Liverpool 2008: Speech by Julia Goldsworthy MP

8 March 2008

In her keynote speech at the Liberal Democrats spring 2008 conference, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Julia Goldsworthy talked on the Government's centralising tendencies, the overuse of quangos and the need for a popular revolution in local government:

Most of us remember when, how or why we got involved.

For some of us it will have been when our parents handed us our first focus leaflet, introducing us to the family trade.

For others there may have been a defining moment.

Like when the Conservatives brought in the poll tax.

Or when Labour lied to us and led Britain into a war in Iraq that has cost us hundreds of our young men and women’s lives, and Iraq hundreds of thousands.

We are not going to forgive or forget that.

My reason for getting involved was slightly different.

From a very young age – and like many of my friends, I was fed up.

Fed up with my experiences locally.

Fed up that my area wasn’t getting a fair deal.

Fed up that faceless bureaucrats seemed to be running the show – when they knew nothing about what was going on locally.

And I was fed up that our voice wasn’t being heard, let alone listened to.

I knew my area, my county, my Cornwall deserved better.

We needed people to stand up, speak out and make things happen.

And I saw the only people doing that were the Liberal Democrats.

So I said I’d deliver a few leaflets.

And then look what happened.

That’s what made me a Liberal Democrat and that’s why I still find it such an incredible privilege to represent my home community.

And I’m sure it’s what is motivating our councillors and candidates in this year’s local elections.

And it’s why Nick, the campaigns department, ALDC and all of us will be out there on the doorstep supporting them.

And support from all of us is essential, because getting local voices heard has never been more important.

Britain is becoming the most centralised, bureaucratic and unaccountable state in the European Union.

Sorry Vince – I don’t agree with you. On this one – Gordon Brown is definitely more Stalin than Mr Bean.

This government says it cares about decentralisation. They try to talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.

Before Christmas, they signed what they condescendingly called a Concordat between central and local government.

It’s a principle we support, and indeed we have been calling for the government to do it.

But, as ever with this government, they promise much and deliver little.

The Concordat will fail because this government refuses to accept that new responsibilities need resources. Power needs to be followed by money. To make it real, this Concordat should have been accompanied by reform to local government finance.

Instead of a popular revolution in local government we’ve seen:
- increases in targets
- greater centralisation
- and less accountability

More and more decisions are being taken further and further away.

Not by the people that really count, those most affected by them.

But by people we don’t know, who nobody voted for and who nobody can get rid of.

They’re called quangos.

But unlike the soft drink, they don’t refresh anything. And we all know when we’ve been quangod.

Labour promised to consign the quango state to the “dustbin of history.”

Instead, in the last two years 200 new quangos have joined the thousands which already exist.

You’ll find every single one in the must-read Public Bodies Directory 2006.

It takes 352 pages to list them all – and it’s almost as interesting as a Jeffrey Archer novel.

But there’s a serious point here.

These people spend more of our money than the NHS and defence budgets combined.

They spend more than all of democratically elected local government.

That can’t be right - it’s got to change, and we’re the ones who are going to change it.

We’re not going to be fobbed off by Brown’s blah blah blah.

We know there’s a difference between “consultation” and real participation.

We know that regional ministers are nothing more than a mouthpiece of central government policy.

And we know that there is a dramatic democratic deficit in so many of our regional institutions – all of those three letter acronyms - RDAs, GOs, SHAs, LSCs, PCTs? - they read like a bad hand in Scrabble but represent things that wield huge power locally. 

For us, closing the democratic deficit is about electing local people that will be accountable for local performance.

Just as we have discussed today, in health.

As a result of today’s motion, for the first time, people will have real power over their local health service.

It’s not just about bringing accountability and decision-making closer to home.

It’s about making sure that there is the resource to deliver.

Even where local government is given more responsibility, we know they won’t get the funding needed to deliver that service properly.

Just take concessionary bus passes.

It’s a great idea to encourage greater use of public transport.

But, like everything, it costs money.

And while some additional resources have been given to local government to deliver this scheme, it’s not enough.

For example, in Cambridge, they are having to meet almost half the cost of the scheme – to the tune of £17 a year for each family.

And if the lack of resource causes problems, you can guess where the Government will point the finger of blame.

Meanwhile, when it comes to their own pet projects, they are happy to pour millions down the drain.

They’ve spent £100m on a first-time buyer’s initiative which has housed just 700 people.

How many more could have been found homes if this money had gone to local councils to support affordable housing, helping young people stay in their communities.

This is just one example of decisions taken too far away – they lead to unintended consequences, and a government that is detached from daily realities.

Just take the decision by Government to rationalise what they call “inefficient physical structures”.

Otherwise known to the rest of us, who are actually paid-up members of the human race, as post offices.

When post offices are closed vulnerable, elderly people in particular are more likely to be left isolated.

The closures start a domino effect which leads to yet more decline in local communities.

Very often the shop goes.

Next it’s the pub and before you know it it’s the village school under threat.

But the government is interested only in the bottom line.

The savings won’t even cover the costs of running one Government Department’s London offices for a year.

This is a Government who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The people paying the real price of the closures are the most vulnerable people and our local communities.

For the Government it’s about a statement of accounts.

For us, it’s about proper local accountability.

And on post office closures we are holding them accountable for this disgraceful action that follows in the shameful footsteps of the previous Conservative Government.

Both Labour and the Conservatives impose their views on communities. They say they want decisions made locally, but only if these fall in line with central government diktats.

They can’t get their heads around the fact that local decision-making is not about different people simply rubber-stamping the government’s own conclusions.

But about making different decisions altogether.

The Tories and Labour want to stifle diversity.

We Liberal Democrats want to celebrate it.

That’s why the Labour Government are running away from the issue of waste collection – when they should be allowing local councils to innovate, for the sake of our environment.

And that’s why the Conservatives in Westminster are opposing local government reform, often in open conflict with their own councillors who are putting forward the plans on the ground.

They seem to think that there can only be one answer to any question, and that one system is best, no matter what the consequences are for delivery on the ground.

With these actions, the Tories have exposed themselves as the worst kind of phoney localists.

In Government they centralised – any local power base that stood up to Margaret Thatcher was crushed ruthlessly.

They haven’t changed, even though they try to pretend that they have.

They want nothing more than to run the country their way from Whitehall. They’re seeking power to horde it.

As Liberal Democrats, we seek power because we want to give it away.

That’s why one of the first things I did when I was elected, was to bring forward the Sustainable Communities Bill.

This built on the good work of Sue Doughty.

Sue, we really look forward to you re-joining us in the House of Commons when you take back Guildford from the Conservatives.

Sue will win because she realises, and we all know, that massive centralised structures fail to meet the needs of people on the ground.

We win elections because we listen to our communities and take effective action to meet their needs.

What a shame that this Government and the last one haven’t learnt this lesson.

I have lost count of the number of people who have come to me in sheer frustration because they cannot get from central government the services that are vital to their daily lives.

They are frustrated by a faceless state that is also deaf and dumb to their needs.

The tax credits system is the classic example of this.

On planet Brown, this system is perfect.

His spreadsheet shows everyone getting exactly the money they need to lift them out of poverty.

Not a penny of government money is wasted.

Great theory Gordon.

But the reality is that people’s circumstances change.

The system doesn’t respond quickly enough.

The result is millions of overpayments and underpayments, and call centres flooded with people trying to sort out their problems.

And of course, these problems are compounded by government pressures to deliver so-called efficiency savings.

This Prime Minister is desperate to prove he is being prudent with taxpayers money.

But too often, all that is actually happening is the cost ends up at the door of the vulnerable people using government services.

Nowhere is this clearer than with the costs that people face simply calling government telephone contact centres.

In too many cases the government is charging for access to these lifeline services.

Even though there isn’t a face to face alternative.

And it is most expensive for those with the least money.

At the Department for Work and Pensions alone, people without access to a landline phone are spending £400 million a year on mobile calls to services they cannot live without.
Many of those calls will be to sort out jobseekers benefits.

And the average cost of a call?

Half of one week’s Jobseekers allowance.

Money they would otherwise be spending on food.

This setup is nothing short of a scandal – in effect it’s a cynical charge on those with the lowest incomes.

We are leading the way in fighting this, and we want your help.

Please join us this evening at 6.15pm in Venue 7, here in the Arena, where we will be discussing this very issue.

In the government’s twisted logic, it’s a good thing to shunt these costs on to people’s phone bills – it’s another box ticked for efficiency savings.

Is it any wonder that people feel fed up and ignored when they find themselves confronted with this creeping, centralised, faceless state.

They ask themselves,

“Is anybody listening. Is anybody going to stand up and speak out for us”?

We are.

We will and we do.

We’re already doing so in local government, where we are setting the agenda.

Building on the great heritage of community politics that was born in this city, we are still driving the agenda forward today.

For example in Birmingham, where the second city of the UK now operates 10 local zones, bringing services closer to the people.

These areas have been given multi-million pound budgets and hundreds of staff.

The councillors representing their area meet in public and have the powers to adapt services to local needs.

Cambridge and Eastleigh are amongst others where Liberal Democrats are pushing the boundaries of real localism by de-centralising decisions and budgets.

In Newcastle, neighbourhood wardens are active on the ground, one in every ward, increasing community confidence by tackling crime and improving the local environment.

Despite the constraints of this Government, the Liberal Democrats are already demonstrating the art of the possible.

But of course we must go further – there is so much more that needs to be challenged and changed.

So, we will:
- cull quangos 
- and devolve the funding to democratic institutions.
- expose unaccountable regional bodies for what they are 
- they’re nothing but mouthpieces of national government.
- Call for local government to take on more responsibilities.
- We’ll give them more funding and more devolved decision making.
- Make existing local bodies more accountable, starting with our proposals for the health service.
- And we will of course axe the unfair council tax.

Our thinking and our actions brings localism to life.

This puts us streets ahead of the other two parties.

And we have to be absolutely clear about our ultimate ambition.

It’s not about moving bureaucratic control from Whitehall to the Town Hall.

That’s not radical or effective.

Our ambition is to empower individuals and communities, not local government for its own sake.

We must challenge local government, not apologise for it if we want it truly to live up to people’s expectations.

But local government has a strong role to play in delivering our ambition.

It needs to be the democratically accountable backstop, and not an end in itself.
And we need to take the public with us on this journey.

We must show how localism really can work to people’s benefit, with decisions taken by local people, for local people to improve their lives and their communities.

We are the champions of local democracy.

The champions of local people.

And the champions of real change.

The mantle is ours.

We cannot afford to fail.

So, as my hero, David Penhaligon said, “let’s get on with it!”

ENDS

Applicability: this item refers to England. Due to devolution, detailed policy may be different in other areas of the UK.