ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Tories to require high taxing local authorities to hold referenda

David Cameron is making a big speech tomorrow morning on council tax. It appears, according to advance reports, that the Conservative leader will commit the party to give local voters the power to veto large rises in council tax.  "Any authority," says the Mail, "wanting to impose a rise above a rate fixed annually would be forced to hold a local referendum seeking the approval of voters."

With inheritance tax, surveys suggest that the council tax is Britain's most hated.

More tomorrow.

12.30am: This from PA: "Tories see council tax as a potent political weapon due to growing voter discontent with bills which have risen, for a typical Band D property, by 92% in England and 103% in Wales since Labour came to power in 1997.  Average Band D bills in England reached £1,321 this year, compared to £688 a decade ago. The total council tax take across Britain has increased from £11 billion in 1997 to £23.5 billion this year.  Mr Cameron will argue today that referendums would be cheap to hold, because postal voting slips could be sent out in the envelope containing the yearly council tax bill."

10am: The press conference at the Young Foundation has just finished. Cameron drew heavily on the principles outlined in his Co-op speech in Manchester and post-bureaucratic speech in San Francisco before getting onto the proposed council tax referenda. Emphasis added:

"All politicians in opposition talk about giving more power to local councils. But all governments seem to end up centralising power. I want to prove that we will be different. That we really mean it when we talk about localisation. That’s why I am announcing today a significant new element in our policy platform: the democratisation of council tax.

Since Labour came to power council tax bills have doubled – largely thanks to unfunded burdens and extra bureaucracy from central government. The new powers we will give local councils will reduce the pressure to increase council tax bills. But I don’t propose to hand over power to councils without strengthening the accountability of councillors to the people they serve.

Today, that accountability is enforced through capping – an old-fashioned idea straight out of the bureaucratic age. I want to replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability. Capping will be scrapped - and I want to allow local people themselves to have a say over local taxation.

So the next Conservative government will require councils that want to introduce high council tax rises to submit their plans to a local referendum. They must explain to local taxpayers why they want to raise taxes by so much and they must show what they would do – a shadow budget – in the event of their plans being rejected. Council tax referendum ballots would be sent out with the annual council tax bill – and if people voted against the rise, a rebate would be credited to the next year’s bill."

Download this pdf to read the full speech.

1pm: SocietyGuardian's Peter Hetherington claims that the LGA and Tory Town Halls aren't happy with the plan

Local government blog launches on 5th November... can you help?

ConservativeHome has two main objectives.  First, we aim to agitate for the causes set out in our manifesto - including 'the politics of and' and respect for grassroots opinions.  Second, we aim to provide more coverage of the Conservative Party than any other newspaper or website.

As part of the commitment to our second core aim - comprehensiveness - we recently launched our Parliament blog.  It's much less popular than the rest of the site - currently receiving an average of just over 600 visits a day - but we're going to persevere with it until at least the new year in the hope that its audience will steadily grow.  There are certainly great treasures in many parliamentary debates that go completely unnoticed.

Our next project is a blog dedicated to local government.  We're looking to recruit local councillors from across the country - district councillors, county councillors, Cabinet members etc - who will be willing to contribute short essays that will be of interest to readers from around the country.  The short essays could be about the impact of central government on local councils, interesting campaigning ideas, thoughts on localism.  Our aim is for this new section to become essential reading for Conservatives interested in local government and in wider ideas of localism.

Earlier today I spoke at a seminar for local councillors with Theresa Villiers MP and Dan Hannan MEP.  Dan noted that more or less every successful conservative party in the western world champions localism and aims to protect local traditions and independence.  Those aims must increasingly be the British Tories' aims, too.

One of the great successes of our time in Opposition at Westminster has been the renaissance of Conservatives in local government.  The 'local Conservatism' blog aims to build on that renaissance.

We've recruited about a dozen councillors so far as contributors.  We're still looking for a few more.  You need no technical expertise.  If you can use email that's enough!  Send us your thoughts once a fortnight or so and we'll post them.  Please email us now if you'd like to join our team.

Heseltine's plan for a renaissance in city governance

The hitherto low-key Cities Taskforce chaired by Lord Heseltine has revealed it is going in a very localist direction, recommending the party builds on Labour's introduction of directly-elected mayors and town hall cabinets by establishing American-style mayors in all cities (something he advocated after resigning in the 80s). They would have power over government services such as transport, the emergency services and welfare.

In what they've dubbed a transfer of power from "quangocrats to democrats", the mayors would be accountable to local councillors and voters. Funding for "government puppets" like RDAs and LSCs would be diverted to city government. One of the main reasons for having a mayor's office is that it can pull together the multitude of different regeneration funding streams. Heseltine said:

"These radical proposals build on the hard experience of the 1980s and 90s and meet many of the criticisms made of present government policy by their own advisors. I hope they will commend themselves to a future Conservative government. I believe they could herald a broad renaissance on English city governance.

10am update: The report can be downloaded here. It also includes the idea of giving city governments the power and their own credit rating to issue bonds and borrow on the open market.

Deputy Editor

Civility and social progress

Libby Purves concurs with Cameron's diagnosis of society in the Times today:

"As Mr Cameron said, there’s a lot we have started to shed responsibility for — public manners, civic pride, carrying a job through and taking the rap if we foul up. And the way has been led by a governmental and official culture of denying guilt and refusing ever to resign, and a mania for removing responsibility from individuals by hedging them in with restrictive rules. Head teachers, police, NHS staff, museum curators, officials of all sorts are made to spend far too much time in the tedious tasks of “accountability” (meaning form-filling and pretending to have hit imaginary “targets”). Individuals, meanwhile, fear to tackle nuisances in case they themselves are jumped on by the law."

Click here to read yesterday's civility speech in full (over 4500 words) or continue reading this post to see a few extracts. It brilliantly articulates some of the subtler, underlying problems with 21st century British society. The New Culture Forum has also covered the speech.

Deputy Editor

Another argument for localism

"We need a skilled politician who knows how to make and execute decisions using the advice of the official mayoral machine and the London Assembly. We do not want an empire-building rent-a-quote.  The obvious recruiting grounds are the assembly, the boroughs and Parliament. A candidate needs experience of London electors. It would help if our candidate either had been or still is a councillor or an MP within the London area. He would know part of the electorate well. He would know the local organisations, and be used to the some of the local media.  It would be good if our candidate had a track record of delivering better service for less cost as a leader or committee chairman in a borough council, or in some other elected office. It would be important that the candidate could devote large amounts of time in the year ahead to the task of wooing the electorate, researching and setting out a plan for sorting out London's problems. I don't mind what sex, race, creed or religion the person is, but I do want someone competent."

With those words (in The Telegraph) John Redwood sets out some qualities that the Tory candidate for London Mayor might need.  The trouble with Britain's centralised system of government is that there is very little opportunity for people to acquire real experience of policy innovation and running genuinely independent local councils.  The situation could not be more different in the USA.  Republican voters have a choice between John McCain, Rudi Giuliani, Mitt Romney and one or two others.  What is notable about Giuliani and Romney is that they have serious executive experience.  Giuliani has run New York.  He has driven down crime, managed budgets and cut taxes.  Romney ran a Winter Olympics for Utah and was also Governor of Massachusetts.  We might have less difficulty finding good candidates for high office if we had our own system of seriously devolved power.  Just a thought.

Cameron says voluntary sector can help defeat postcode lottery

David Cameron recently admitted to The Telegraph that he was frustrated that his big idea of social responsibility hadn't really taken off.  The Tory leader had another go at explaining the idea yesterday - in a speech to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.  Although the speech was focused on his wish to deliver a shift from state welfare to social welfare he spent some time explaining that he had no intention of dismantling what most voters see as the benefits of state welfare:

• "Universal education" and "universal healthcare" were "great steps forward", he insisted, and they "must never be reversed".
• There would be no cut-price welfare, either: "With a Conservative government, spending on public services will rise. We will share the proceeds of growth between lower taxes and more public spending."
• Mr Cameron also reassured people that there would be no retreat from state provision until the voluntary sector was ready to take its place: "Our motivation is not simply an arid desire to roll back the frontiers of the state. It is a mission richer and more rewarding than that: to roll forward the frontiers of society. To empower - and, yes, to fund - more social organisations in the work they do. Not to force new work on voluntary bodies - but to give them a "right to supply" where they can do a better job than government."

David Cameron also offered four reasons to discount the objection that voluntary sector provision would produce a postcode lottery with very different service standards across the country:

1. There already is a postcode lottery despite the existing centralisation of services and he pointed to inequalities under the NHS.
2. The freedom and innovation produced by a vibrant social enterprise sector will not just raise standards but it will eliminate the worst forms of inequality as social entrepreneurs freely transfer good practice across the country.
3. Expert commissioning of services will ensure consistency and improvement.
4. Basic standards for outcomes and access will still be set by the state and he cited Service Level Agreements and Public Service Agreements as models.

The speech contained some hints of policy direction.  Mr Cameron promised less stringent reporting requirements for small voluntary organisations and measures to ensure full cost recovery.  He also said that matched funding might be one way of reducing the danger that public funding of voluntary organisations leads to them losing their independence and distinctiveness.  ConservativeHome notes a few ideas here that might stop free charities from becoming functionaries of the state.

Webcameron: David Cameron discusses his speech

Nick Herbert seeks to reconnect local communities with police

Writing in this morning's Telegraph, Philip Johnson trawls the Inspector Gadget blog for examples of the failure of the Met to provide enough beat officers for London's streets. 

After years of Westminster politicians promising to put more police officers on the streets of local communities, Nick Herbert MP, Tory spokesman on police reform, has had enough and thinks an entirely different approach is needed.  Mr Herbert has written an article for the magazine of the Reform think tank about rebuilding the links between local communities and the police service.  Mr Herbert's inspiration is one of the founding principles of British policing, as set out by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 - ''the police are the public and the public are the police."

According to The Daily Telegraph  Mr Herbert wants "communities unhappy with the priorities of chief officers," to be able to, "withhold part of the budget and spend it on beat patrols of their own, or reopen mothballed police stations".  Mr Herbert ultimately wants to see local communities elect police authorities or, ideally, their police commissioner.

The proposed reforms to policing are the most concrete example of the Tory leadership's commitment to localism.  Localisation competes with crunchy conservatism, 'modern compassionate conservatism' and 'fraternity' to be defining labels for Cameronism.  The Direct Democracy campaign launched its Agenda for a New Model Party immediately after the last General Election.  DD has ten founding themes:

1. Decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect.
2. Decision-makers should be directly elected.
3. Citizens should be as free as possible from state coercion.
4. Local authorities should be self-financing.
5. Policing should be brought under local democratic control.
6. The state should fund, rather than administer, education.
7. The state should fund, rather than administer, healthcare.
8. Taxes should be simple, fair, transparent, efficient, competitive and low.
9. The supremacy of Parliament should be guaranteed over ministers, judges, officials and foreign treaty obligations.
10. Candidates for public office should be selected from the widest possible base.

On today's Platform Daniel Hannan MEP thinks that localisation might be the answer to the West Lothian Question.

What is social growth?

The EPP announcement means I've only just caught up with yesterday's David Cameron speech on community.  It's very good.  David Cameron attempts to triangulate himself between 'the extremes' of Polly Toynbee and Simon Heffer.  Both of them are too obsessed with the state, he thinks, when the real answer to many of Britain's problems is the growth of society:

"Everyone agrees: we need more community. The problem is that we conduct this debate in largely sterile terms about the size of the state.  On one side you have people, like Polly Toynbee on the Guardian, who think that the restoration of community lies in expanding the size and scope of government.  And then there are those on the other side, like Simon Heffer on the Telegraph, who think that only a small state can deliver healthy communities. They argue that we must cut taxes and cut spending before we can hope to see a revival of community... The mistake both the Old Left and the Old Right make is that they look at the problem from the wrong end. They concentrate on government, not the people.  The fact that they say opposite things - one that we should expand the state, the other that we should shrink it - is irrelevant. They're both talking about the state."

"The coming realignment of British politics"

Earlier this week Ed Vaizey MP wrote two much-blogged-upon posts for The Guardian's Comment is Free.  The first appeared to warm towards the idea of a LibDem-Conservative coalition and the second appeared to cool on the idea.

Peter Franklin (an occasional ConservativeHome Platformer)  has reignited the debate on Comment is Free.  Peter thinks the electoral logic is "obvious".  But what, he asks, of the ideological logic: "Other than environmentalism, what can the two parties unite around?"

Peter believes that localism (recently discussed on ConservativeHome) is the "obvious issue":

"The Lib Dems are already signed up and the Conservatives are rapidly signing up.  This shared agenda also allows the two parties to fudge their remaining differences on domestic policy by letting communities make their own decisions at a local level. Best of all, localism provides a common point of divergence from Labour's centralising tendencies (soon to be reinforced under Gordon Brown)."

Nominations for Local Hero

Your nominations and citations are sought for the 'Local Hero' award of the Inaugural Conservative Movement Awards.  This award seeks to award someone who has championed the 'small is beautiful' tradition within conservatism.  It might be an outstanding local councillor or council.  It might be a local campaigner who has taken on overmighty bureaucracy.  It might be someone or some group that has championed localisation.  Please submit your ideas on the comments thread below.

Yesterday we sought nominations for 'National Campaign'.  Tomorrow we'll be focusing on 'One To Watch'.

Danny Kruger: Councillors don't have the power to be different

Danny Kruger, writing in today's Telegraph, thinks he has discovered the explanation for (1) apathy in local elections and (2) the success of protest parties like the BNP... Local government has no real power in Britain:

"Councillors have only the most tenuous influence on education, policing, healthcare, welfare and housing. All politicians are the same? Of course they are, because they don't have the power to be different... The growing support for the BNP represents not (or not mostly) an emerging racism, but the angry expression of voters' accurate perception that no one is listening to them."

For Mr Kruger the key to reversing the powerlessness of local government is ensuring that it raises the majority of its money locally and can spend it much more freely.  He recommends Douglas Carswell MP's preferred tax-raising instrument - a local sales tax.  Kruger:

"There is a fact of pure serendipity: the Government raises from VAT almost the exact sum - around £80 billion - that it passes on to local councils in grants.  So the solution is obvious. Give councils the power to set VAT locally and to collect the receipts. Or rather abolish VAT and replace it with a local sales tax (LST) - far easier and cheaper to administer than a tax on "added value"... LST would be set initially at 17.5 per cent - the VAT rate - but thereafter at councillors' discretion. Councils could raise the remaining quarter of their finance as currently with council tax, or with an income tax, or a poll tax, or - best of all - not at all.  Tax competition would act as a downward pressure on rates, leading to a virtuous cycle of improved efficiency and tax cuts. Rich areas would help support poor ones with a cross-subsidy formula, but the link between taxation, spending and representation would be restored."