Nick Cuff: No to pay rise and nowhere on finance

Caroline Spelman today ruled out the idea of paying Councillors city wages, describing it as an impractical solution to the problem of tackling Councillor diversity.  The idea was mooted in a wide-ranging debate on how the Conservative Party should develop the role of locally elected members.  Concerns were raised that many Councillors were retired and not representative of wider society.

Henry Smith, Leader of West Sussex suggested the answer was to give more power to local councils and more freedom.  That way local government would once again be seen as an attractive career to young professionals.  Smith then identified the proliferation of quangos such as RDAs and Learning and Skills Councils describing them as roadblocks to the success of local councils.

Douglas Carswell MP, also speaking at the event, urged the Conservatives to adopt meaningful policies which would empower local people.  It was agreed by all the panelists that local government finance must be tackled.  Carswell once again renewed the call for a local sales tax, something which Spelman was not prepared to be drawn on.  He went on to question the commitment of all political parties to the localist cause.

There seems to be little consensus amongst the policy community in general about how you go about tackling the thorny issue of local government finance.  Spelman was keen to wait for Sir Michael Lyons' review of the issue which is to be published in December.  Sir Michael has been criticised in some Conservative circles, perhaps unfairly, for his Labour Party background (he was a Labour Councillor in Birmingham).

He was conspicously absent at conference this week despite attending both Labour and Lib Dems.  There are also concerns that he has as yet to find a solution to finance which is both politically acceptable and practical to implement.

Comments

[Denis Cooper]

You really have to have local taxes to pay for local services, as far as possible, because otherwise local electors can't get a clear idea who should get the credit or the blame for how they're run and how much they cost. In some of the poorer areas with very low local revenues they would still have to be topped up by grants from central government, but the default position should be that local authorities are entirely financed by local revenues.

[micah]

We long ago learned the error of taxation without representation. Now we are also learning there is no real representation without taxation. It seems to me that if localism is to be accountable and legitimate (and therefore effective), then they need local taxes to be it.

Perhaps the idea that you choose where a proportion of your taxes go might be looked at; you get to indicate how 25% of your local taxes are spent - libraries or parks. Or perhaps that's a little too much....