Localism Bill

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, localism has many friends on all sides of this House. I suspect that, as we consider the Bill and seek to improve it, we will approach that task in a friendly way. We all believe in localism because of our own experience, with so many of us having grown up, as it were, in local government.

There is, however, a problem. For localism to be delivered effectively on the ground requires two things in particular: trust and risk taking. In my experience of government, Ministers do not much trust anyone with their pet projects—those policies that they have been striving to bring to fruition for so many years, particularly those bitter wilderness years in opposition. Now that they have the opportunity to do it, they are being asked to cede power. The Treasury trusts no one. I say that with hand on heart. Civil servants are not prone to risk taking. I say that having been one. Therefore, in those circumstances we have a problem—something that has contributed to the schizophrenia that lies at the heart of the Bill, as has been exposed and shared with us by several colleagues, again on all sides of the House. They point on the one hand to the Secretary of State giving and on the other to the Secretary of State taking away, or holding close to his own chest. That is something that we will have to deal with in Committee. We must engender a little more trust and create space for risk taking, recognising that, from time to time, localism will go wrong. We have to be prepared for that.

Reflecting on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord True, one person’s variety is another person’s postcode lottery. The challenge, therefore, is to create a context in which it is possible to unleash and unlock the potential that comes from local communities; and to give people an opportunity to have a go, feel engaged and have a sense that their activism counts for something and can go beyond mere protest to the tough, rough business of delivery, which many of us who have been local councillors know something about. How can we achieve that when, at the same time, there are huge restraints on public spending and resources are a real issue out there in the field? That will require all the ingenuity and good will that can be mustered across central government.

We are also faced with the challenge that the Bill is being introduced alongside the restraints on spending at the same time as the Government are rolling out their big idea. However, I argue that it ought not to be seen as the big idea of any one Government as it is something that we all ought to be able to recognise as having real value—that is, the concept of the big society. If the big society is to be made a reality, it has to be about empowering individuals and communities. If that is to happen, we are going to need more than strong, active local government; we shall need strong, active communities because localism is not just about getting the balance right between central and local government but about enabling individuals to come together at grass-roots level to take responsibility for their own lives and communities, and to do so within a legislative context that is truly enabling and empowering. That is the trick that we have to pull off in Committee and as the Bill goes through Parliament. We should welcome the opportunity to do so.

In some ways it is a pity that we did not have this opportunity at a more auspicious time in terms of the public finances because the reality for so many groups on the ground—we are grateful to ACEVO, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, and to many other organisations representing the voluntary sector for giving us the relevant statistics—is that some councils are responding to spending cuts by looking after their own and are passing on disproportionate cuts to the voluntary sector and to community groups, thereby reducing the very community capacity to build the big society that we need.

The Minister will recognise the importance of small community groups in promoting good practice. For example, the Pepper Pot Day Centre—an organisation that she will know well because she was a strong supporter of it when she was a distinguished leader of a local authority—has pioneered innovative ways of caring for the ethnic minority elderly. The fact of the matter is that such small voluntary groups up and down the country are threatened by the cuts. I am afraid that we do not always find sympathy in local government for such groups or a willingness to cede power. We do not always find a willingness to protect such groups, some of which are rather difficult and challenging—they are all the better for it—from the impact of cuts. The prime example of the big society to which the Prime Minister referred when he was asked what he understood the big society to mean was the citizens advice bureaux. Those bureaux are bearing the brunt of local authority spending cuts.

I hope that during our deliberations on the Bill, the Minister will have her civil servants brief her on the report of the Commission on Big Society. I declare an interest as I was a member of that commission. It was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and included among its number the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and a Conservative member of the other place, but perhaps even more significantly, members and leaders of voluntary sector organisations from all over the country. The commission made three recommendations which I should like to share with the House, and which I hope the Minister will consider as we move onto the next stage.

The commission’s first recommendation states:

“That the Government amend the Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill so that it requires commissioners to consider not just the full social, environmental and economic impact of their decisions in awarding contracts to different potential providers, as it does currently, but also explicitly to consider the impact of their decisions on individual and community empowerment, and to do so when decommissioning or cutting a service as well as when commissioning one”.

That would make a real difference and concentrate the mind in a way that would enhance, rather than detract from, the big society and localism.

The second recommendation states that, given the threat to so many smaller voluntary organisations up and down the country, the Government should,

“shorten its consultation period, and make its proposed guidance on local government funding avoiding disproportionate cuts to the voluntary sector”—

that is, through the impact of the statutory sector’s decisions on the voluntary sector—

“with immediate effect”.

That would provide some immediate relief for some of the organisations who are currently bearing the brunt of so many of the cuts.

Finally, the Government should,

“require local councils to publish their spending on the voluntary sector, as the Minister for Decentralisation has previously called for, and … the Treasury collate, quality-assure and publish the information, so that councils can be held to account by civil society groups”

and can be subject to proper public scrutiny.

All of that is doable in the context of the Bill. None of it requires additional public expenditure, but it would make a reality of the localism that we all seek, the localism that truly enables and empowers.