05 May 2006
A catalogue of central government failures strengthens the case for devolving more powers to local government. So why – despite decades of official rhetoric and numerous inquiries – is Whitehall so reluctant to let go? Tony Travers investigates
Each time we are presented with a chance to reform local government, there is a choice to be made. We can argue for changes that will allow councils to fulfil their constitutional role while delivering services the public demands locally. Alternatively, we can embark on a renewed bout of cynicism and pessimism.
At present, commentators are awkwardly poised between these rather different views of the situation. Even the weariest oppositionists concede that the communities and local government minister is approachable and intellectually inquiring. David Miliband's peregrinations have led him to a belief that England is over-centralised, that neighbourhoods offer a route to better governance and that city-regions could improve the economic competitiveness of urban areas. He has delayed and expanded Sir Michael Lyons' review of finance.
On the other hand, there is little evidence that this summer's white paper will contain much radicalism. Surprises are out. Ministers and civil servants want people to read their proposals and see things they already expected. Thus, there is little secrecy about proposals to move towards neighbourhood governance or to strengthen city-regional collaboration. Finance will be omitted, pending the Lyons Inquiry's report in December this year.
The lack of any driving political or electoral ambition for reform is a serious weakness. In a democracy such as Britain, changes can come about only when a government feels under pressure to act. In recent years, the Blair government has again and again legislated about criminal justice. Antisocial behaviour and concerns about terrorism have turned the prime minister into a zealous proponent of reform. Moreover, he has been prepared to defend himself aggressively when attacked by liberal commentators about the curtailment of human rights that, it is alleged, has resulted from new legislation.
Within public services, New Labour has risked much to push through controversial legislation about the NHS and education. Last week, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was booed off the stage at a conference by nurses angry about risks of redundancy and market-driven health service reforms. Government backbenchers are still hoping to slow down or halt the school reforms being pursued forcefully by Blair and his allies.
But there is no sign that Downing Street is prepared to cave in to its opponents. Public service reforms are seen as essential and inevitable. Blair might be frustrated and talk about the 'scars on my back' he has endured in pushing through change. Nevertheless, he is determined to continue until the job is completed.
Contrast all this determination about crime, terrorism and public services (and, for that matter, Iraq) with the mild and understated approach to local government. There is not much evidence of a determination to pursue reform in the shires and cities. Indeed, the most radical step taken by the prime minister to affect local government was the decision to scrap the 2007 English council tax revaluation. Doing nothing was certainly an option on that occasion.
It is instructive to consider the many and various obstacles to reform. Not the least of these is the antipathy of many ministers and civil servants to losing any of the control they have so carefully built up over the decades. Consider the halting and unhelpful reaction of, say, the Home Office to earlier reforms that attempted to transfer decision-making downwards. Initiatives such as the single capital pot and Local Area Agreements were seriously undermined by service departments being unwilling to allow their resources to be mixed in with those of other departments. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, by contrast, has done its best.
The approach of many service departments to their local provision has had the effect of limiting efforts to 'join up' services within existing Local Strategic Partnerships. The Lyons Inquiry team are very interested in what they call 'place-shaping'. One of the obstacles to achieving this sensible objective is the difficulty of engaging the national, regional or local interest of the key service departments. Without health, police and social security involvement in local partnerships, such alliances can have little impact. The creation of regional or near-regional police authorities is hardly going to help to solve this problem.
Even the most pro-local politicians and officials in Whitehall privately believe that council leadership is second-rate. Whatever is said about 'the best' leaders and chief executives in local government, the political elite continues to have a decidedly sniffy attitude to local decision-makers. In the light of recent failures at the Home Office and Department of Health, such views are simply hypocritical. The scale of mismangement and naivety within the core of central government is indeed breathtaking. No-one appears to know how to deliver major policy initiatives – from defence procurement to computer systems. Yet the same ministers and civil servants continue to resist passing freedoms to local government.
Concern about the financial impacts of change, particularly in local tax bills, is another blockage. Labour and Conservative politicians have fear of revolutionary West Country pensioners built into their DNA. The Trafalgar Square poll tax riots are still on television about once a week – most recently courtesy of Ken Livingstone's visit to China – as a reminder of how much damage an ill-judged local tax reform can do to a powerful majority government. The easiest way of keeping the electorate happy is to cap the council tax and do nothing. That, sadly, is a major blockage to reform.
Finally, as suggested above, the public is not seething with demands for a major reform of local government functions, structures or finance. Indeed, as much opinion polling suggests, the electorate has not been unduly enamoured of 'local government' in recent years, although the same polls show positive readings for many of the services provided by councils. If there is no public clamour for change, the government is unlikely to rush into a major decentralising reform.
But if the obstacles to a straightforward move to greater local autonomy appear to be bulky and threatening, there are other aspects of politics that will surely create pressures for increased local autonomy. The regular and highly publicised failure of centrally controlled services is the most convincing evidence of the need for change.
It would be cruel to describe in detail many of the recent weaknesses of top-down centralism, but they can be briefly listed here. The spectacular way in which billions of pounds worth of additional health expenditure has led to deficits and sackings says much about the weaknesses of centralised control. The problems with innumerable computer contracts, Individual Learning Accounts and the Child Support Agency make much the same point. Added to all of this, the Home Office's incompetence and secrecy in relation to foreign prisoners is little more than par for the course.
Ministers and civil servants are not stupid. Nor do they deliberately seek to achieve the kinds of debacle reported upon at such length in recent weeks. They are not bad people. The problem is more straightforward: it is simply not possible to control all aspects of every complex public service from a single office in London. NHS trust chief executives might be called to emergency seminars at Number 10, (like Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs officials before them) but this is not a sensible way to run local public services in, say, Carlisle or Nottingham.
The question is: how to convince the government that a once-and-for-all shift of decision-making away from the core of government could be achieved without leading to a collapse in cherished public services. Despite the evidence of nineteenth-century local government, where cities competed to deliver improving service standards, ministers and their officials behave as if they believe that any loss of central control would lead to a rush for the lowest common denominator. This is palpably silly.
Local government and its supporters will also have to help tackle the 'postcode lottery' issue. The government, the media and the public all behave as if having precisely the same public service outcomes in every part of the country is a sensible and achievable objective. The impossibility of having absolute equality of provision alongside greater local discretion is an issue that will have to be addressed head-on. There might even need to be an all-party approach to the subject.
For its part, Whitehall must scale back the use of the targets and regulation currently used to oversee all aspects of local government (and Local Strategic Partnership) provision. Virtually no one believes that the present regime of mass targets and overlapping regulators can be retained for much longer. Nevertheless, effective regulation and limited service guarantees could be an element in the decentralisation of power to localities.
Local government itself needs to address the question of neighbourhoods and communities. There is clearly a vacuum in democracy below the existing council level. Local authorities will have to help the government come up with sensible and practical ways of allowing people to engage with politics at this lowest level, such as neighbourhood committees with budgets, opportunities to influence those who make town hall decisions and the creation of community trusts. Non-executive councillors could have their status enhanced by being given an effective neighbourhood role.
The Lyons Inquiry and this summer's white paper should, together, become an official report on half of the constitution. The way local government is funded, coupled with its autonomy and viability, are essential elements in the wider question of how Britain is governed. We cannot have all power concentrated in a single executive, subject to little more than a parliamentary rubber stamp. There is more to representative democracy than that.
David Miliband is at the heart of the efforts that need to be made to preserve and strengthen local government. He or his successor will face the task of creating consistency out of the structural, democratic and financial elements of reform. Yet Cabinet ministers cannot act alone. Given the turnouts in local elections and pitiful trust ratings for politicians, time is fast ebbing away from democracy at all levels. All politics is local. Either local democracy must be strengthened or the whole edifice of British democracy will be threatened. There really is no choice. A concerted effort is required to lobby for radical change.
Tony Travers is the director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics
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