I am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate, although I guess that the fact that it is the last debate before Christmas means that it is in something of a graveyard slot. However, it gives me the opportunity to wish you season's greetings, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House about expressing season's greetings and thanks to all members of the House of Commons staff.

I should also like to take this opportunity to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend Barbara Follett, who will respond to the debate, and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), who are also present.

The debate's title shows that it is about transparency in financial reporting and Birmingham city council, which sounds rather technical, but the debate is really about accountability. It is about how far the local authority-which provides or commissions some of the most important services, the ones that my constituents depend on-is really prepared to level with people such as me. I am elected by my constituents, and I want to know how the council spends public money in my area, who decides the priorities for spending the money that is controlled by the council in the short and medium terms, and what those priorities should be.

Those are issues that I am only now bringing before the House by means of this specific debate, but I have been raising them with the city council not for weeks or months but for years. I know that the fact that I have raised those issues, and that I continue to do so, is a source of irritation to key figures in the city council-both in the central cabinet that the Conservatives control city-wide, and among some of the 12 Conservative councillors that represent wards in my Birmingham, Northfield constituency.

I sometimes get the feeling that they are wondering, "What's the Labour MP doing poking his nose into these issues? Why is he wasting our time asking all these questions? We are the council. We have quite enough to do getting on with what we have to do as a council without him constantly going on at us. Why doesn't he just stick to his own job?"

Actually, I think that that is my job. Part of the reason is that, according to its own rhetoric, the council does not just want scrutiny of what it is doing. The council also says that it wants the public-the people whom councillors and I are elected to serve-to be able to comment on services in their communities, and to influence their shape.

The council has a series of committees at constituency level, theoretically all with devolved budgets. As a city with 1 million people-the largest local authority in England-Birmingham is simply too big to try to do everything from the centre. Theoretically, all parties sign up to that principle-an acceptance that greater efficiency and effectiveness are achieved by getting decisions made closer to the ground. But devolution is about more than setting up different city council structures to negotiate internally with each other, whether that is between different parts of the city council's operation at constituency level or at the centre, or one department negotiating with another.