Not everything in the new localism garden has been rosy. Indeed, a number of people have argued that recent government decisions – cutting local government totally out of school funding and the Home Office telling a Regional Police Authority they had to suspend their chief constable – spell the death of the concept.
But, actually, my impression is that – at least in key policy-making circles – there has been a decisive acceptance of the principle that Labour needs to shift the way we govern ourselves and deliver public services to a more devolved approach. This has been accepted both on the delivery side and on the democratic engagement side, as being a feature that governance should try to reflect. This is profound stuff. It reveals that the desire for effective, responsive delivery and governance near the front line is seen as worth the risks and complications on delivering equity and national minimum standards across the country that matters so much to the centre-left.
But it would be daft to pretend that all is straightforward. First, there is confusion around the role of the centre in such a world – I believe it is still pretty strong. There is also confusion as to whom or what to devolve to. So some see schools, hospitals and police as the place to devolve power to, with or without local democratic accountability structures, while others see local authorities as the key. Then there is the nature of local involvement desired – is it as governors, as scrutinizers, as non-executives? Is it to take or to guide decisions – or just create social capital? And how do these interact in any case?
The role of higher tier bodies also gets confused, as some recent debates have shown. The Treasury has described the need for intermediate bodies who, when Whitehall devolves, can keep an eye on the lower tier bodies. And to add to all of this, the decentralisation agenda has become enmeshed in debates about choice, and the end of the one-size-fits-all welfare state. So debates there are – but healthy ones as befits an important new set of agendas.
Looking forward, then, where – if elected – should a third-term Labour government take this agenda? Starting at the higher levels, Labour needs to get serious about the regional agenda. While some at more local levels fear they are a threat, we will only really make a devolved Britain work if there is some kind of democratic structure at regional level. The half-hearted approach apparent so far will not do.
Then at more local levels Labour should be encouraging more neighbourhood activity – including neighbourhood councils – as well as more local ownership in different situations ranging from parks to leisure centres. In one way or another, Primary Care Trusts and the police need to become drawn into the local accountability framework for at least some aspects of their work. This may be through new, dedicated, elected bodies but may also be through giving more leverage over them to locally based institutions. Meanwhile, the funding for local government needs to shift to more money raised locally, including seeing off CBI pleading and localising the business rate to some limited degree. And the progress made on giving local bodies more freedom through negotiating with the centre via local public service agreements needs to continue and intensify.
Core to all of this is the need to really sort out a proper and crucial role for local authorities and stop treating them like rather bad hired helps. That does not mean necessarily placing them in charge of lots of things nor giving them back education or health or housing. But it does mean giving them the power to play the community leadership role that we should be electing them for – especially in areas like liveability, community cohesion and antisocial behaviour. And this aim must be kept centre stage so we get rid of the silo-based approach to our devolved services. Putting it higher up in the manifesto pecking order – with a Department of Devolved Governance to oversee it (something NLGN has long argued for) – would maximise the chances of getting this right.
Some of these ideas will work; some will not. So Labour should be committed to letting experiments happen and, even then, letting different places go different ways in their institutional approaches.
By embracing this approach, Labour would be admitting that simple, centrally driven answers do not exist to every problem, that fuzzy governance and asymmetric approaches are going to have to be a key part of the way forward. And it would be saying that we were not frightened of this, wanting to hide behind some centralist approach – but instead that we were ready for
the challenge.
There is a fight as to whether this agenda is basically a left or a right one. Getting governance and public services closer to the people – under frameworks that give the centre the role of ensuring broad equity and decent national minimum standards – must be a centre-left clarion call. Winning this agenda for Labour matters enormously.