The limits of localism

by Paul Goodman

David Cameron's vision of public services reform, set out yesterday, isn't just about localism - in the sense of local people taking more control over the lives they live, the services they use, and the communities they inhabit.

His Big Society ideal also involves private companies and other providers bidding for and winning contracts, thereby helping to repair "the breakdown in our society".  But let's stick with the localist theme, and imagine a British localist political settlement.  Its main features would be roughly as follows -

• Local authorities would take control of housing, planning, social security, urban policy, and sustainable communities.
• Local authorities would be free to levy new taxes.
• Ring-fenced grants would be abolished.
• NHS targets would be abolished.
• Schools would be freed from central government and local authority control, while new providers would be able to set up free schools.
• Local sherrifs would be responsible for policing and have oversight of criminal proceedings.
• Community groups, voluntary organisations, clubs, charities, faith groups - in other words, civil society - would supply more public services (as of course would private companies).

As some readers will have spotted by now, this dispension is very like that set out by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan in "The Plan".  I haven't replicated its proposals for Parliamentary reform, because they're extraneous to my purpose.  I have, in one or two cases, departed from their checklist: for example, they support an opt-out system of individual health accounts from the NHS, while I leave the basic structure of the health service unchanged.

This is because I want to sketch a settlement which is both extremely radical and yet imaginable within the present contours of British politics.  I'm stretching likelihood as it is (because, for example, the Treasury is unwilling to concede new local taxes).  For this reason, I haven't reproduced Carswell and Hannan's ("Cannon's") plan to leave the EU, because while I believe it probable that Britain would quit in the event of a Europe-wide convulsion, I think it's very unlikely to do so without one.

So there it is.  My judgements will be agreed or disagreed with according to the reader's inclination, but it's indisputable that any localist settlement - mine, Cannon's, or anyone else's - throws up a series of questions for government.

Let's go on to imagine that my imaginary settlement is implemented at a time when the Government's main priority, as now, is to eliminate the structural deficit and help the economy to grow - and agree that if they don't achieve these aims they're unlikely to re-elected.

Here are some problems that follow, some more likely than others, but all possible -

• The Government wants more homes to be built for workers moving to growth areas.  Without those homes, growth will be slower.  But some local authorities decide that they don't want to provide very much new housing, because allowing it to be built is very unpopular with local voters.
• The Government wants business to flourish in order to ensure that growth happens.  But after business rates are returned to local authorities, some left-wing councils repeat what they did during the 1980s, hiking rates, closing businesses, and damaging growth.
• The abolition of ring-fencing allows much the same councils to preserve waste and perks while slashing grants to voluntary groups and charities, and blaming the Government for "underfunding" at the same time.  (This is already happening.)
• The response of doctors, nurses and other NHS staff to the abolition of targets is to take more time, trouble and care with patients.  This slows the system down - at least until other supply-side reforms are introduced into the NHS.
• A small minority of parents want to set up not so much free schools as anarchic schools, in which the most discredited educational ideas of the 1960s are applied, thus ensuring that children aren't taught properly and thus learn nothing.
• The Government wants to create directly elected mayors in the 12 largest English cities, subject to confirmatory referendums.  The enthusiasm for these referendums turns out to be low, and elections mostly produce Labour placemen who do little for their areas but attack the Government a lot.
• Many successful bids for public service contracts are won by private providers from outside the local areas involved, not by local and community groups.  This may provide better services, but it can scarcely be called localism.
• Some people declare that they want real localism, thank you very much - which, in their opinion, means the implementation of what they call "sharia law".  ("Sharia law" is in fact a misnomer, and isn't what most Muslims believe sharia to be in any event, but that doesn't deter those calling for it.)

Now, I'm not suggesting that central government should impose new housing on local areas, or that left-wing parents shouldn't be able to set up free schools, or that private companies shouldn't deliver public services.  I travel on the same train as Cannon, though I get off before the end of the line.

Indeed, I'm not proposing solutions at all.  I am, rather, pointing out that government means choices - "to govern is to choose".  For example, Ministers can try to prioritise both growth and localism at once.  But they must recognise that the one can conflict with the other, at least in the short term.

The short term, of course, isn't everything.  It's less important than the long term.  However, governments that don't care for the short term as well as the long risk not getting re-elected.  So if, for example, the economy doesn't grow during the next few years, the Conservative Party's unlikely to win the next election.

By the way, all this isn't to say that the Government's pursuing a consistent localist agenda.  I'll examine tomorrow how localist it is and how localist it should be - thus trying to answer some of the questions I haven't today.  Why didn't I?  Because I want to make a point: that - once again - "to govern is to choose".