Bring back local government

Author: Peter Hetherington, The Guardian - Jun 12, 2009

Before Gordon Brown begins his mission to reform parliament and revive our flagging democracy he – or, rather, the people around him – should get back to basics. From where I'm sitting, democracy, at its purest level, is in crisis because it doesn't exist.

Let's be clear: government by the people for the people began at the grass roots and worked its way up, eventually, to Westminster. Local people first participated in running their communities, then elected leaders to partly do the job for them: hence the valid distinction today between participative and representative democracy. The former is rather important in local government when you consider the pathetic turnouts, often well below 30%, leading some to conclude that councils have lost much of their legitimacy unless they learn to reconnect with an apathetic electorate. That means not only frequent consultation but, also, in the case of contentious projects and proposals, local referendums.

Hang on, I hear you say, what about Westminster elections (or lack of them, in the case of a discredited House of Lords). Turnout at general elections has fallen to such dangerous levels that 40% of the electorate don't bother to vote. Actually, there's a link between the two – national and local government – which I will discuss later on.

So let's start at the grass roots. In areas such as mine – Northumberland – we don't have local government any longer. At best, we have a local administration – essentially a call centre, with various options for your complaints and little direct contact, which makes it indistinguishable from the distant public utilities we've learned to loath.

That's because the recently departed Hazel Blears, as communities and local government secretary – yes, the very minister who constantly banged on about "people power", "communities in control", and "empowerment" – abolished six district councils to create an all-purpose unitary council in Northumberland on 1 April. She did the same in six other counties: all, apparently, in the name of efficiency and economies of scale. Enhancing local democracy didn't come into the equation.

My admirable local paper, the Hexham Courant, neatly summed up the dilemma in last week's editorial:

After 10 weeks, the unitary authority for Northumberland has failed to adhere to its fundamental founding principles ... from the ministers who forced this system on us we were promised enhanced local democracy and accountability ... local communities were promised empowerment and engagement. Instead, they have been emasculated.

The local town council in Hexham, which operates like a parish council, complained they had no idea how the new unitary authority was operating in their district: no consultation, no transparency, no nothing. At the annual meeting of the town's civic society, the unitary council's highly paid director of place – I kid you not! – gave his own interpretation of local democracy: "When it comes to fundamental decisions, we acknowledge the primacy of the elected members ..."

Heaven help us. Putting aside the fact that there are far fewer councillors anyway now, this comment could be seen as representing a woeful disregard for the wider democratic process and our old friend "participative democracy".

Blears never tired of telling everyone that services should be devolved to the lowest possible level. That's presumably why "communities" has pride of place in the departmental title. Every opinion poll tells us that people, until the hiatus over the industrial scale of MPs' expense fiddling and tax dodging, are most exercised not by the shenanigans in the Westminster village but by the state of their (sometimes rubbish-strewn and badly potholed) local streets, pavements and parks.

The first task, then, for Gordon Brown, and his hastily assembled constitutional reform team, is to put the "local" back into government. Tell the Audit Commission to judge councils, such as mine, on how successful they've been devolving powers to the lowest level and reconnecting with a deeply grieved electorate. If they are failing miserably, take sanctions against them. Begin a local democratic crusade.

And that leads us to the second stage: House of Lords reform. A way has to be found of connecting communities, localities, cities and regions to the upper chamber. It should become, first and foremost, a local and regional senate as well as a revising and scrutinising chamber with teeth – not, necessarily, mindlessly discussing the state of rubbish collection in Upper Chungford, but constantly overseeing the state of all democracy in the round and keeping a check on the executive.

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