Clause 58
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
9:30 am
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government), Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
Good morning, Mr. Chope. It is nice to see you in your place. We shall welcome your deliberations.
I wish to raise a couple of issues and cover a few points about the parishes that we did not have time to discuss at our previous sitting. Parishes are the real backbone of community involvement in the rural districts that make up so much of our country. Those of us who have spent most of our lives in urban areas and are relatively new to parishes certainly appreciate their work.
In previous sittings, I have touched on the growing bureaucracy that surrounds parish councils and on my appreciation of their concern about how their role is perceived and defined. I hope that the Under-Secretary will be allowed to interpret the clause reasonably generously so as to cover the community governance provisions of the next two or three clauses. I should like to know her intentions behind the power that will be given to principal councils to organise the community governance review.
What do the Government expect to be reviewed? Will parish councils that are not working effectively be under threat? There are two concerns about the community governance proposals in the Bill, and the first has to do with the provision to allow petitions from people who think that their area might need a parish council. Asking principal councils to consider whether the parishes in their area are working effectively could threaten those councils that think they are working straightforwardly and effectively but are doing so more quietly than the Government expect.
Let me expand on those two points. If new parishes are to be created, are the Government satisfied that the capacity is there to take on the role of parish councils in some new areas? In urban areas, the tradition and structure of involvement in local communities may not exist in the same way that it does in rural communities, where parish structure has been part of the landscape for a long time. For example, it is not strictly accurate to say that an estate with 3,000 people living on it is equivalent to a small village of 2,500 or 3,000 people.
People can live on an estate with a relaxed sense of community; in fact, their sense of community may apply to a council or geographical area that is larger than their immediate surroundings. A hamlet of fewer than 100 people can have a strong individual identity quite different from what might be found in a group of 100 people living in an urban area. If urban parishes are to be created as a result of the proposals and petitions, is the Under-Secretary confident that there is enough capacity, that training and resources will be available, and that mistakes will not be made?
The second worry is whether parishes are being overloaded and given too many things to do—a question that we touched on the other day, when we debated their being given the chance to promote the power of well-being. At the weekend, I attended a meeting attended by representatives from two thirds of my parish councils. We covered several matters, but two or three things in particular irked the people who were at the meeting.
For example, people felt that their voices about what matters to them were not being listened to. We discussed planning and, although there is a statutory right of consultation, in too many cases people have become very wary of the whole concept of consultation. To them, the consultation often seems like an exercise being carried out by a principal council or authority: opinions are collected, but there is no real intention to act on the information gathered. When the expectation of local involvement is raised but not fulfilled, the danger is that people are not encouraged to stay involved or to continue making a contribution. The people to whom I spoke were concerned that there was more bureaucracy and more things that they had to do.
The implications of the Standards Board that was introduced some years ago are probably well known to the Under-Secretary. My own sense is that all the fuss that was raised among the parishes that I have contact with seems to have settled down, and that the board is no longer such an issue.
There was real concern, however, that if new powers were taken on to promote well-being, the councils would find it difficult to bring in new people to handle the extra duties. They already find it hard to get people involved. Councils are concerned that, if they do not opt to promote a power of well-being, they will be seen by the powers that govern them as not willing to be involved in their communities. That might expose them to charges that they are not doing their job, with the result that a community governance review organised by their principal council could appear threatening.
In other words, I want to know whether the Government desire parish councils to do certain things, fulfil certain standards and perform a certain amount of work. If a council does not do all that, will the Government feel that it is not doing its job and that it is time for it to go?
If so, I think that that would be a failure to understand the purpose of parish councils, what they do in their local communities and how they go about it. The concern is that the continual audit, and the inspection and review some years ago that revealed a certain number of silent parish councils, disturbed the sense that councils were masters of their own destiny and could look after things in their own way, provided that they fulfilled basic statutory requirements and were doing the job that their local parish constituents wanted them to do. Fulfilling those requirements, rather than responding to more rules and regulations from above, should be the most important thing that they do.
Those are the concerns I wanted to put on the record. I pay tribute to those who work in our parish council, and to its clerks. Clerks often cover a number of different parish councils: their ability to keep the councillors and chairs up to speed with changes in legislation and responsibilities is formidable, and we pay tribute to them and to all the parish councillors who work so hard.
I would like to know what is behind the Government’s thinking on the community governance reviews. Is there anything that parish councils should be aware of? If petitions are raised for new parish councils to be created in urban areas, what guarantee will be given that support and resources will be available to assist them?