By Richard Johnstone | 26 February 2014
A future Labour government would support the restructuring of local authorities into unitaries in a drive to ‘declutter’ the public sector, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie has said.
In a speech setting out details of the zero-based budget review that the party has pledged to undertake if it wins the next election, Leslie said there was a need to rethink local services to meet the party’s target for a current budget surplus by 2020.
The coalition government had undertaken a crude top slicing of departmental budgets, Leslie said, which had led to disjointed and short-termist decisions on cuts.
Labour’s review would instead start by asking what the state needed to provide and how public services could support jobs, growth and prosperity.
This would require existing services to ‘justify’ the current model of provision, Leslie said, as there were significant savings to be made from greater localism and changes to ‘declutter’ the public sector.
‘If we step back and look at the needs and issues in communities across Britain, can we really justify the way in which public services are structured,’ he asked.
‘If we were starting afresh, would we really build the current arrangements in exactly the same way?’
This test would also consider whether local service delivery could be improved, based on Ed Miliband’s call for a greater focus on users, announced earlier this month.
In his speech to the Social Market Foundation yesterday, Leslie said devolution of power would lead to greater efficiencies and improved value for money.
‘Put simply, devolving power will work best where we also declutter,’ he added.
‘Every member of Parliament will have experienced cases where baffled constituents turn up desperate for advice because navigating the complexities of local and regional agencies is ridiculously confusing.’
Among the options he highlighted was possible efficiency savings through reforms to local government, including a reduction in the number of councils.
Leslie highlighted that the previous Labour government had given authorities powers to merge and change their boundaries, leading to a series of reorganisations in 2009 creating new unitaries in Cornwall, Central Bedfordshire, Shropshire and Northumberland.
Changes were also planned in Devon, Exeter and Norfolk, but these were halted in 2010 by the incoming coalition government, which Leslie said was ‘continuing to resist’ proposals to create unitaries.
He added: ‘The government and Whitehall should be doing more to empower local councils, like Warwickshire or Leicestershire at county level, who see from the bottom up the benefits of collaboration and who are actively debating whether to come together. This should also include small district councils who are facing the greatest financial pressures of all.
‘[Shadow local government secretary] Hilary Benn and I will continue to explore the full range of options to support councils as they share services, pool budgets, and choose to collaborate and integrate further.’
Responding to the speech, local government minister Brandon Lewis said any local government restructuring would be expensive, divisive and time-consuming, and would divert time from improving frontline services.
‘Labour are motivated by partisan politics, doing what they think is best for Labour self-interest rather than what’s best for the country,’ he stated.
