No-one has explained why it was essential to issue the White Paper on local government in October.
We had already written that it was premature to publish the Government’s plans before it had received the Lyons report – and digested reactions to its proposals – in The MJ on 28 September and 9 November.
Some in local government feel frustrated by the chancellor’s pre-Budget statement that Lyons would be delayed until the time of the actual Budget. It looks, at first glance, as if the Government is once again failing to grapple with hard decisions about local government and how to finance it.
The Government first established the Raynsford review of the balance of funding, and then, to avoid doing anything, set up the Lyons inquiry, and extended its remit. And, just as it was on the point of issuing its conclusions, ministers postponed publication.
Local government should welcome the pause. It gives it time to strengthen the eventual Lyons report and, more importantly, to enable Gordon Brown – possibly the next prime minister – to show where he stands on the future of local government.
Sir Michael Lyons will now have time to consider the implications for local government of three important reports – Eddington on transport, Leitch on skills and Barker on planning.
Sir Michael has stressed that local authorities have a major role both as expressions of local democracy and as helping central government achieve its strategic objectives and economic goals. He now has the chance to show how local authorities have a decisive part to play in improving transport and skills, and that these and the planning function are critical to the place-shaping role he has promoted.
To play that role, they need considerable discretion for innovation, and to underpin their functions, they must have a substantial tax base of their own.
The pause will enable him to exert influence on Mr Brown. The chancellor is the key player, to whom all four reports flow.
In the spring, he will have completed the Comprehensive Spending Review which will set out his objectives as prime minister. He will be taking critical decisions that will shape the future of local government for years to come.
He is now more likely to take the right decisions than if Lyons had reported in December.
In the past, Mr Brown has appeared to be no friend of local government. He pressed for council-tax capping. His close allies seemed keen on regional government, and pulling local-government functions from cities and counties to remote provincial bureaucracies.
But, there was a straw in the wind at the last Labour Party conference – his main speech mentioned local government favourably, and the word regional was never mentioned. Under the influence of Lyons, he may see that local government with a significant tax base of its own drawn from its own voters could be an ally of the Treasury in ensuring the wise use of resources, matching their allocation to needs more effectively than is possible at a national level.
And in response, local authorities would have to accept that instead of passing the blame to central government and constantly pressing for higher grant, they would have to defend their decisions on expenditure and taxation to their electorate as their own responsibility.
Mr Brown is crucial for local government. Through the Treasury, and as a future prime minister, he can pull the other departments of Whitehall together to support devolution to local authorities.
Perhaps the chancellor’s eventual decision will not be supportive of local government. He may turn out to be a centraliser and regard local authorities as mere agents of central government.
Even that decision is more welcome than continuing to proclaim the rhetoric of devolution behind which centralisation increases. But best of all, he could show his government is charting a new direction – to reinvigorated local government. n
George Jones is emeritus professor of government at the LSE, and John Stewart is emeritus professor of local government at the University of Birmingham
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