Clause 56
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
7:45 pm
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government), Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I am happy to move these amendments briefly in the name of my hon. Friends. We will have an opportunity to talk more about parishes in our next sitting, so I shall not rehearse now a number of the issues that I want to raise in relation to them, but shall confine myself to the amendments.
The purpose of the amendment is to widen the scope for the use of the power to promote well-being. Instead of confining the power to eligible councils, which are effectively those that will be designated under the quality parish councils criteria, the amendment would extend the power and give that opportunity to all councils. That is in line with our general approach of being as permissive as possible in relation to the devolved powers.
Although I support that extension, I offer one caveat that bears on what I said about the previous amendment. At the weekend, I had a meeting with all my parish councils. I split them into two groups and I saw about two-thirds of the 54 parish councils in my constituency. We had a good discussion about the Bill and the various powers that it contains, and one of the clearest messages that came out of the meeting was that although people thoroughly enjoyed being part of the parish council, they were concerned that over time, more and more responsibilities were coming their way and they did not know whether they could find the people to do the job.
I will read two short quotes, the first of which is from Cardington parish council, which said to me in a letter dated 8 January:
“Concern was also expressed that at this time it is already difficult to get people willing to volunteer to become Parish Councillors, the volume of consultation documents that are received for comment, and with the Local Authorities being penalised if they do not meet the Target Dates for responses.”
Stevington parish council said:
“The role of the Council appears to be changing and both the Council and the Clerk will inevitably have to take on more duties; we forsee difficulty in encouraging residents to stand for the Parish Council in the future if the role becomes more onerous.”
I received a number of other similar remarks. Those two comments can be taken to represent them all.
The power to promote well-being is incredibly widely drawn. The Local Government Act 2000 enables the local authority to promote well-being where it considers it will
“achieve any one or more of the following objects—
“(a) the promotion or improvement of the economic well-being of their area,
(b) the promotion or improvement of the social well-being of their area, and
(c) the promotion or improvement of the environmental well-being of their area.”
The various powers that are available to a council that is granted such a power include the power to
“(a) incur expenditure,
(b) give financial assistance to any person,
(c) enter into arrangements or agreements with any person”
and so on.
I hope that the Under-Secretary can briefly give a sense of how she expects the powers to be used by parish councils and why she feels they should be limited by qualifying criteria. Will she also bear in mind that because the powers will exist, and people will seek them, there is a danger that parish councils are being given rather too much to do? Their original purpose is changing and it is difficult to get the right sense because we are caught in a trap. Many parish councils want greater responsibility, but will the extension of powers and more responsibility encourage anyone new to come on board and share the burden with the small group of people who at present give a huge amount of time to local affairs? We had an interesting discussion on the matter with the parish councils and, by and large, the consensus was that they did not think they would encourage new people.
I was disappointed, because members of the Committee are involved in the process of government and it matters a lot to us. I am interested in the Under-Secretary’s thinking on the promotion of well-being. How many councils does she think will take up such a provision? Is she keen for it to be permissive so that if a council wants to take a chance, will it be able to do so rather than fulfilling the criteria of being an eligible council and going down the quality parish council route?
Will the Under-Secretary give us her view, to which we can return when we discuss other provisions relating to parish councils? The growing bureaucratisation of parish councils is not helping the process of getting more people informally involved. They fear that their involvement is no longer informal but getting more serious. That might not encourage people to engage with local matters in the way that we would like them to.