Local Democracy Notepad

There’s a good post up here on Conservative Home about what advice MPs should take seriously. I had one here a while ago about personality types – it would be good to do anything that could be done to weight these models – help the poor buggers to work out how they should be behaving at the viagra lowest prices moment.

Local government governance guru Peter Keith-Lucas has
an article in this week’s Local Government Lawyer assessing the current state of governance in local councils.

It’s a good read – expert but not too technical. Keith-Lucas has plagues to put on the houses of both parties: the Labour party for watering down the proper role of scrutiny in its most recent green paper, the Conservatives for setting out proposals on Standards Committee issues that (he suggests) leave the door open for greater councillor corruption. Here’s his closing paragraph (but do go and read the lot):

For healthy local government, there must be corporate governance, there must be a balance between the power of the executive and the checks and balances, in terms of council and scrutiny holding the executive to account, and an enforceable set of minimum standards of conduct. I am seriously concerned that the checks and balances which were an essential part of the 2000 Act Settlement are under attack. That promises a prosperous New Year for lawyers, but not a happy time for local government.

Conservative Chairman Eric Pickles. He was there. Wonder if wants these selection processes everywhere?

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Mike Smithson of Political Betting has a report of an open selection process that the Conservative Party ran in Bedford the other night.

I’m not sure of Mike’s political affiliations (I have my suspicions though). I am more certain of the evening’s chair, Iain Dale. I suspect that both of them are being kinder about this event than it deserves – perhaps out of party loyalty.

Iain’s isn’t a dispassionate report as this aside illustrates:

There was a lot of humour during the course of the evening. When I was explaining the voting system someone shouted out: “Can we vote for you?” and got a round of applause. I laughed and suggested that they might get the chance if local MP Alastair Burt stood down!

But leaving that aside, I don’t know if any of this alarms you, but it does worry me. Mike is, of course, right to be worried about the impact that this will have upon party members and activists. If you pay your fees, stuff the envellopes and pound the streets, the least you should expect is the right to be able to confirm the decision of a meeting that may have been packed. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick one to round the week off. I missed this post yesterday on Paul Waugh’s site.

I won’t accuse George Osborne of cowardice for saying this because he’s hardly unique in this respect:

But he left the best til last. When asked if there was any chance of following up this localist agenda by giving councils more of their own money via loc govt finance reform, the ghost of the poll tax hovered over his reply:

“Let me put it this way. Local government tax reform is something that we might leave to a third or fourth term..”

But it does sum up the problem, doesn’t it? I don’t think you could read that story and not see that local policies are seen as anything other than a pawn in the Westminster game – one that’s played out mainly for a small highly valued demographic of swing voters who have to be reached through the prism of the reporters on a handful of national newspapers.

Last week, David Cameron offered a fairly populist ‘bonfire of the quangos’ proposal, with the implication that politicians would take back many of the toxic decisions that they had farmed out to overpaid bureaucrats.

In the FT the other day, Philip Stephens questions the emphasis:

“…broadcasting policy accounts for only about 5 per cent of Ofcom’s workload. Moving it to Whitehall would scarcely mean “that Ofcom, as we know it, will cease to exist”. Some 90 per cent of Ofcom’s remit comprises unglamorous work such as telecommunications regulation, upholding broadcasting standards, allocating spectrum, and, crucially, policing competition. All this can properly be done only at arms length from civil servants and ministers.”

I’d agree with Stephens’ highly critical conclusions about the seriousness of the Conservatives here. All of that said, if MPs had to pick up that 5% that he mentions, it would be a minor triumph for common sense, the taxpayer and a for democracy as well.

Here are a few observations about OfCOM’s activities in the past year or so:

• Not content with having one place to farm out awkward questions, Lord Carter’s ‘Digital Britain‘ was launched in competition to OfCOM’s Public Service Broadcasting review
• In reply, OfCOM have strategically launched their local media review
• While this happened, DCMS have a new minister in the driving seat – one who shows no grasp of the policy questions or any disposition to ruin the end of his ministerial career with futile study
• … and anyway, whatever the DCMS decides, it will be overruled by the bafflingly named BERR
• Carter resigned before his report was published, undermining the whole shooting match

And where, exactly, does parliament fit in to any of this anyway?

These exercises were a complete waste of time. They have taken place in the context of impending General Election and the fin de siècle atmosphere in which all complex policy matters are discussed. Few of these conclusions are likely to result in legislation before the chess-table is turned on it’s head by an incoming government.

It’s a farce – and one that exists because Parliament doesn’t have the resources or the self-confidence to take these issues on in the first place.

We can assess the commitment to promoting ‘scrutiny’ at a local level from the main parties by looking at their attitude to these ‘political detoxifying chambers’ that QUANGOs partly provide. David Cameron could announce that he will ignore the outcome of both the Digital Britain review and any forays OfCOM is making outside of the more complex regulation of things like Radio Microphones – an issue that it would probably be unwise to hand back to Westminster.

Update: I’ve just seen this post over on Jim Godfrey’s blog:

The real solution in my view is not necessarily to weaken Ofcom by taking away PR functions and slashing salaries, but to strengthen the DCMS. Too much of their policy ‘thinking’ takes place elsewhere and they need a strengthened capacity – in concert with the Department for Business.

“Councils triumph at MJ awards” blares the headline in this weeks Municipal Journal, which is hardly surprising since only councils are allowed to enter.

Hammersmith & Fulham’s Conservative administration came out top as political team of the year (Waltham Forest were runners-up) and Ealing won best achieving council. It’s notable that there aren’t any awards for engagement, participation, or democracy promotion. Maybe next year…

Given all the talk of localism in recent months, it is pretty disappointing to see Caroline Spelman, the Conservative shadow Local Government minister, making the following statement (via the BBC) on Council Tax rises:

At a time when millions of workers are facing pay freezes or unemployment this year, it adds insult to injury to drive up bills by a further £41 a year, on top of previous years’ rises. Labour’s refusal to follow the example of Scotland and freeze council tax bills in England is unfair on English taxpayers, who yet again have received a raw deal.

What makes this posturing worse is that there is a real case for the Government to answer on the funding formula, non-domestic rates, LABGI and so on – all of which could be argued from a localist position. And yet we get this attack, which implies that central government is where voters should place the accountability for council tax rises.

Does Ms Spelman think the Westminster Government sets Council Tax? If she realises that councils do, does she know which party is in control in most of them?

Time for one last look at the Conservative party’s local government green paper Shift Control. A quick canter through chapters four and five, and then some conclusions.

Chapter Four is about spending. It says a Conservative Government will:

• give local people greater control over how central government funds are spent in their area;
• phase out ring fencing, so that decisions about how councils spend their budgets are taken by councils and their
  citizens alone;

• make it easier for local government to raise money for local projects on the bond market.

The first point, about greater local control, refers to the Conservative-sponsored Sustainable Communities Act. This Act, according to the Green Paper allows “local governments to identify money spent in their area by central government agencies and then (after consultation with local people) to recommend ways in which it could be spent better by redirecting it to local priorities.”

That description of the Act is correct, in the same way that Lord of the Rings can be summarised as “Go and pop that ring down over there, Frodo”. In practice, between local people and the fulfilment of their desires are (i) the council, who have to choose which ideas to put forward; (ii) the LGA, who have to pick councils’ best ideas to recommend to Government; and (iii) the Government, starring HM Treasury as Sauron.

Now, if the Conservatives are serious about giving the SCA some zip, those obstacles may just fall away, but (as with other protestations of localism from parties in opposition) I am sceptical. I just can’t see the Treasury (or any Minister controlling it) being happy to let local authorities change central budgets, except at the extreme margins. Want to stop benefits payments or cancel a hospital build so you can try a whizzy new idea? Well, maybe we’ll let you take £20k out of the leg ulcer budget.

Chapter Five contains proposals for abolishing regional government, which are so eye-wateringly technical that I’m not even going to repeat the details. In summary, every regional-level strategy and body will be done away with (except in London), and councils will be free to do what they will, as long as they are within national planning guidance. The Regional Development Agencies will either continue or be replaced by alliances of local authorities co-operating on economic issues, depending on local wishes.

I think there’s something to be said for this approach. The regional bodies do their best, but they are big bureaucracies, not democratic institutions. Fundamentally, if we are serious about local democracy, local government should be taking the decisions that need to be taken about housing numbers, development etc. on a sensible grown-up basis. At the moment, anti-development councils jump up and down protesting about centrally imposed plans, pleasing their lobbyists, while avoiding any difficult decisions on their responsibility for the national economy. If they’re trusted with the powers, I suspect that they would use them sensibly.

To wrap up, then, what do I think of the green paper? It’s certainly not a great transformative vision for local government. “Occasionally interesting tinkering” is probably the best that could be said for it.

Good things? Some reasonable thoughts on regions, particularly the idea of local councils creating workable economic sub-regions. That’s important in the areas round London, which are very poorly served by the current regional structure. Warm words on devolving powers and releasing control, for all my scepticism about whether they will ever manage to do so.

Disappointments? The biggest is that the paper makes the same fudge as the current Government about localism. Does localism mean handing things to councils, or does it mean handing things to local people, over the heads of their elected councillors? Who can tell? Localism is a good thing, the Conservatives are in favour of it, the end. It doesn’t say much for the analysis behind the green paper that the difference between the different sorts of localism is never brought out, or even acknowledged.

Why give people referendums on council tax rates, but councils greater power over the location of housing developments? Why should the people of the twelve biggest urban authorities be forced to vote on whether they want a mayor, when the councillors of the thirteenth-biggest can introduce one or abolish one merely by putting it in a manifesto that no-one reads?

I suspect the answer is “because it seemed like a great idea at the time”, but that’s not really good enough for the likely future Government. Labour has tied itself up in knots on localism, and I expected the Conservatives to be clarifying the situation, not jumping in and knotting away themselves.

The paper is also, given its promises of referendums, astonishingly thin on building better day-to-day interactions between residents and councils. I appreciate that the Conservatives can’t be seen to be forcing councils to do things, but why not have a webcasting fund? Twitter training? Something, at least, to show that the Conservatives understand that political engagement can be built up from the local level.

Time for a look at Chapter three of the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control.

This chapter is the section of the green paper that focuses on democracy, so there’s a lot to talk about. The chapter says that a Conservative Government would:

• provide citizens in all our large cities with the opportunity to choose whether to have an elected mayor;

• give people the power to instigate referendums on local issues;
• make the police accountable to the people they serve through directly elected commissioners, crime maps and
  quarterly beat meetings;

• put the power to judge the behaviour of councillors back in the hands of their citizens by abolishing the Standards
  Board, and repeal the rules that prevent councillors representing their constituents’ views on local issues;

• permit local authorities to devolve unlimited funding to ward councillors; and
• let local people choose the organisational structures of their local councils.

Directly elected police commissioners deserves a fuller treatment elsewhere, so I won’t discuss it here. I’d only say that the obvious problem is one of competing mandates. Standards Board issues are democratic, in the sense that elected politicians should not be subject to disbarment by unelected civil servants – leaving such issues to the judicial system is by far the better approach.

Devolution of some money to ward level – as a power not a duty – isn’t a bad idea in itself, but the green paper suggests that money will be parcelled out to councillors directly. Participatory budgeting may be relatively untried, but an opportunity to extend it has been missed here. Participatory budgeting also provides a check on process: if individual councillors have sole responsibility for spending, the possibility of ward-level slush funds can’t be ruled out.

Allowing referendums on council governance structures might be a good idea if people knew or cared what their council governance structure was. More likely to be used is the alternative proposal to allow changes based on manifesto commitments. One problem in the proposals is that any referendum would take place at the same time as local government elections. This hasn’t been thought through. If Blanktown Council holds a referendum on whether to create an elected mayor, it has to be before the election cycle or there could be a four-year wait until the proposal is implemented. Far better to have the referendum held on election day in the year before the change comes in.

It’s also not clear what would happen to those places where directly elected mayors already exist. Would a council elected on a manifesto of getting rid of them be able to do so? This is important because elected mayors are sometimes independents, and sometimes from a different party than that controlling the council. It would be unfortunate for democracy, to say the least, if an respected independent mayor could be chucked out by collusion between a local government old guard on the council.

Quite contrary to the anything-goes spirit of the above, another proposal is to force big cities to have referendums on elected mayors whether they want to or not. This is probably the weakest idea in the chapter. Caught – as the government are – between a desire for elected mayors and a reluctance to impose them, the Conservatives have come down in favour of a double fudge. Rather than letting councils be, or imposing mayors, they are going to force councils to hold a referendum (in which most if not all councillors will campaign for a no vote). Then, beyond that, they are proposing to do this on the basis of current authority boundaries. In the case of Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, at least, the boundaries are historic irrelevancies. Far better to follow the London model and have directly elected subregional leaders (call them mayors if you like) that cover strategic issues across a range of unitary authorities.

The idea of local referendums triggered by 5% of electors sounds great until the first local referendums for expelling immigrants, leaving the EU, or reintroducing hanging start coming in. There need to be several safeguards on this proposal – first, referendums should be restricted to local government issues (not just issues that affect the locality); second, there should be a participation threshold, of say 20%, for a result to be considered valid; third, the option to hold the referendum outside the normal electoral cycle should be removed: this means that referendum votes would get higher and more representative turnout.

Part three of a series of articles looking at the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control.

This time, chapter two. This chapter is about localism, and promises that a Conservative Government would:

• give local residents the power to determine the balance between the level of council tax and the level of services
  delivered;

• drastically reduce the centrally imposed bureaucratic burdens that drive up council tax;
• hugely enlarge the freedom of local councils to act in the best interests of residents by giving them a ‘general
  power of competence’;

• return to local councils the freedom to determine how they carry out their statutory regulatory duties;
• abolish all process targets applied to local authorities, and free councils from intrusive and ineffective inspection
  regimes by abolishing the Comprehensive Area Assessment; and

• end all forced amalgamations of local authorities.

I’ve italicised the parts that are relevant to democracy issues.

The general power of competence is something that local government has been asking for for some time. It would give local government more of an independent legal standing – they could implement good ideas without seeking specific legislative support from Parliament. The wellbeing power is something that comes close, and lessons from that suggest that there are real institutional barriers to its use. On the basis of that experience, the Conservatives would probably need to provide more than a power on its own, particularly at a time when existing services are being constrained by financial pressures.

Ending forced amalgamations of local government probably means ending all amalgamations of local government. On this, the Conservatives appear to be supporting councillors’ views rather than trying to bypass them. I may be wrong, but I can’t think of a unitarisation or merger proposal, at least in recent years, that has had support from the elected members in both councils involved.

This is an interesting battleground for local versus national views. From a civil service perspective, there is no rationale other than bureaucratic history behind some of the current local government boundaries. As the LGA have been saying for a while, they don’t match up with functional economic areas, and they often don’t even match the boundaries of built-up areas, as in Norwich, Nottingham and Cambridge. Politically, local government bureaucracy is a tasty target for Treasury cost-cutting. Against that centralist pressure, the democratically elected members of councils will be steadfastly opposed to any changes to boundaries, or unitarisation.

I suspect that a Conservative government looking for expenditure cuts will find this promise hard to live up to.

The most surprising proposal in the chapter is the idea that voters might get a referendum on local council tax increases. I’m quite torn on this. I’ve said here before that one-off referendums on national issues are not helpful or useful, because you can’t take anything meaningful from the results. At the same time, I don’t have such a negative attitude to referendums that are a recognised part of a process, and take place on a fairly regular basis, as in Switzerland.

The proposal here is that a referendum might take place if the council proposed a tax increase higher than a nationally-set cap. Call it ‘soft capping’. Councils would know that setting a rate higher than the soft cap would risk an embarrassing referendum defeat, as well as incurring the balloting cost, which at least for Broadland DC in Norfolk, is about £50,000 per referendum.

Part of this proposal is political cleverness – abolish hard capping and replace it with something almost as effective. I suspect that soft capping enforced by local referendums is a little bit better than capping enforced by a distant Government minister. Not better than no capping at all, but the chances of that happening under any plausible Government are very, very small.