Council plans: all mod cons?

Christine Shawcroft examines the effects of the new White Paper Modernising Local Government.

The term "modernising" will soon have the same connotations as "reform" under Thatcher. The health service hasn't recovered from her reforms, while local government reform entailed the abolition of the GLC and Metropolitan counties. Now the Blatcherite Government can finish off local government by modernising it - out of existence.

The White Paper Modernising Local Government proposes optional changes for councils to consider - so optional that, if councils ignore them and do nothing, they lose government grants. Suggestions include having a directly elected executive mayor with a cabinet appointed by the mayor from councillors; a leader elected by the council, who could appoint the cabinet, or the council could elect them; or a directly elected mayor with a council manager appointed by the council.

All "options" concentrate power in the hands of a few full-timers, with part time councillors with real jobs left to a scrutinising role and surgery work. This is part of the trend started by the plan for a London Mayor. Millbank wants to see small numbers of individuals with effective power and control. The selection and election of these individuals can be controlled by the Party machine far more easily than hundreds of councillors being selected by wards.

A ward councillor's role will be radically reduced to attending surgeries and tenants' meetings, and scrutinising decisions. The link between the decision makers and the local communities will be severed. When I was judged still fit to be a councillor (or maybe I was unfit for twelve years but nobody noticed) I spent most of my time in surgeries explaining that the Council wasn't able to rehouse people because we were not permitted to build housing and we had lost our best properties under "Right to Buy"; that we couldn't put a new roof on their children's school to stop rainwater pouring down the walls because we weren't allowed the capital borrowing to invest; and we couldn't put a senile grandma into a home because places were being bought in private provision at vast cost to make a profit for the owners, and we couldn't afford any more places. Who needs to spend more time in surgeries like that?

Separating executive power from community representation is unworkable in practice. Who would be prepared to justify policies they had no hand in to a meeting of angry victims of those policies?

Local councillors responding to these options must point out that the problems of local government are largely financial, not structural. If the Government prefers to hand out huge sums in subsidy to private rail companies rather than fund local services, the least they could do is to redefine the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement so that councils are able to borrow money for capital investment in the same way as a private company. They should say they are not prepared to hand over power to individuals but prefer to organise committees so they deal with policies, not administrative details, and that there should be less departmentalism and more joint working.

No mayor or leader should be given powers of patronage to appoint cronies. All policy decisions should be taken by democratically elected Labour Groups, which should meet more often, then carried out strategically by less frequent committees. Councillors need to be supported in their role - this would reduce turnover. Lots of new councillors learning together how the council works is a recipe for disaster.

A Labour government elected on a platform of decentralisation and devolution cannot insist that all locally devolved power has to be in the hands of individuals controlled from Westminster. Local communities already feel there is no point turning out to vote because their council has no discretion to carry out local priorities. The White Paper's proposals will only make this worse, not better.

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