Clause 77
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
10:00 am
Bob Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
I am delighted to see you back in the Chair, Mr. Chope. The purpose of the amendments is to deal with parishes in London. I appreciate that the Under-Secretary may use them as an opportunity to attack me for having a centralising rather than a localising tendency, but that does not bear much analysis.
Logically and instinctively, as a localiser and a devolutionist, my temptation would be to say that, if local authorities want a parish council, we should provide a permissive power to let them do so. However, that must be tempered to some degree, as the Government’s White Paper recognises. What is appropriate in some parts of the country does not necessarily work everywhere else. History and traditions of local government vary.
In general, the situation and the evidence suggest that parishes are most common, even in the home counties, in the more rural areas. There are exceptions—Milton Keynes is an urban area that is fully parished—but that is not the rule. After our evidence sitting, I took up the challenge and went to Bromley public library to see if there were parishes in the London borough of Bromley prior to the local government reorganisation. I found that there had not been for many years. The only part where parishes existed was Biggin Hill, and that was purely anomalous because of it having been transferred to Kent many years ago.
There is no real tradition in London of parish government. We have to think, therefore, where the demand is coming from. London had parishes before the creation of the old metropolitan borough councils at the end of the 19th century, but they were absorbed into the London boroughs, so there is no history in London—unlike in much of the rest of the country—of two-tier government at neighbourhood service level. There is a tradition of city-wide government—the London county council or the Greater London council—but not at the level of delivery of neighbourhood services. If we are to go down the route of the Government radically changing London’s governance structure, that ought to be in response to a clear and pressing demand and proven need.
What strikes me about the debate so far and the literature that has been produced is that there is no evidence about where that pressing demand or need comes from. London Councils, the representative body of the London boroughs, has at no time sought to have the power to create parish councils in London. None of the London boroughs has petitioned or sought to set up parish councils. The Commission on London Governance, of which I was the deputy chairman, looked at that in considerable detail and took evidence from interested bodies over a period of some months. We had people come down from Milton Keynes and elsewhere during our in-depth review.