Eric Pickles
Tomorrow the Localism Bill arrives in the Lords. The most controversial provisions appear to be the community right to challenge plans and buy local community assets like libraries, pubs and community centres and the provisions for social housing. The Opposition are worried that independent sector organizations like Serco and Capita could run local services under contract but are happy for local trusts and voluntary organisations to do so even though they will find it harder to raise the capital. The Commons debates continued for weeks of committee hearings dissecting more than 400 clauses and no doubt the marginally amended Bill will be further scrutinized at length in the Lords.
At the heart of the debates are ideological issues about whether every state citizen should get the same uniform services or whether local pluralism and decision making, leading to a ‘postcode lottery’ or ‘a thousand flowers blooming’ would lead to more appropriate services locally. A couple of weeks ago Polly Toynbee in the Guardian quoted Mori Poll’s finding that overwhelmingly the British say they want services to be fair, that state provision should be the same everywhere. Mori found 91% thought the grass in public parks should be cut with equal regularity everywhere. That’s a great example for demonstrating the downside of state planning because we have not had any rain here in south east Norfolk since February (today it’s raining though, hooray) so the lawn has been cut only once every two or three weeks. We’ve just returned from a few days with my brother in the Lake District, where the luscious green grass is almost Irish emerald green and growing visibly daily. Local needs are so different in every service area, depending on the age demographics and social structure of a locality, it does not make sense to decide matters centrally. As with grass cutting so with bin emptying, house building and community support organisations.
Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Local Government, gave a characteristically robust and wide ranging introductory speech in the Commons that travelled from St Augustine to Clint Eastwood and was long on vision, short on the nitty-gritty. I have to confess a soft spot for Eric Pickles as one of the most straightforward local MPs I had to deal with when Chairman of a Health Authority. Of the dozen or so MPs I had contact with about local services Pickles and Stephen Timms were my favourites for doing business with; very different styles but equally admirable. I’m looking forward to listening to the debate; I like the idea of localism but fear what bad councils will do, and there are plenty of those. But greater local powers might attract a better quality of local councillor, a worthy aim in itself.
Baroness Hanham
The Bill will be taken through the Lords by Baroness Hanham, a highly experienced pair of hands who understands all too well how local government works.
http://www.bexley-is-bonkers.co.uk/ is a good read for what localism will do up and down the country.
Centralism, you just have to look at the theft by politicians and politicians then deciding after the fact to make it legal. Try investigating what happened to the ‘regulations’ when the Attorney General was caught taking 100K in expenses. They changed the rules retrospectively. She even wasn’t sacked for breaking her own law. The cleaner was put in jail.
Conclusion, its politicians who are the problem not the solution.
6.8 trillion of debts. How are you going to pay your share?
Another 13 trillion (all present values by the way) to bail out the feckless in their retirement.
Not all can rely on ‘Attendance Allowances’, and subsidised food and alcohol.
@Lord Blagger:
Putting people in jail for the crime you commit is the usual way countries akin to Zimbabwe deal out their punishment. Or, there is the other way, only charge those you no longer want, or, have fallen foul of your authority and bin them as well. Take Baroness Uddin, how much did she get away with? If my memory serves me well, it was an awful lot more than Taylor.
And Taylor tells us, they are all at it. Hence the reason for the selective choices of offenders, they don’t have enough room in the prisons for them all!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333153/Labours-Baroness-Uddin-booted-Lords-claimed-40-000-AFTER-expenses-fiddle-came-light.html
The joke is, Uddin will have the gall to return there after a few months more months and pass judgment on the rest of our future policies, whilst she collects tax payers money once again.
And what did she do to be given this peerage in the first place? Does anyone know?
Or, come to that, the one time Attorney General who seems to have no memory in tact, Baroness Scotland?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23747525-embattled-baroness-fights-to-save-her-job.do
We now hear, she too thinks she can reemerge on the political scene. Thick skinned bunch these Baronesses.
The name is an insult to Scotland and the Scots. It really is a low ball for those north of the border.
British say they want services to be fair, that state provision should be the same everywhere. Mori found 91% thought the grass in public parks should be cut with equal regularity everywhere.
Equality, such an important concept in Mathematics and in political philosophy since the first French revolution, is such a difficult issue. The development of the concept is discussed somewhere very effectively on a wiki page, but I shall have to think what the header is.
It seems to me that, in the NHS for example,
which is the first state organisation to have a seriously bad impact on my own existence,the concept of equality is itself equivalent to the lowest common denominator.
So in the case of rain falling unequally in different parts of the country, you may be quite sure that the rain would fall least everywhere, if it were organized by the state. They would find the LCD and apply it vigorously in the principle that everybody must have equal rain. That may be a mathematical contradiction, but that would not worry them at all!
It is the application of statistics themselves which causes the complexity, by allowing us to know what the “sameness” is, what we should be equal to.
The mathematical contradiction above of the LCd being the same as equality, would amount to explaining something as
“Lies,lies and statistics!”
Is it SERCO and Capita who have lobbied for the bill to be introduced?
I have spoken to one interested person in the Dorset area, who is very keen on the prospect of being able to help buy the library, and the confusion surrounding it.
Bill stage or not, it seems that quite a lot has been done already.
The bill may be intended to put a sheen on property monkey business which is going on already, with the substantial decline in library use due to the Internet.
I can not say I share for a single moment the noble baroness’ confidence in the said Minister. Far from it.
@G.Howell:
Not to mention he is obese and soon people will be refused NHS care for letting themselves get into such an unhealthy state. It is surely a sign of ‘poor judgment,’ or, ‘the inability to control oneself.’
Grass cutters are not so stupid, by and large, to cut the grass at the same height and at the same frequency throughout the summer regardless of whether or not, and if so how intensely, it has rained. It does take some management with some brains and minimal knowledge to get this right, of course.
A good trick is worth repeating
Reading Blagger’s link which is a fairly normal explanation of local authority although erring on the generous side about competence and integrity, the above remark is the most obviously relevant one!!
If SERCO and Capita have done it once, BEFORE a bill is introduced in parliament, you may be quite sure that…… “the trick is worth repeating”, with the full force of the law, and act.
Full marks on that one Blagger.
Can You Legislate for Localism?…
As the Localism Bill passes through Parliament and is immersed in a quagmire of amendments and technical debate, even at optimist like me might begin to question whether the Government will ultimately setback or boost the cause of community led planning and solutions.
The issue is, when politicians attempt to loosen the control of the state and introduce local flexibility, the civil servants are left with the tricky problem of providing legislation to achieve this equitably and consistently. When the process at the centre of this is as technical as landuse planning and requires checks and balances to prevent endless legal challenges to decision-making, I think the problem is even trickier. Add to this that the Government also wanted to achieve a clean sweep of change by at the same time scrapping the NPPF rulebook and it is no wonder that planners feel at best that they are being asked to take a step backwards in order to move forwards.
As the passage of the Localism Bill through Parliament gets bogged down in debates about the effectiveness of inadvertently encouraging rival Neighbourhood Plans that can all be rejected by a public referendum, it becomes more difficult for me to disagree with the sceptics. However, the challenge in determining whether the Localism Bill will be helpful to the cause of community empowerment, it is not whether it helps pioneering towns and councils but whether it encourage imaginative and collaborative local leadership across the country. Of course, get it wrong and it will hinder even the pioneers.
The other important thing amongst all the current technical and ideological debate, is to step back from the statutory landuse planning aspects of the Localism Bill. Legally-binding Neighbourhood Development Orders may be the exception rather than the rule and referendums should be used as a last resort, if at all. If instead, the Government’s promotion of Neighbourhood Plans can be achieved through consensus building and non-technical community-led planning, then the impact can go beyond confrontations about ‘bricks and mortar’. I still believe that the intent in the Bill to look beyond planning to community owned and managed assets and services is to be applauded.
AMT sees localism as a long-term journey about changing council cultures, building community capacity, understanding issues, working with businesses and then developing locally tailored solutions that are community owned in every sense of the word. We use the concept of the ‘Localism Ladder’ to share the experiences of our members in undertaking this journey over the last decade or so. I am just about managing to remain optimistic that the Localism Bill will help communities make further progress but it gets hard in the face of all the current wrangling over detail.
Visit http://www.towns.org.uk to chart progress against the Localism Ladder.
I read today that government has yet another plan for equality? It is to remove council tennants from social housing that is considered ‘too big’ for their present needs.
Those with an extra room will be ousted on the grounds they are taking up too much space and therefore are not entitled to Housing Benefit for the extra footage. This is of course directed at the elderly. Those who have lived in their homes for umpteen years.
Have you seen the size of a council house or flat? The rooms are not big enough to swing a cat. Yet, they are now classified as too large owing to the millions of immigrants entering the country by the day. They now want these places for those in priority need. Immigrants have umpteen family members to accommodate. Or, they say they have.
Now, those who paid for this social housing, through their taxes, or, their families taxes, and fought for this country, or, worked for this country, are to be forced into what is termed a ‘studio.’ That is if they live alone, or, pushed into another form of ‘lesser’ housing, as their requirements are over provided for in the past.
So, this is what government thinks of the indigenous people who ‘vote’ for them. Not worthy of a few square feet to move around in. Another way to bring stress levels to a hypertensive reaction.
The joke is, Uddin will have the gall to return there after a few months more months and pass judgment on the rest of our future policies, whilst she collects tax payers money once again.
==========
Not if I have anything to do with it.
As to Taylor, why hasn’t the police followed up on what the others have been doing?
Taylor should have been asked to make a statement as to what they have been upto, and the police should investigate.
Meanwhile, the Bar council has started proceedings to have him struck off. That’s the standard disciplinary action for offences involving fraud.
Somehow I suspect the Lords will do a Uddin, and suspend him, no doubt to run concurrently with his jail time, then he can carry on troughing.
@Lord Blagger:
All the more reason for the Lords to be cut down to the 200 who actually turn up and carry on with the task they are supposed to be there to do.
According to recent information only 200 of them are the maximum amount who really earn their daily stipend.
Why not go the whole hog, and axe the lot?
New Zealand doesn’t need a second chamber.
The UK doesn’t either.
I would disagree with you there. On more than one occasion, it has been the presence of the Lords that has stopped bad things from becoming law. The role of scrutinising and reviewing legislation out of the party-political environment of the Commons is important. This is also why reform of the Lords needs to be done very carefully, because most of the ideas I’ve seen so far will degenerate into another party-political chamber (which we don’t need) filled with professional politicians who mostly lack the expertise to understand the fine print on some of the legislation.
It’s not especially germane to the current thread about the Localism Bill, but there is a very real case that any person who is convicted of committing a felony carrying a maximum sentence exceeding two years whilst serving as a member of either house should be barred for life from sitting as a member of either house, the bar taking effect from the date when any appeal right against conviction has time-expired (or, if sooner, when it has been indicated there will be no appeal against conviction).
‘The Opposition are ….. happy for local trusts and voluntary organisations to do so even though they will find it harder to raise the capital.’ Well, I for one (a trustee for over a decade of a couple of charities together worth over £20million) resented becoming simply made an agent for government to do things that government, though best fitted for the task, was no longer prepared to do (or pay for, or allow, local government to do). Charities are not set up to do the work of government or local government but to innovate, to fill gaps where no government has thought to go and so on. It grieved me to simply substitute for government.
Charities are indeed funded by ‘private concerns’ and this is done with the belief that the said ‘Charity’ will carry out the objectives these funders have been led to believe will be central to their objectives.
What will Governments role be in directing the affairs of these Charities now? What if the donations stop as a result of Government interference because the funders no longer find they have ideas in common?
Who will keep an eye on the Charity organisers and managers? How much will these people be paying themselves in future?
Charity organisers make huge salaries. Odd really when we always believed Charity was just that, a Charity. And those who work on behalf of that Charity did it for altruistic reasons not for personal gain.
Trustees of charities do so for altruistic reasons and are not remunerated. The employees are paid what the trustees think appropriate, and market forces can determine what you have to pay to get a quality CEO. If trustees overpay, they will come to regret it. Government should have no role in directing what charities do. They should keep out altogether. The Charity Commission should monitor and, as necessary, regulate. Donors can and do move away if they perceive a charity has lost its way or purpose, and one way they can lose their purpose is by becoming simply the agents of government – whoever is in power – instead of acting independently to carry out their mission.
If you take the example if several hundred rugby clubs when the open game began, after the 100yr moratorium in 1997, the appealing cry went out for more funds by way of share issues
to do all the essential things that needed to be done to keep in the position and maintain the status they had, not mentioning of course that the business meetings would be carefully vetted by professionals to keep the shareholding in the hands of the existing
accountants and owners.
Most charities, clubs and associations, have a pseudo-amateur management which in the case of some of the largest UK “charities” pays high wages to all the management. They are management structure business organisations, there to keep them in well paid work.
In the case for example of the British Legion, the local clubs, have shamateur presidents who earn themselves backhanded wages from the business, and also, and a good many are developed for property purposes, those presidents get excellent kickbacks from the development profits, in whatever way they choose to do it. Property development takes time, and those who are prepared to sit around and wait for the profits, are those who make most out of it, namely the professional estate agents and developers.
40 years is not that long in terms of a property development situation, a career of accumulation over many years organised by a partnership practice which passes on the
development asset from one generation of partners to the next.
It sounds as though the Bill is thoroughly trivial, designed to placate those members of the public who are temporarily indignant at the loss of a publicly owned asset, and that the property developers/estate agents are waiting to swoop in large numbers.
Saying that, a recovering property market will not occur for another 7 years or so, during which time the developers will be doing their regular work of accumulation and re-designing over and over again.
Few people get rich by being involved in owning professional rugby clubs. The money flows one way – from their pockets into players’ and coaches’ salaries, and it should be remembered that players have time-limited careers curtailable abruptly by injury.
You make allegations against the Royal British Legion at its various levels. This is not really the place to explore those, but if you know something specific you should let top level RBL management know about it or report to their auditors or to the Charity Commission.
Lord Blagger: If the HoL was to go we might loose you!
Here is the link to the NZ Constitution.
http://www.gg.govt.nz/role/constofnz.htm
Pray tell, what in particular do you like about New Zealand’s Parliamentary system.
Is it that constitutional change to its electoral system can only happen if 75% of MPs agree to it? Perhaps it is their 3 year Parliaments? What about the powers of the Governor-General to act without statute under Royal Prerogative.
Or is it that in 2010:
“New Zealand Policy Unit of the Centre for Independent Studies proposed a Senate in the context of the 2011 referendum on MMP. They proposed a proportionally-elected upper house made up 31 seats elected using a proportional list vote by region, with the House of Representatives elected by FPP and consisting of 79 seats.”
Shame I know! And you were going to emigrate to NZ just to spite Lord Norton.
Ref: Parliament of New Zealand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_New_Zealand#Senate_proposals
keep it up Senex….
Back to local issues, or, maybe not. Who knows what local ‘ism’ will be covering in this perverse shake up from the top.
I heard the most insane story today from the horses mouth so to speak.
A disabled person who needs a mobility scooter wants to apply for a grant to secure one. He/she wants one that is small enough to keep in a tiny flat, without taking up the entire living room floor centre, in which doing so, constantly reminds them of the fact they have no space to move around in. Also the need is for the smallest and lightest to enable those who assist the person to lift it into and out of various forms of transport without getting a hernia. Low and behold one was found to be perfect. No frills, bare necessity only, very light weight, and folding to the size of a suitcase. Really practical. These things are pricy but this one is about middle of the range.
However, the person was told, no grants, assistance or help of any kind for financing this thing was possible, because, now wait for it, it is classified as a ‘luxury’ item.
The state is utterly insane and filled with too many people who have no understanding of the needs of those who are truly disabled.
You can take this scooter on a train, plane or liner, as well as put it easily into a car, so, as a result it comes in the range of a luxury, because, the disabled may be able to enjoy some of the activities able bodied people do on a regular basis. This concept being a big crime in the eyes of the local bureaucrats.
The EU needs to look into the resentment toward the disabled people in the UK have. It is perverse and dark and not something the Europeans seem to harbour.
@Maude the example you cite seems perverse – he/she should refer the correspondence to a relevant disability organisation as a mobility chair is a very basic requirement. Authorities should be alive to space and access issues – people don’t want their hallways or living room to be clogged like a car park.
@DanFilson:
Thank you for the guide Dan, very thoughtful of you. I shall do just that.