Despite statements to the contrary, ministers are centralising more power. But councils' lack of response is partly to blame
Education Secretary Michael Gove’s move to nationalise the funding of schools in England provoked barely a squeak from local government. And this lack of response is typical.
Since the coalition took office, councillors have capitulated too often, making little criticism of many central interventions. They have not pointed out that this government upholds localism but intervenes on small points over refuse collection, planning, schools, chief executives’ salaries and council newspapers. Or that ministers have barely consulted councils on the giant restructuring of welfare, housing and health.
Of course, the coalition has its own version of localism, to do with individuals, families, school autonomy and elected police commissioners – but surely this deserves scrutiny from local government?
Councillors – and their chief executives and finance directors – have been quietest over the deficit itself. Instead of thinking for themselves, they have mindlessly repeated the mantras of Chancellor George Osborne and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. In doing so, they have implicitly accepted that councils overspent in recent years and so massive reductions in their budgets are necessary. Where is their counter-case?
They might at least have argued the toss, making the point that if they ‘overspent’ in the boom years it was because they undertaxed. Michael Lyons’ 2007 report into local government finance – with its alternative, more sustainable fiscal system – remains on the shelf. The appetite of the coalition to rebalance revenue and spending by adjusting local taxes is, if anything, even smaller than its predecessor’s. Local authorities ought to point that out.
On welfare, councils have stood passively by. Grant Shapps, the housing minister, must rub his eyes at local acquiescence in Housing Benefit caps that are likely to damage councillors’ political interests. Across the welfare reforms, local government is the fall guy – it is councils that will have to organise the evictions and cope with the social debris.
Partisanship trumps any wider sense of local government interest. Margaret Eaton, the chair of the Local Government Association, has seen Communities Secretary Eric Pickles regularly since the election: she and her fellow LGA Conservatives follow the party line. As for the ‘advanced’ Tories of Hammersmith or Essex, their fellow feeling with local government as a corporate entity is non-existent. They are happy to add their support to measures that will not only shrink spending but enhance the power of the centre – as long as the centre is ‘theirs’.
Liberal Democrats, once the great believers in localism, follow their leader in out-Torying the Tories. Labour is passive. London Councils, Labour-controlled since the May elections, has been a bystander as government policies have rolled over the capital.
The result is imbalanced debate. Pickles makes some outrageous intervention – his ludicrous prescription of the frequency of bin emptying, for example. There is not even a mild response of the ‘come off it, Eric’ kind. The LGA is tongue-tied.
Take the restructuring of audit, with its ramifications for spending and autonomy. The planning ought to involve local government. Instead, critical legislation is being written with minimal municipal input.
Some might ask, what’s new? When Labour was in control locally as at Westminster, former LGA chair Lord Beecham did not rock the boat. Besides, the normal cycle of politics will produce more opposition after local elections next year and the year after.
But that is being complacent. Substantive policies are being drafted and implemented that deeply affect localities. This ought to have been a moment for local voice: argumentative, confident, assertive. Instead, silence.
David Walker is the former managing director, communications, of the Audit Commission
