New Clause 1
Sustainable Communities Bill
3:30 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (Local Government & Community Cohesion), Department for Communities and Local Government; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)
We are making progress, Mr. Cummings, and I am grateful to you for that. The new clause contains the Government’s proposals for the resource mapping process. I believe that there is broad agreement on its framework, which we discussed in our sitting on 2 May. Amendments have been tabled to the new clause, and we might wish to debate them briefly, but I do not want to detain the Committee.
The local spending reports covered in the new clause come from a power of the Secretary of State to make such arrangements and could effectively cover all public expenditure in each local authority area, both current and future spending. That is an important point. I am giving away birthday cakes here, and Opposition Members are not—[Interruption.] They are pleased; I thought that they were not writing it down. The Committee discussed on 2 May the difficulties of defining local and not local spending, and I reported back on the consultation across government on some of the issues.
The amendment that I have tabled includes a dutyto consult interested parties so that we do not simply impose a process from Whitehall. The costs of producing the local spending report must be limited. However, the power should contain the flexibility to allow the report to focus on proposed expenditure within county areas or, alternatively, a break down for counties and a break down for districts, or simply a break down for each district. In two-tier areas, that it important.
The outcome might be a simple report that identifies how much money is to be spent in each area by partner authorities and if they do not spend it themselves, which is increasingly the case, who does.
The original clause distinguishes between funding for primarily national or for local priorities. Much expenditure could legitimately be said to be either. We think that it is more powerful to be able to identify the totality of funding that may be spent in each area. That exercise would be based largely on existing—and possibly on currently available—information. The aim of the task would be to quantify expenditure that can easily be identified as relating to a particular local authority area. The intent would be to understand in broad terms how much money local partners and communities are responsible for. The intent would be not to create an artificial split as to what funding might go where, but to identify as well as possible what is to be allocated to where. The purpose would be to help local authorities, their partner agencies and their residents and community groups to plan better.
Mr. Cummings, is it desirable to you that I should move amendments (c), (d) and (e), which stand in my name?