Daily View: Localism bill
Commentators get their heads around the localism bill which aims to devolve power to local councils.
Michael White argues in the Guardian that what Eric Pickles is really devolving is voters' anger when services get cut:
"It's a case of 'handing down the axe', as one thinktank put it. But all parties now preach 'people power' and Eric Pickles is offering a tempting mix: referendums on higher council tax or directly elected mayors; the right of communities to acquire treasured local assets at risk (the pub or post office?), at least in theory; the ability of councillors to decide how to spend their budgets untrammelled by Whitehall diktat and to keep more of what their entrepreneurial flair helps generate locally.
"Fine, say critics and creativity is likely to flower in different ways in different areas, leading to cheaper, better services. But the formula is bound to favour well-heeled areas over deprived ones. That is what decades of central government interference is basically about - attempts to redistribute cash from rich to poor as well as curb town hall folly."
Peter Hoskin says in the Spectator that greater responsibility being given at a time of budget restraint may not be welcomed by all councils:
"The upshot may well be a nationwide blame game: are bad services due to the cuts imposed from on high, or the actions of individual councils? Yet the government must be confident that it can win out in the end. All they really need, after all, is the example of one or two successful local authorities to embarrass the others into line."
In support of the bill, Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan says in the Telegraph that it's been a long time coming:
"A proper link between taxation, representation and expenditure at local level is not an optional extra: it is the foundation of meaningful localism. Grant it, and much follows; deny it, and little changes."
The Independent's editorial argues that there are inconsistencies in the plan:
"Government wants power devolved and yet it wants planning, education or even chief executives shared between local authorities. Even if that does not create super-councils, as critics fear, it certainly takes decisions further from, rather than closer to, the ordinary citizen."
The Telegraph's editorial defends the plans against criticism:
"The proposals are, inevitably, being depicted as little more than a mask for local authority spending reductions, also announced yesterday. Those cutbacks do not actually warrant some of the apocalyptic language with which they have been greeted. They will be painful - spending cuts always are. But they will take expenditure levels back only to where they were on the eve of the crash. This is less about amounts of money, more about a spending culture built on the expectation of annual budgetary increases, regardless of what is needed."
Chair of the Community Cohesion Institute Ted Canter says in the Mirror that asking people to run their own libraries and other local services could have its pitfalls:
"A bigger problem is it is generally only affluent areas that can keep community organisations going, in poorer areas people struggle to run their own lives together, let alone local services.
"This could mean the gap between rich and poor areas grows."
Links in full
• Michael White | Guardian | Councils do need more freedom, but I doubt the localism bill will provide it
• Peter Hoskin | Spectator | Eric Pickles kickstarts the local blame game
• Daniel Hannan | Telegraph | Two cheers for the Localism Bill
• Independent | Cuts are being devolved, not power
• Telegraph | A first step in handing power back to the people
• Ted Cantle | Mirror | Coalition's Localism Bill raises pitfalls of DIY Government
