Council scrutiny Bill ‘could be derailed’

28 Jan 10
A Bill giving councils more power over local public spending, viewed by ministers as vital to the success of the flagship Total Place initiative, could be derailed by a single opposition MP.
By David Williams

28 January 2010

A Bill giving councils more power over local public spending, viewed by ministers as vital to the success of the flagship Total Place initiative, could be derailed by a single opposition MP.

Labour MP David Chaytor has told Public Finance that Conservative filibustering tactics could thwart the progress of his Private Members’ Bill.

The Local Authorities (Overview and Scrutiny) Bill, which has its second reading on February 5, has been publicly endorsed by Communities Secretary John Denham.

Chaytor said: ‘With these Private Members’ Bills, you never know what the opposition, and individual opposition MPs, are going to do.’ He said that over the past year Tory backbencher Christopher Chope had ‘made it his mission’ to scupper Private Members’ Bills, deliberately holding up a vote by debating them until they ran out of parliamentary time.

‘It may well be he wants to do that again. If that happens, it might just run into the sand,’ he said. ‘All you need is one person to object and the thing can be blocked.’ Chope was unavailable for comment as PF went to press.

Chaytor confirmed the Bill would give councils the power to scrutinise local service providers such as transport operators and utilities firms, as reported in PF on January 15. He also proposes to boost the process by placing new requirements on bodies subject to council scrutiny.

Speaking at the New Local Government Network’s annual conference on January 27, Denham said the Bill was necessary to ensure the success of the Total Place project, intended to increase efficiency in locally provided services.

‘What will really make Total Place effective is councillors’ formal ability to scrutinise and challenge all spending on local public services,’ said Denham.

He said Chaytor’s Bill ‘will start to build that more effective, more comprehensive scrutiny regime, which the government will be fully endorsing’. He argued that the scrutiny reforms would place councils ‘at the centre of local decision-making’, before listing a series of savings already being identified by Total Place pilots.

These included Birmingham, council, which discovered that any investment in drug addiction treatment was recouped nine times over through savings in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, Dorset councils found they could cut hospital admissions by 15% by investing in support for elderly people to live at home.

‘Total Place isn’t just the direction of travel, but the future of local government and local public services,’ Denham said, adding that it was a ‘comforting myth’ that all inefficiencies were caused by central government red tape.

A survey from London Councils, published on January 25, concluded that 15% of all public spending in the capital – £11bn out of £73.6bn – could be saved by applying Total Place principles.

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