Clause 31 - Power to pay grant
Local Government Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)
The Government are giving themselves total flexibility under this clause to pay grants to local
authorities at the Minister's whim. There will be no parliamentary scrutiny whatever, except, as the Minister said on Second Reading when I raised this point, on the scrutiny of the estimates. I shall come to that in a moment. All sides should be concerned about this extra grant-making power that the Government are taking.
Hon. Members may say that the Government pay out huge amounts of grants that are never properly scrutinised. They would probably be right to say that, but that is no reason to give the Government more powers. Clause 31 would allow the Minister to pay a grant at any time, to any authority, for any purpose, without there being any objective criteria by which elected Members in this place, or in local authorities that are not getting those grants, can see why that grant has been given.
The Government can pick and choose the authorities to which they want to give grants. That already happens to a certain extent, but at least there is some scrutiny of that power. I am rather worried that the Government will use the extra power that the clause gives for purposes about which people at the audit stage may be extremely concerned. We tabled amendments Nos. 83 and 84 so that Parliament could scrutinise the grants made.
The Minister said on Second Reading that the estimates procedure is available to scrutinise grants. I was surprised at that because he should know that that procedure has fallen into disrepute. Various Procedure Committee reports of the past 15 years have described as a constitutional myth the idea that the House really wants the Executive to account for spending. The estimates are debated only on the three days allowed for under Standing Orders, and we do not even debate them on those three days—we debate Select Committee reports that are attached to the estimates. When I have asked questions about the estimates during those debates, Ministers often could not answer because they had not been briefed on those matters. They had come to the House not expecting to be questioned on the estimates. The House has effectively given up the scrutiny of expenditure. We would go another step forward in that direction if we accept clause 31.
I shall not labour that point because of the time. However, to assure hon. Members that I could if I so chose, I refer them to a document that I have written called ''Making MPs Work for our money: reforming Parliament's scrutiny of the Budget'', which costs £10. Alternatively, hon. Members can download it free of charge from my website, www.edwarddavey.co.uk.