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ON THE RECORD
HILARY ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 8.2.98
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Hilary Armstrong, the one thing that
Local Councils - most Local Councillors anyway - wanted out of a Labour
Government was that they would have more money from Central Government, to
spend on the things that they needed and that they would be able to raise as
much money as they needed locally, without Capping and all that sort of thing.
Now, you led them to believe that would happen. It's a very long way away
still, if it's ever going to happen, isn't it?
HILARY ARMSTRONG MP: We never said that it would happen as
straightforwardly as that. We always said that Local Councils had to become
more accountable to local people and in order to get the new powers and so on,
there really would have to be tied into getting more people interested and so
on. We can't say they're really accountable when the most people that vote is
about forty per cent of the Electorate.
HUMPHRYS: But what about the business of Capping
them; of saying to them: Look, you may not spend as much money as you want to
spend.
ARMSTRONG: We've always said that the amount Local
Councils spend should be in the hands of local taxpayers and we want to make
that link very clear and explicit; and councils know this. It was our policy
before the Election and we will be consulting on that in the next few weeks.
HUMPHRYS: But if it isn't in the hands of local
people if you are telling the Council how much they're going to be allowed to
spend. If you cap them, it isn't in the hands of local people is it?
ARMSTRONG: Well, we are saying that we want to move
to a new system, where not as much is raised centrally as is raised locally.
But that means we've then got to make it much more accountable locally. And,
that's why we're consulting on a whole series of changes; on changing the
financial system but also on changing the democratic system and renewing local
democracy as part of the agenda to enable councils to do more for themselves.
HUMPHRYS: But let's look at that Cap first of all
- what everybody calls the 'cap'. When are you gonna lift it? When are you
gonna say - and we'll come onto how they spend the money and local decision
taking and all that in a minute - but when are you actually going to say to
them: Look, we're gonna lift the Cap on you. You spend what you need to spend
- need, is the important point.
ARMSTRONG: Well, we've said that we will raise
crude and universal Capping. But we have also said that we want to get total
change in Local Government; total reform. Local Government needs to be modern
and so raising the Cap is not the whole answer. Local people have to know what
they're spending money on, how much they're spending and am I as a local
taxpayer getting value for money. That's the way that the Local Government
reform is going to go and that's what Councils are working to now.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so you will not raise that Cap;
you won't lift that Cap, unless, until, they have satisfied you that they have
in place the sort of arrangements whereby you can be sure that local people
have been consulted and they are - know what the council is gonna do is what
they want to do.
ARMSTRONG: Well we will be consulting with them in
the next few months about what we can do in the short term. In order to get
the longer term changes that I'm talking about, we need legislation. So, that
will take time. But we do think that there are things that we can do in
the shorter term as long as Local Councils respond to that.
HUMPHRYS: And, what are they? What are these
things that you want them to do?
ARMSTRONG: Well, we want them as I say, to open
themselves up to much more involvement of local people. We're introducing a
new system on public service delivery - which we've called Best Value. And in
Best Value, councils are working with local people to say: What are our
priorities? What should be our priorities? What sort of services do you want?
What sort of local performance targets will we have? And, you know, we will
sort all that out with you and you can vote for us each year to say whether or
not you agree. Are you getting value for money? Are you getting the quality
you want at the price you're prepared to pay?
HUMPHRYS: And when you talk about asking them what
they want, about consulting with them and all that, are you talking about
referendums here? I mean, let's say a local authority wants - I don't know - a
new swimming pool - wants to spend a couple of million on a swimming pool or
something - would they have to have a referendum on that?
ARMSTRONG: Oh, they wouldn't have to have a
referendum on everything.
HUMPHRYS: On what?
ARMSTRONG: We do want to get more people voting but
- no - Local Councils, themselves, should be choosing ways of effectively
involving people locally in the sorts of choices that they can be making and
the sorts of money they should be spending on new developments, and so on. Ah,
but there are a whole way of doing that. Some Authorities are trying out
Citizens' Juries, some are trying regular consultation panels, some are trying
questionnaires, some are trying local community plans that they're putting out
to every household and asking them to send those back in. There are all sorts
of ways. Referendums are one way but, again, they've got to be used in a
proper way and used selectively.
HUMPHRYS: I'm slightly puzzled by this. I mean,
let's take a Council that decides that they can do a mixture of those things
that you've just described and they rather hope that that will satisfy you as
the Minister responsible.
Now, what do they do? Do they send
these plans off to Whitehall and say: Look, we want more money and we have put
in place this system, this system, this system for consulting a lot of people.
Does somebody in Whitehall, then, sit down and say: Now, is that enough local
consultation and, therefore, they'll be able to get their money. Or that's not
enough local consultation there, but they won't.
ARMSTRONG: Well, that's the sort of thing that
we're going to be consulting on, so that we get this right. We've, actually,
set up about thirty-seven pilot projects on this best value idea and will be
working with those projects and with those different Authorities, to see what
is working. We don't have an ideological approach to this and, certainly,
Whitehall and Westminster don't know best on this.
We need local solutions to local
problems. The local District Auditor will be involved and there will be, of
course, performance indicators and so on and we're working with the Audit
Commission on those. There are clear ways of how you can keep things
accountable but the main people Local Councils should be accountable to are the
folk who elect them.
HUMPHRYS: Well, indeed.
ARMSTRONG: So, we want more people to vote.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Well, indeed but it's a question
of how you assess that. But, what you're saying quite clearly it seems to me
anyway is that there will be a kind of trade-off. You give us the kind of
local democracy that we think ought to be in place and, then, you can raise the
money.
ARMSTRONG: That's the sort of thing that we're
saying. But, the more Councils take hold and become accountable to local
people, the more open they are, the more they look at how they organise
themselves. So, that folk outside know who is taking decisions and on what
basis they're taking decisions. Then, the more Central Government will be able
to give them new powers and new ways of raising money.
HUMPHRYS: New powers? Powers to do what?
ARMSTRONG: Well, one of the complaints, at the
moment, is that virtually everything a Council can do is determined by Central
Government and we have an idea of what we call the power of community
initiative and that will be to respond to the environmental, social and
economic needs of the area. But, again, these new powers will come with
responsible Councils.
HUMPHRYS: Well, what we might see, then, at the
end of this process is a dozen different Councils with a dozen different
approaches to local, what you would call local democracy. One might have
referendums, one might have Citizens' Juries, one might have this, one might
have the other. And, somebody, somewhere, is going to have to ajudicate as to
whether they are acceptable or not. It all sounds very woolly, doesn't it?
ARMSTRONG: Oh, it isn't woolly at all. It is
accepting that you've got to find local solutions to local problems. And,
trying to say you know best from Whitehall, simply hasn't worked. It's turned
most people off from Local Government. It's one of the reasons why so few
people are interested in what's going on in their local town hall. And, it is,
actually, saying that we do need to have at local level the Council engaging
with the people it is seeking to represent. I think, that's not a
revolutionary idea but my goodness, it's an idea that people out there are
waiting to take hold of.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah.
ARMSTRONG: And, so, of course, I shouldn't be
saying how every Authority does everything, but it's my job to make sure that
they're all responding to local people.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, local solutions to local
problems, they ought to be able to decide for themselves. Now what about this
business of elected mayors? London it appears, is going to have one, and we're
told some other big cities may have them. What about smaller cities and towns.
Will they all have them in the end, is that how you see it going?
ARMSTRONG: Again, we are saying, and we are
challenging Local Government to look at how they themselves are organised. Is
an elected mayor a way in which they will get much clearer accountability, with
folk knowing who is taking the decisions. But we're not saying that's the only
model, we're saying have a look at other models. We really do think that the
committee system has got a lot of problems. Nobody else in Europe uses that
committee system. Some of them have elected mayors, some have executives where
the executive is taking the decisions, and other councillors are the
scrutineers and the representers of local people. And so we want authorities
to be looking at different models of organising themselves which turn them
outwards, instead of inwards, constantly trying to work out how they do things
inside the Town Hall, but opening the doors of the Town Hall and stretching out
to local people by doing things in different ways.
HUMPHRYS: So are ...
ARMSTRONG: There is actually a bill in the House of
Lords at the moment which is a cross-party bill which Lord Hunt has brought in,
and it's getting controversy and people are looking at it in different ways.
But this would allow councils to experiment in different forms of organisation.
HUMPHRYS: But, I'm not quite clear what you're
saying, whether you think, the Government thinks that directly elected mayors
are a good thing or a bad thing, whether you want local authorities to have
them, the smaller cities, the smaller towns?
ARMSTRONG: Oh, I think they're a very exciting, new
way for this country to be running local affairs.
HUMPHRYS: Right. But if they don't want them,
they don't have to have them.
ARMSTRONG: We are saying, locally they've got to
look at what they're doing. We think that particularly our cities are the
right sort of place to have an elected mayor, and I believe once that has
started in one place it will be taken up in lots of other places.
HUMPHRYS: And, if it isn't will you impose it?
ARMSTRONG: But again, it is local solutions..
HUMPHRYS: But if it isn't...
ARMSTRONG: ...that we're looking for.
HUMPHRYS: You think it's right for those bigger
cities, but if they don't want them, and you think it's a good idea, will you
impose them - will you say you've got to have one?
ARMSTRONG: Well, at this stage we're saying: You've
got to do some thinking for yourselves, and you've got to come up with those
reform measures yourselves and if you don't think it's an elected mayor, then
come up with another solution. But we're encouraging them to think about
elected mayors, and as I say, I think once we have one in London then there'll
be other major cities in this country who'll want to make sure they're on an
equal footing.
HUMPHRYS: What about making them have a referendum
as to whether they want a mayor not, whether the people want a mayor or not?
ARMSTRONG: Well, that's another thing that maybe we
want to look at. Why not have people locally over to say: We want our council
to have a mayor. We want our city to have a mayor. That's another thing that
we're going to be consulting upon.
HUMPHRYS: So if the local authority says: We
don't want it, that's not going to be good enough?
ARMSTRONG: It's not going to good enough to say the
status quo is fine. The status quo is not fine, because we don't have enough
people voting, we don't have enough people really caring about what's going on,
and as long as the status quo prevails, then central government will have far
too much influence. If we're going to have real live local government, then
locally they have got to take some responsibility for reform and for change.
HUMPHRYS: Hilary Armstrong, thanks very much.
You'd better go and get warmed up now, I should think, after that bitter
Scarborough wind. Thanks for standing out there for us.
ARMSTRONG: Thanks very much John, thanks a lot.
Bye now.
HUMPHRYS: Bye bye.
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