Commit to localism, urges council leader

Speaking at a fringe event at the annual party conference, Sir Albert Bore, the Labour leader of Birmingham City Council, praised the coalition Government’s “localism” agenda and claimed Labour must show more commitment to devolving powers to the regions.

“We are perhaps the most centralised country in the whole of Europe,” Sir Albert said. “Most other countries have strong regional systems of government centred on their regional capital cities.

“If we’re honest, to say that the last Labour Government disappointed when it came to localism, might be just a little bit softly put.

“I think the last Labour Government was concerned about arguments that localism would create too much inequality of provision, forgetting that to tackle inequality you have to respond differently in different places. It’s centralisation that actually prevents us from dealing with inequality.

“I don’t like to say this, but in many ways the current Government has shown more commitment to localism, and we have to recognise that and put it right in the manifesto for 2015.”

However, Sheffield South East MP Clive Betts, who is the chairman of Parliament’s Local Government Select Committee, launched an attack on the coalition Government’s record on devolving power.

Mr Betts highlighted a series of edicts from Communities Secretary Eric Pickles about how local councils should be working, and the reluctance of Ministers in the Department of Work and Pensions to give local councils a say in how to tackle unemployment.

He said Mr Pickles’ threat to strip councils of their powers over planning was “one of the most centralising things that any Government has done in the past 30 or 40 years”.

But he accepted that Labour has to change its approach to local decision-making in the future.

“Labour is instinctively more comfortable with things being equal and the same,” he said. “But actually, should we be worried about things being done differently in different parts of the country? Actually that’s where innovations come and the best ideas originate.

“The whole issue of postcode lottery is something the public are a bit schizophrenic about, in a way.

“You ask people whether the service should be the same in every part of the country, and they say ‘yes’. And you ask them should local communities have a real say in what happens in their area… and they’ll say ‘yes’. How do we tackle that?”