Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-21
Topic: Government Operations
Graham William Allen (Labour, Centre-left): I do, but I gently suggest that the hon. Lady does not push me too far on that point, because she will push me into talking about what the SNP has done to local government in Scotland. One of my new clauses, which may go some way to meeting her point, would entrench the rights of authorities below local councils—neighbourhood, community and parish councils—so that they too can have clear rights The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) has left the Chamber, but people do get confused if there are lots of different tiers and nobody quite knows who does what. If the parish council looks after grass verges, everybody gets to know that and those who are interested can ask questions at that level. If the electrification of the midlands main line or the refurbishment of the M1 motorway is the responsibility of the combined authority for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Derby, people will get to understand that mechanism. We could spend a lot of time talking about combined authorities. Let us let evolution take place and let us make sure, as part of that evolution, that, if we manage to secure this immense gain and step forward of going from Whitehall to town hall, we also go to the level below the town hall Entrenchment sounds like a very technical, dry constitutional question, but it is what just about every other country has. Just in case we ever got an unpleasant or tyrannical central Government of any political party, a local area would have justiciable rights to say, "I’m sorry. You cannot do that. You cannot impose that on us. We are an independent unit, with just as many rights as central Government." Those rights might include the right to raise its own money, issue bonds or whatever it may ultimately be during the next five or 10 years as we catch up with the rest of Europe. Such entrenchment cannot be obtained, however, even by a Minister as benign as this one or his colleague the Secretary of State, because it is sometimes required to be in writing and to be defended The object of my new clause 1 is to defend the progress that the Minister and the Secretary of State are trying to make so that there cannot be changes unless there is consent. There are many ways of doing that. One way is to have a super-majority in the House. If someone came along and tried to terminate the life of a Parliament, just at the whim of the Executive, it could not now be done because there has to be a super-majority. Perhaps local government is as important as the question of how long the life of a Parliament is. Another way would be to have a check and balance, as it were, perhaps with local government itself—with the LGA, or any other institutional arrangement—being able to say, "No. We’re not yet prepared to relinquish that power, so we stand where we are." It could also be defended behind the Parliament Act 1911, which says that the second Chamber shall not stick its nose into any affairs other than—this is the only one at the moment—five-year Parliaments. We could add that it shall also defend the rights of local government and its independence from the centre. Putting such constitutional or democratic blocks in the way of an erosion of some of the very good work that the Government are doing in the Bill is very important in my opinion. I hope that that will be addressed, if not only this occasion, then in a future Bill.