[cma-l] Communities in control: real people, real power - audio interview

[Dave Rushton]

Lest we lose all sense of proportion ....

 From today's Guardian - Simon Jenkins.

Tax and policy? You're lucky to have parking tickets and bin bags

Britain's local democratic deficit is the starkest variance between  
our politics and that of other western states

Hazel Blears, the secretary of state for "communities", yesterday  
published a white paper containing an astonishing proposal. To make  
local electors vote, they should be entered for a "prize draw" to  
win, say, an iPod or shopping voucher. Instead of the incentive of  
real power, they should have an incentive of greed. They may not vote  
because the vote is democratically barren, but they might at least be  
bribed to do so. Welcome the age of heroic cynicism.

Nobody can take this government's localist pledges seriously until it  
does so itself. Consider two villages, both the size of an average  
British parish. One is in central France. It chooses its own mayor,  
known by name to everyone. Its commune is a one-stop shop, caring for  
the mairie, primary school, church, market and square, planning  
development and even administering a small welfare fund. The commune  
levies a local tax to pay for these things.

A small municipality in Sweden runs the same services under an  
elected council, but it also runs its doctors' clinic and its housing  
allocations. This is covered by a proportion of a locally determined  
income tax, "redistributed" to ensure a degree of service  
equalisation between rich and poor areas.

Blears and her boss, Gordon Brown, would never tolerate such  
permissive localism. They genuinely believe that Britons are not able  
to run their own affairs, are indeed indolent, incompetent and  
probably venal. Last year Blears announced a series of "experimental  
pilots" whereby parishes and urban neighbourhoods would be donated  
tiny pots of money, just to see how they chose to spend them. They  
would not be allowed to raise them from taxes.

Now we have more gesture localism. Blears's latest white paper was so  
meagre it hardly merited a report in the press. It is full of quotes  
from Aristotle, Milton and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and  
is called Communities in Control - a title as ironic as its  
predecessor from Ruth Kelly, Strong and Prosperous Communities  
(2006), not to mention John Prescott's In Touch With the People. Like  
the concept of a state secretary "for communities", Whitehall has no  
sense of self-ridicule.

The white paper, presaging legislation, contains the usual dribble of  
largesse. Apart from prize draws, there are measures to make it  
easier for municipalities to choose elected mayors. Communities,  
undefined, are to be allowed to petition for local debates and demand  
meetings. Neighbourhoods might have more access to small "kitties"  
for traffic-calming and play areas, donated from above and prescribed  
as between £5,000 and £2.5m. A Soviet municipality under Lenin would  
have been treated less patronisingly.

This is dark-ages democracy and, for those who have laboured in the  
localist vineyard, depressing. Blears has experience of local  
government and, like many who have risen to higher things, clearly  
takes a dim view of its participants. Already the schools minister,  
Lord Adonis, has all but centralised primary and secondary education,  
depriving communities of their most cohering institutions and  
crushing teachers with bureaucracy.

Occasional suggestions that "local people" might regain some control  
over their health service, as in Scandinavia, and over the police and  
local order, as in America, have vanished into the Whitehall sands. A  
battle is said to be taking place over re-establishing elected watch  
committees, but since these will be separate from local councils they  
will be subject to central control and "producer capture" by the police.

With planning "nationalised" under the 2004 and 2008 acts, the  
absence of schools, health, and law and order strips the heart from  
any concept of local democracy, and Blears knows it. Democracy cannot  
be built on bin bags and parking tickets.

Speaking recently to parish councillors - still the most numerous  
body of elected people in Britain - Blears said she was "a firm  
believer in devolution to the local level" and wanted to give  
parishes "new flexibilities and powers". She just does not mean it,  
any more than the authors of identical speeches and identical white  
papers before her.

Indeed, last week she openly questioned if local democrats were  
capable of accepting more power. She brutally stated, via Public  
Finance magazine: "Are you up for this?" The justice minister Michael  
Wills put it more bluntly in a speech to the Fabian Society last  
autumn. Localism, he said, "means a reinforcement of inequality in  
this country". In other words, the answer to Blears's question is no.

All experience makes clear that there is no point in pursuing the  
localist debate if three requirements are not met: that elected  
bodies run some substantial public services; that they own some  
institutions; and that they raise some discretionary taxes. The  
franchise must bite. Without such bite, all democracy is play-acting  
and all devolution empty paternalism.

Blears and her colleagues believe that people will not accept any  
diversity in standards that might result from local taxing powers.  
But they have allowed such power to Scotland and the mayor in London.  
Nor does any other country in Europe find this a problem. The concept  
of equalising locally raised revenue between rich and poor areas is  
familiar everywhere - as Blears knows well - and was explicit in  
Britain before rate-capping.

Rich people already purchase private schools, doctors, security and  
transport. Why should they not be free to decide on their own public  
services? The only proviso is that the local taxes be subject to  
redistribution, as are private incomes. This would be easier if such  
taxes include an income element. But it is not postcode lotteries  
that ministers fear. What they fear is a loss of control.

Britain's local democratic deficit is the starkest variance between  
its politics and that of other western states. Under Margaret  
Thatcher, who began the march to centralisation, the path was  
deliberate. "I must take more power to the centre," she said, "to  
stop socialism." Under Tony Blair and Brown the march has been more  
sinister because denied.

British people still regard their local council as their first port  
of call for public services: by two to one, compared with central  
government (according to Mori). Yet these councils are, to the  
centre, mere agencies. Their elected representatives are superfluous  
as conduits of accountability, and their voters not to be trusted  
with policy, taxes or priorities.

Empowerment is empty without accountability, and accountability is  
empty without fiscal bite. There is no communal governance in Britain  
at present and no intention, on the part of either big party, to  
introduce it.

To the government, Britons are considered incompetent to shoulder the  
democratic responsibilities considered normal elsewhere. Ask why, and  
ministers all give the same reply: "But have you actually met any  
councillors? They are useless." Were it true, which it is not, they  
do not ask what has made them so.

Blears on local government is like a 19th-century aristocrat on  
extending the franchise. The peasants are never quite ready for it.  
But at least in the 19th century Britain was progressing towards  
democracy. In the 20th it is moving in the opposite direction.

simon.jenkins at guardian.co.uk

On 11 Jul 2008, at 16:25, CMA-L wrote:

>
> "Communities in control: real people, real power" was launched by DCLG
> on 9 July 2008.  This White Paper is about passing power to
> communities and giving real control and influence to more people.
>
> CMA members, and webcasters with Canstream, Radio Peckham/South City
> Radio were chosen to host the launch of the White Paper and they
> interviewed Hazel Bears on the day. The interview starts at 1:05
>
> http://www.southcityradio.org/shows/white_paper_launch_show.mp3
> _______________________________________________
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