democratic is it for the Secretary of State to appoint a shadow mayor ahead of a referendum for local people? Would not such a person have an advantage when standing for mayor? It cannot be right or democratic for the leader of whatever party it might be to have such an advantage in a mayoral election.
The Bill could have encouraged and empowered more people to get involved in the way their community is run and made local councils more responsive to the communities they serve. Instead, it abolishes the duty on councils to provide information to people about how their local council works and how they can get involved. It also states that councils no longer have to bother replying to petitions from local people. I do not understand that.
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to the right hon. Lady for giving way; we are obviously getting on better now. She talks about democracy. Can she explain how democratic it was, over 13 years of a Labour Government, to increase the amount of ring-fencing from 4% to 15% of local government spend? Was not that simply a case of Labour saying that Brown knew best?
Caroline Flint
In some cases, there was an argument for some ring-fencing, and I am not going to step away from that. I am glad to say, however, that as we moved through from ring-fencing to local area agreements, we encouraged local councils and their partners in the police, health and elsewhere to come forward with plans of their own. That is what was happening. I think I am right in saying that the present Administration agree with the work on Total Place. They were going to give it another name, but they still agreed with the principle of partners coming together in that way. However, there is nothing in the Bill to help Total Place, or whatever it was going to be called under the coalition Government, and that is a crying shame.
Toby Perkins
My right hon. Friend is being very generous in taking interventions, and I thank her for taking one from this side of the House. Do the councils that she meets think that they are better off now that, instead of getting ring-fenced funds, their funds are being abolished by the Secretary of State?
Caroline Flint
I do not think that the many councils that have had their area-based grants removed are singing from the rooftops about the end of ring-fencing. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it is not the most deprived communities that are being paid; they are losing out hand over fist.
Rebuilding trust in politics and engaging people in the political process is vital, but the Bill could undermine standards in public life by making codes of conduct for councillors voluntary. Good standards are surely not optional. Every community expects its elected representatives to adhere to certain standards.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
Following the question put by her hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), does the right hon. Lady get thanks from her local residents when she meets them for almost doubling most of their council taxes?
Caroline Flint
The record will show that for many years under the Labour Government it was Conservative councils, not Labour ones, that increased their council tax.
This Bill is meant to take power from Whitehall and devolve it to local communities, but we find on closer inspection that it provides an arsenal of more than 100 new powers for the Secretary of State. It should be retitled the “only if I say so” Bill, because if the Secretary of State does not like it, it ain’t happening.
Much has been made of the introduction of local referendums, and we support mechanisms that promote public engagement in the political process, but when the Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to decide what is or is not a local matter and on what local people can and cannot have a say, just how deep the Government’s commitment is to localism is called into question. Far from devolving power as we were promised, this Bill represents a massive accumulation of power in the hands of the Secretary of State. If nothing else, at least we now know why the Government were forced to drop the word “decentralisation” from the Bill’s title.
Mr Blunkett
Could we not sum it up very simply by saying that the Government are centralising the power and decentralising the pain?
Caroline Flint
Yes.
Despite the best efforts of the Secretary of State and his Ministers to transfer powers from the many to the few, even they have not got everything wrong. Some of the Bill’s measures are a continuation of policies introduced by the previous Labour Government—[Interruption.] I am afraid they are. When the Government build on our reforms, we will support them. We support the general power of competence for local authorities, because those elected in an area should be able to do what is in the interests of the communities they serve. With no mention of local economic partnerships in the Bill and in the absence of any other plans for growth, giving local authorities greater flexibility on business rate relief to encourage new start-ups and help local businesses is one small step in the right direction. It builds on Labour’s introduction of small business rate relief.
Caroline Flint
We welcome the principle of greater involvement for local people in how their communities are developed. Broadly speaking, we support the transfer of powers and functions from unelected bodies to the Mayor of London—provided there are sufficient powers of oversight and scrutiny for the Greater London authority.
I am sad to say, however, that as a whole this Bill represents a massive missed opportunity. When reading it through, it is difficult not to be struck by the sense that, for all the agonised intellectualising of the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), this Bill is little more than a rag-bag collection of press releases from Tory HQ. Giving local people and communities a greater say in and more control over the future of their local areas and building an open and less adversarial planning system is to be welcomed, but when the Secretary of State’s own Department estimates that neighbourhood plans could cost as much as £250,000, we remain to be convinced that those plans are anything more than a gimmick or a vehicle for those with the loudest voices and deepest pockets to impose their will on the rest of the community.
Hazel Blears
The Secretary of State purports to say that the planning system will be simpler and more open to local people. How does that square with his decision to abolish planning aid, which has provided tremendous support to people right across this country? Those with he loudest voices will continue to have the biggest say.
Caroline Flint
My right hon. Friend echoes the point made earlier in Communities and Local Government questions. Planning aid is one vehicle to enable communities that might not have architects, solicitors and accountants among them to engage in the process. It is worrying when people’s hopes are raised and then dashed when they are effectively unable to take part.
Caroline Flint
I give way to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), who has been trying to intervene for some time.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Lady. As a councillor from 1998 to 2009, I watched councillors and residents become frustrated time and again because councillors could not properly represent residents on a range of issues owing to Government guidelines, particularly on planning. Surely the right hon. Lady would agree that the Bill gives back one very important power—the power of councillors truly to represent their residents without having to worry about any sort of guidance put out by the Government or a quango?
Caroline Flint
I am sure that, as a former councillor, the hon. Gentleman agrees that different communities have different capacities to engage. Often, in planning and development as in other contexts, it is the voices of those such as the homeless that are not heard. We need to think of ways of supporting those silent communities. The part of the Bill relating to councillors is interesting, but, again, questions will have to be asked in Committee. We shall need to ensure that it works properly, and enables councillors to represent people in their areas without affecting any quasi-judicial position in which they may find themselves when decisions must be made.
Caroline Flint
I will make a little more progress, and then I will take a few more interventions. The record will probably show that by the end of my speech I had taken more interventions than the Secretary of State.
I mentioned the possible cost of the proposed neighbourhood plans, which might prevent those without deep pockets from being able to participate. The same is true of the much-vaunted provision relating to community assets, which is being billed as a community right to buy. Before the Bill was published we were told that, by giving communities a right of first refusal whenever local assets were being sold or closed down and by guaranteeing them a fair price, we could save pubs, post offices and village shops from closure; but the Bill does no such thing. There is no right of first refusal, there is no right to a fair price, and there is no help for communities seeking to save local assets that the Secretary of State’s cuts threaten with closure.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
May I return the right hon. Lady to the issue of neighbourhood development plans? As she will know, parish councils already have to produce parish plans which are part of the supplementary planning guidance. She said that neighbourhood development plans would give a voice to people who wanted to force their will on other people. Does she not understand what an insult that is to serving parish councillors such as me? Many parish councillors spent a great deal of time producing parish plans which were not bigoted and not about forcing our will, but were about protecting our local communities. All that neighbourhood development plans will do is give that more force.
Caroline Flint
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I was not referring to parish plans. I have met representatives of parish and town councils, and one of the questions that they have raised—fairly, in my view—is how parish plans might work in relation to neighbourhood development plans, and which would take priority. I am sure that we will examine such issues in Committee in order to ensure that we do not end up with over-duplication.
I know that parish and town councillors do a fantastic job. My constituency contains many parish and town councils. However, we need to ensure through neighbourhood plans that it is not possible for a few people who are not elected representatives to create a forum in which they can impose their will on others in various ways because of their clout and their finances. We need to ensure that the plans allow communities to be represented fairly. We also need to consider the implications for councils in terms of the cost and the additional responsibilities that will be expected of planning officers and others who service the neighbourhood plans. It is not that the idea is necessarily wrong, but we shall need to establish how it will work in practice, and whether it actually amounts to much. Is it all that meets the eye? That is what people want to know. They do not want to be led up the hill only to be marched down it again. That is not the sort of politics in which we should engage.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Does the right hon. Lady think it better for planning decisions to be made by unaccountable regional quangos or by local people?
Caroline Flint
I do not think that the answer should be more powers for the Secretary of State, for a start.
What I have said also applies to the community right to challenge. We are in favour of empowering front-line staff. In many instances, not just in local government but in the health service and elsewhere, our staff should be at the forefront in coming up with ways of improving services. Those on the front line often have better answers than some managers. Many councils of all political persuasions already engage community organisations and voluntary groups in the delivery of local services. That is not new, and we think that it should be encouraged. However, those organisations need support. Given that their resources are being cut throughout the country, and given that there is no provision other than the right to be considered, we remain to be convinced that this part of the Bill will mean much in practice.
The Secretary of State tells us that this Bill is the centrepiece of what the Government are trying to do to shake up the balance of power in the country fundamentally, but perhaps what is most striking about it is what it fails to deal with. Across every community in the country people often feel that they do not have enough of a say about what happens in their local area, whether in local bus services, community policing, the district hospital, or in the jobcentre’s tackling unemployment. This Bill says nothing about that; it offers nothing to remedy that. Giving elected local representatives the power to summon people before their committees much as we do in the Committees of this House would be one simple, practical thing to give local communities a real say in the services that they use, but the Bill fails to do that.
In turning to the proposals—[Interruption.] Well, I understand from reading the Bill that scrutiny committees can summon an officer of the council, but they can merely invite someone from another organisation. There are no summoning powers over representatives of the utilities, for example, or over the district commander. That is what we are talking about: proper accountability, and proper powers for scrutiny committees.
On the Bill’s proposals on housing, it is again difficult not to be disappointed. For some homeless households, a home in the private rented sector may be a better option than social housing if that avoids long waits in temporary accommodation and provides greater flexibility of location than social housing, but that should be a choice for the household involved, so we will not support a proposal if it allows the most vulnerable members of our communities to be forced into unsuitable accommodation.
What else is missing from the Bill? There is a complete absence of reforms to the private rented sector—the Bill does not even touch on the subject—and we remain to be convinced that there is sufficient quantity of decent homes in the private rented sector to house those in need.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns about passing to local government the responsibility to house people in the private sector? Rents are not regulated, tenancies are limited, conditions are often poor, and the tenant’s power to control the way the landlord behaves or maintains the property is very limited. What we need is more council housing with secure tenancies at economic rents, as are currently charged. That is the real way out of the housing crisis.
Caroline Flint
Supply is important on all counts: supply in social housing, supply in rented housing, and, indeed, supply of affordable homes for people to buy. There is, however, absolutely nothing in this Bill about the private rented sector. In fact, in the name of protecting home owners—he referred to this earlier in departmental Question Time—the Secretary of State was all too keen to confer on private landlords with empty properties a general power to neglect for up to two years, rendering local councils powerless in the face of blight or antisocial behaviour. That is a dilution of local authority powers, as we enabled councils to take action after six months, and it was announced just three days before the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) urged swift action to tackle empty homes, warning that empty properties attract squatters, vandalism and antisocial behaviour. The Minister even went to Oldham on a visit related to the policy, for which he had to apologise. It did not do the Liberal Democrat candidate much good. What we have here, therefore, is a chaotic policy and a hapless presentation, and it would be comic if the results were not so devastating.
The Secretary of State knows that I support sensible reform of social housing, but it must be reform that encourages employment, supports families and helps to create strong communities where people feel safe. Simply abolishing secure tenancies and kicking new tenants out of their homes when they get a promotion or a pay rise would just create fear and uncertainty. It would disrupt family life, and it could provide a disincentive to work. We on this side of the House could never support reforms that put a break on aspiration
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I fear the right hon. Lady is overegging the pudding, given that she must surely acknowledge that in her time as Housing Minister she very courageously brought up the issue of social rent tenure. She was faced with a hailstorm of opprobrium from her own party because of that very brave decision, and her party did nothing about the issue in 13 years in power.
Caroline Flint
My worry was about single men and women without dependants who were not in work, who had not received the right training and who, often, were going from foyer projects into social housing with a secure tenancy but no support to get them into work. For me, social housing should be a springboard into work—it should be a springboard for people to change their lives. I find it odd that the much-vaunted proposals of the Minister for Housing and Local Government were all about saying that councils will check someone’s pay packet to see whether they have had a pay rise. People may use a pay rise to improve their home, for example, by buying new curtains or decorating, but they could now face eviction. I do not understand that approach. It is not about creating strong and stable communities; it is about stopping people realising their aspirations and stopping the self-sufficiency of many families in future.
The cuts to the housing budget have already dealt a hammer-blow to the hopes of hundreds of thousands of families who are trying to get their own home, and on the big issue of how we get more new affordable homes the Bill is ominously silent. The Government seem unmoved by the fact that the number of planning permissions for new homes in the last quarter of 2010 was down 18% on the record low of the same period in 2009. They seem unmoved by the fact that the housing waiting list figures rose by 12% between July and September, and the Secretary of State is unmoved by the fact that his proposed reforms to the planning system in this Bill could make things worse.
Labour would support reforms that gave local people and communities a greater say and more control over the future of their local areas, because a fair and open planning system that involves local people does lead to better decision making and greater consensus about development. However, every community cannot thrive if the system is biased against change, and every community has to look to the future to create new homes, new workplaces and new jobs. A planning system that is devoid of any obligations to provide for the future, rather than just to protect the present, is destined to fail. There is a danger that the reforms in this Bill, including the scrapping of regional housing targets, could mean that the homes that this country so badly needs will not be built. Indeed, since this Government came to power local authorities have already ditched plans for 160,000 homes—that represents 1,300 homes every single day. Although the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) tells us that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister want “chaos” in the planning system, that is not what local people want. They want a planning system that respects the wishes of local communities but is able to deliver the homes that are so badly needed.
Last week, the voters of Oldham sent a very clear message to the Government about the rise in VAT, the trebling of tuition fees, the cuts to the police and the loss of vital community services. To those people, and those across the country, this Bill has nothing to say. For the council coping with huge front-loaded cuts, and facing rising costs for child protection and growing demand for social care, the Localism Bill has no answers. For the community that will see its potholes unrepaired, its streets unswept and its libraries shut down, the Localism Bill offers no help. For the councillor hoping for new jobs in their area, wishing to hold local agencies to account or wanting new affordable homes, the Localism Bill is worthless. For the resident who is worried about care for a loved one, living in fear of antisocial behaviour or concerned about their children’s youth club closing, the Localism Bill gives no assistance.
Labour knows that localism must mean more than dismantling local services and putting blind faith in volunteers picking up the reins, and that localism must serve more than those with the loudest voices and the deepest pockets. We are on the side of local people when it comes to the issues that they really care about. It is to Labour that they will look when this Bill fails to deliver, because they know that the Tories’ claim to believe in localism is a sham. Let the record show that we urged the House to decline to give this Bill a Second Reading.