Local Government, House of Lords and PR

A reformed House of Lords, elected by proportional representation, running local services such that local authorities (and council tax) are abolished, are these good ideas, I certainly think so. Oh, and solving the West Lothian problem, dealing with the postcode lottery and introducing a proper way forward for English regional government if people really want that.

We've had great Reform Acts before, this will be the sixth (I think!) Read on.........


Bradford Constitutional Reforms


Much has been written about possible reforms to several different UK domestic institutions, and this paper proposes some new ideas that will transform much of the constitutional landscape. These ideas cover the postcode lottery, council tax, regional government and devolution, proportional representation, House of Lords reform and the West Lothian problem.

1. The Abolition Of Local Authorities

The set-up of UK Local Government is extremely confusing even to those of us who live here. This is the result of a complete re-organisation in 1973 and further partial re-organisations in 1986 and the 1990s. (www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/uklocalgov/structure.htm)

My first reform is dramatic and revolutionary - I am unaware of any other country that has ever done this – but it is not an end in itself, merely the beginning of a series of linked ideas. It is the abolition of local authorities; all of them, district, county, parish, mayors, LEAs, etc. Its purpose is to end the confusion, yes, but more importantly, to replace a system that was created in the Victorian era with something that works better. Local authorities served us well from their beginnings in the nineteenth century, but now no longer do, hence the constant tinkering with the system. In their day, they solved many of the governance problems of the time, but were then, and still are, based on ideas and structures that are now outdated. We do not travel by horse and carriage over muddy tracks and we do not communicate by snail mail. We can easily travel anywhere in the country, and around the world, in a few hours; we can communicate and deliver documents, sounds and moving images instantly. In other words, we can solve the same problems that confronted the Victorians in radically different ways, thanks to these advances in technology. And because, often, we do indeed solve these problems now in different ways, these institutions are bypassed as irrelevancies, causing them to lose influence and causing voters to stay away at election time. Local authorities are often now only used as agencies of central government to carry out government policies, when new institutions would carry these out more efficiently. Local Government, in particular, is dealing with an increasingly prescriptive Whitehall funding regime which is inevitably restricting the choices available to elected politicians in Town and County Halls across the country. (Councillor Richard Stay, Bedfordshire County Council, 4th July 2005.)

James Blitz, writing in the Financial Times 13th January 2007 - In London..........when services are delivered by 32 individual boroughs - each acting independently of each other - strategic planning is impossible. He was referring to children with special educational needs, but the comment applies to just about everything else that local authorities do.

The BBC, commenting on the lamentable history of Edinburgh's new tramway, has this: 'Edinburgh City Council's transport convener has said he did not have the right skills to "properly scrutinise" the city's troubled tram project.' (BBC website 11th October 2011).  Let's hope we don't have some local authority try to build an airport..... "Nine years late and billions over budget" - Berlin's new airport.

'In recent months some of local government's most senior figures have urged the government to bite the bullet and draw up plans to radically reduce the number of councils.'  (Vaughan Roderick BBC Welsh Affairs Editor commenting on a Welsh government review 19th April 2013)

 

 "Bristol council adds diesel vans to fleet despite ban" (BBC website headline 29th November 2019) No comment needed.

 

"The KLIC building has since been valued at £2.4m, despite costing more than £6m to build."  (BBC website headline 9th October 2020).  This is the Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk's attempt to build an innovation centre.

 

Blue badge permit 'shocking disparity' revealed. (BBC website headline 14th January 2021)  Why shouldn't local authorities have different blue badge arrangements?  Isn't that local democracy in action?

 
Chris Yiu, commenting (yiu.co.uk/blog/its-time-to-finish-the-revolution-uber-started/#fnref:1) on local authorities' rules for licensing mini-cabs, says - "Whatever rationale existed when these sorts of rules were first introduced, today the only real function they serve is to allow fading local institutions to flex their muscles at drivers’ expense. A single streamlined national regime for private hire — built from the ground up for the internet era and reflecting that fact that peoples’ lives are bigger than local government boundaries — is long overdue."

 
Why is it that this has never been proposed or done before? Because it represents the end of local democracy, so often quoted by politicians as the sacred cow they would claim to defend to the death. But what is local democracy, and is it such a bad thing if it disappears? It is, presumably, the ability of local voters to decide for themselves what happens in their particular area. In other words, what happens in my area, or group of postcodes, will be different to what happens in a neighbouring area, or group of postcodes. Elderly people who need care at home are still facing a "postcode lottery" on the fees they are charged - despite the introduction of fairer charging guidelines. Age Concern England found some authorities don't charge, while others charge from £3.50 to £15.50 an hour. (The Postcode Lottery, Peter Sharples, Manchester Evening News, 12th July 2004.) It’s clear, isn’t it, that the writer considers the postcode lottery to be a bad thing (which it is), but one suspects that he also thinks that local democracy is a good thing. I can’t see any difference between the two. If you have local democracy, you also have, by definition, the postcode lottery. In theory at any rate, the voters in authorities that don’t charge homecare fees presumably like things that way, whereas the voters in authorities which charge £15.50 an hour like things their way. Heavens above, how dare Age Concern criticise local democracy! Anyway, the figures speak for themselves, the turnout in the 2002 local elections was 34% whilst in 2017 just under 29% turned out to vote for the Manchester mayor where the high profile Andy Burnham was standing.  That is to say, two thirds or more of voters don’t care about local democracy, although you can be sure that they do care about the postcode lottery, and want to be rid of it, the UK is too densely populated and too homogenised to need it. Therefore the end of local democracy actually means the end of the postcode lottery, and not much else. But it does not, and need not, mean the end of local control of local institutions.

2. What Replaces Local Authorities?

The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 created Further Education Corporations, which were given the responsibility of running further education colleges in the place of local authorities. Funding (about £3.5 billion) was provided by the government via the Further Education Funding Council (subsequently replaced by the Learning & Skills Council), which controlled and managed the new FE sector. Local authority funding was reduced by a corresponding amount. Over the following few years, further education was transformed into something approaching an efficient, market-led national system for the delivery of education, something that had never happened previously. It was consistent across all regions, both in the delivery of education and in the presentation and publication of financial reports and educational achievements, and it was able to generate savings and efficiencies by being able to share best practice across the whole of the country, thanks to the oversight of the FEFC. Because funding to individual colleges was based primarily on student numbers and completion rates, colleges had a real incentive to make their courses attractive to students and to fashion courses accordingly. Over the years, colleges made financial savings for the taxpayer, whilst delivering higher quality and satisfying the aspirations of many more students – a success story if ever there was one. High-level government control was maintained through the ability of the government to alter the ‘tariff’ of prices paid to colleges for running particular courses or enrolling particular students (disabled, for example). No-one complained about the ending of local democracy in the management and control of colleges, which developed their own systems of communication with their local communities. If people had complaints (often parents of students), they voiced them to the governors and staff of the individual college, and told the local press if they didn’t like the answers they were getting. It worked.

This is the model for replacing all the other services currently managed by local authorities, some examples following. Significant variations in the model will occur in sectors where the degree of control exercised by the local authority is high, and where, for example, the delivery of a service is carried on by an entity that is too small to be able to carry its own management, as FE colleges do - schools, for example.

A. Schools

In theory, we have schools managed by local education authorities in the UK, so the presence of a Department for Education seems contradictory. Education policy in this country should be managed centrally, so that standards, the curriculum, funding, teaching methods, etc are consistent. We currently have a haphazard arrangement of different types of school, some within local authority control, some not, with different funding methods, some extremely successful, some bordering on disasters. All this needs to change to something like the FE system, where a government agency provides the funding to individual schools, based on an agreed basic curriculum, but significantly influenced by local parents, this influence being effected directly through school governors and staff. None of this need contradict such ideas as have been espoused in, for example The Daily Telegraph - Central government should confine itself to the setting of basic standards which providers must meet in exchange for public money, but the actual task of reaching these standards should be left to local discretion. (How patients and parents can halt the decline in our hospitals and schools. Daily Telegraph, 7th June 2005.) “Local discretion” will take the form of parents voting with their feet, without reference to the by-now defunct LEA local catchment area.
The difficulty here is one of local administration - property maintenance, payroll and finance, purchasing, etc. Perhaps the answer is for the Schools Funding Agency (which is likely to be funding parents as well as, or instead of, schools) to maintain area offices to carry out this purely administrative task for several local schools.
The UK needs a national system of school buses. (No More School Run, Policy Exchange Publication) Who better to manage this than the SFA. Could LEAs ever manage to organise such a thing? No.

B. Libraries

The National Year of Reading began in September 1998, at a time when libraries were closing, 175 in the preceding five years. Who did something about this? The government, with its Library and Information Commission (then The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) report in Autumn 1997. Did local authorities do it? No. Who is supposed to run libraries? Local Authorities, who did it well in the Victorian era, but not now. The MLA should be given the responsibility of running libraries on a national scale, with local libraries being funded directly by the MLA, and responsible to that body. The MLA will then be in a position to rationalise the sector, its properties, buildings, etc, its staffing, its purchasing and strategic policies, at the same time increasing the numbers of people using libraries and at a lower cost to the taxpayer. For example, it might choose to share local administrative functions with the SFA.
Since that 1997 report, nothing appears to have changed, except that further reports have been prepared. Councils spend £24 every time they buy a £10 book, because of the bureaucracy involved – Only half as many people are borrowing books as ten years ago – We really have to worry about the decline in book borrowing, because it’s almost in freefall. (Libraries will be Closed in 15 Years, Says Ex-boss of Waterstone’s, Daily Telegraph, 4th June 2005.) Local democracy is responsible for this state of affairs, so it’s presumably what local voters want – or is it?

C. Waste Disposal

Britain is being ruined by the enormous volumes of garbage being generated, enough thrown away every hour to fill the Albert Hall – a sorry tale of how greed, laziness and staggering government incompetence are ruining towns, landscapes and watercourses. (Jeremy Paxman’s Diary, Daily Telegraph, 11th June 2005) Enough said. We need a national body to manage the environment and waste, with an enforceable national strategy for recycling, disposal sites, etc to replace the mish-mash of local authority schemes.

D. Care for the Elderly and the Young.

Victoria Climbié. We need nationally organised facilities for social services, care and carers; this should not be something left to the control of local authorities. Since then, what has local democracy, which in theory created the situation that ultimately led to it, done about it? Nothing? Have voters changed the way they vote as a result? No? And notwithstanding the political response to that tragedy, we've now had the further tragedy of Baby P. The government said last night it may send a new management team into Haringey council, to take over the running of social services in the borough where Baby P died at the hands of his mother and two men. (The Guardian, 18th November 2008). Why? Where's the local democracy in that? The Audit Commission performance tables for 2008 reveal that 40 out of 149 authorities in England provide either inadequate or the minimum accepted standard of children's services. (Camila Batmanghelidjh, The Observer 18th April 2010). If local authorities didn't exist, would we invent them?

E. Highways

The chaos in the snow on the M11 at the end of January 2003 is a good example of local authority mismanagement. The RAC said at the time we have a postcode lottery system with gritting, and the AA criticised complacent local authorities. (both - "Transport Chiefs Snowed Under With Complaints", Daily Telegraph, 1st February 2003.) As a result of this incident, the government promised to introduce a law to force councils to grit roads. Local democracy? I don’t think so. The Highways Agency should be responsible for all roads nationally, their maintenance, safety, gritting, signage, everything. While county councils find taxpayers' money to squander on junkets abroad, PR stunts and other vacuous indulgences, they neglect to buy sufficient supplies of rock salt for a bad winter. (Simon Heffer "Why are our leaders so lacking in grit?", Daily Telegraph, 7th February 2009.)

And so on and so on. Housing services are slowly being separated from local authorities, these days in the form of ALMOs; careers and teenage support services have already been transferred to the Connexions service; planning services have always been subject to the final decision of the Secretary of State on appeal. Parks, open spaces, cemeteries are constantly being vandalised and run down – just look at the sad recent history of Broomfield House, Broomfield Park in the London Borough of Enfield. Building controls can easily be managed by a national agency, working to national and local regulations.

3. Where Does That Take Us?

Local democracy gives us local authorities that we vote for, and which are responsible for a whole range of different aspects of daily life. So it’s unlikely that my local authority, even one voted for by me, will necessarily produce policies on schools, homecare fees, gritting, waste disposal, council house management and rents, planning, etc, all of which I agree with. I’m likely to approve of some and disapprove of others, whatever the political makeup of the authority. Whilst for many other policies, I probably don’t especially care if I don’t need a particular service. If all these activities are managed separately, I can go straight to the agency managing the activity that I’m interested in. If I want different books in my local library, or a change to local parking regulations or rubbish collection arrangements, I go to the relevant agency, one that is focused on that particular activity, and is not being constrained by some other local authority department.

Simon Jenkins, in his November 2004 pamphlet “Big Bang Localism”, says that services should be run at their lowest tier commensurate with their efficient and accountable delivery. But here, he is inconsistent, as this quote follows on from his argument that Britain remains almost devoid of local democracy (both - "Gently Does It", FT Magazine, 30th April 2005), comparing Britain’s 472 units of local administration with France’s 36,880 (I think that’s 472 too many, not 36,408 too few). Localism is not the same thing as local democracy. Michael Howard is quoted in the same article as pledging to introduce locally elected police chiefs, which, again, is muddled thinking. Locally elected police chiefs don’t necessarily act ‘locally’, they act according to national needs and policy decisions. How would locally elected police chiefs have changed the muddled communication between Cambridgeshire and Humberside police at the time of the Soham tragedy, or between Essex and Cambridgeshire police at the time of the M11 chaos? If the police were organised on a national basis and all the county forces and the British Transport Police were merged, then both those events would have been handled better, because the local police would have arranged their response to suit those local circumstances, without regard to artificial county lines. The FT article, quoting Michael Howard’s soundbite about making the state small and the people big, says that this is localism. It is that, but local democracy is not needed to achieve that desirable aim, indeed, it will hinder it.

Agencies will plan and manage on a national scale, but will be responsive to local need – localism. There will be none of the local boundaries that have created the postcode lottery.

• That’s the Postcode Lottery dealt with.

Arguments in favour of the poll tax included, amongst other things, the abolition of the unpopular rating system of local taxation. The unpopular poll tax went in favour of council tax. That, only a minor variant on rates, is rapidly becoming as unpopular as rates and poll tax became. Now, the Liberal Democrats claim to have the answer in the shape of a local income tax, but who’s to say that won’t become equally unpopular? My only quibble with their idea is the word local. Since there are no local authorities, there will be no council tax or national non-domestic rates, which should be replaced by corresponding increases in income tax and corporation tax.

• That’s Council Tax dealt with.

4. Who Is Responsible For These Agencies?

I said earlier that high-level government control of colleges was maintained through the ability of the government to alter the ‘tariff’ of prices. Equally, the government will maintain high-level control of other agencies through pricing and policy mechanisms, leaving the local school, waste management centre, planning office, gritting centre, etc, to manage locally. Who in government has the time to manage these new national agencies? The funding is clear. That comes from government grants that replace local authority spending. The answer to the question is bound up with the next major reform, a reformed House of Lords.

Its members, the MLs, will decide policy and control the national agencies, thus replacing the decision-making processes of the local authorities, when, no doubt select committees, made up of MLs with a particular interest, would be formed to thrash out the detail relating to each agency. The House of Commons would not be involved, except to the extent that it may feel that legislation is needed to amend the terms under which the MLs work.

Thus, the Lords will take over the high-level control functions of the local authorities. Its hours will be office hours and the MLs will be paid. The Lords will retain its other current functions, but amended to address the issues of regional government - amended by being applied only to England. The Scottish parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies will carry out these functions in those countries. The House of Lords thus becomes the fourth regional government, creating a slightly looser, more federal structure. Each of the four regional governments will take over the affairs of their local authorities: but they will do more than that. They will take on the second chamber review role that the House of Lords has now. As the House of Commons publishes new Bills, each regional government will act as a revising chamber, and may send amendments to the Commons. Thus, all four will be required to approve legislation before it can become law, unless there are laws proposed that affect only one country, when only that country’s regional government will need to give approval.

• That’s Regional Government dealt with.

But there’s got to be democracy somewhere in this process:

5. How Are MLs To Be Elected

Firstly let’s clear up how they will not be elected – they will not be hereditary and they will not be Life Peers, as both concepts will disappear. MLs will be elected at the same time as a general election to the House of Commons (procedures for which are unchanged, except that the period of office will be a fixed five-year term), by proportional representation, using the closed-list system, lists being maintained by each political party. Those at the top of the list will be elected, sufficient to fill each party’s quota, the quota being based on the total percentage of votes cast for the party in each country at the General Election. Thus voters will continue to vote for an MP for the House of Commons, as they do now, but in the knowledge that their votes are never wasted, as they will help to increase the quota for their political party’s representation in the Lords. Peers could not only be included in party lists, but would also be able to stand for the Commons, as an MP. It’s possible to introduce all sorts of variations on this theme, of course, for example, 10% of seats might be reserved for non-elected, ex-officio postholders, religious leaders, trades union and industry leaders, legal, finance and teaching leaders, military representatives, and so on. Or a party may have to win a minimum percentage of votes (5%, say) before winning any representation. Keeping it simple, let’s suppose that a 500-seat English House of Lords is made up on the basis of the 2019 election results. Labour would have 170 MLs, the Conservatives 236, Lib Dems 62, Greens 15, UKIP/Brexit 11, others 6. In Wales, Labour would have 33 seats of an 80-seat assembly, Plaid Cymru 8. A neat variation would be to include non-voters in this mix – if, for example, 65% of the electorate vote, then 35% of the seats in the Lords would be empty, sending a clear message to abstainers of the consequences of their abstentions. Parties entitled to contest representation would be those that field candidates in the election for the House of Commons. Each would prepare a publicised list of whichever names that party agreed upon internally. It might well include those standing for the House of Commons. If they win a seat in the House of Commons (on the first past the post system), then their names come off the list, and those lower down move up. Thus Nick Clegg would now be an ML, assuming he was on the Lib Dem’s list. MLs remain in the Lords until the next election when new lists would be drawn up, whilst resignations and deaths would be replaced by the next available name on the current list. This system gives voters and party workers a real incentive to get out every vote, even in safe seats, where the party machine might gear itself up to help neighbouring marginal and hopeless seats to get in as many votes there as possible. It also gives those lower down the list an incentive to help anywhere in the country on a personal basis to increase the vote, as that increases their personal chances of being elected an ML. The system also gives those MLs higher up their party list the security of knowing that there would need to be a major earthquake in voting patterns to cause them to lose their seats, giving them some of the freedoms undoubtedly enjoyed by Peers today, who have the huge advantage over MPs of being able to speak their minds relatively freely - we need people like that.

• That’s Proportional Representation dealt with.

• That’s House of Lords Reform dealt with.

These MLs, then, democratically elected under a PR system, manage our domestic affairs. They are ultimately responsible for putting in place a proper national system for gritting roads, through the Highways Agency; for getting schoolchildren to school safely on yellow buses, and ending the 4x4 school run; for ensuring our children’s homes are run for the safety of the children and preventing abuse. MLs ensure that each agency devolves responsibility for carrying out its remit at the lowest tier in any area. The Scots, Welsh and Irish will have a system of devolved government that makes more sense that the present cobbled-together arrangements. They will have a direct stake in the formulation of UK-wide Government legislation and will control legislation relating to their own countries. The MP for West Lothian will not have voting rights over English legislation.

• That’s the West Lothian Problem dealt with.

6. The English Regions

It would, of course, be possible to develop this process further in England, by creating English regional assemblies, with similar chambers in, say, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle, leaving the London House of Lords with jurisdiction over London and the South-East only. However, having eight such UK regional assemblies might make the process of passing Acts of Parliament extremely difficult, in which case, perhaps only six out of the eight assemblies, two of them non-English, would need to approve UK-wide legislation.

• That’s the most radical and far-reaching set of reforms envisaged for a long time, certainly on a par with the privatisation reforms of the eighties and nineties.