Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of current debates on democracy is that intelligent and committed people still talk about local government as though it still exists. Even council members themselves, as represented on the Councillors Commission, make this mistake. They have just produced a report for the DCLG (a newspeak creation that combines in one Department two non-entities, "community" and "local government") on how to encourage able people to serve on their local authorities. The commission chaired by Jane Roberts, who was a successful Labour leader in Camden, does a decent job of re-arranging the deck chairs on a ship that has long since sunk.
You can read about it on the BBC report here but so far it is not available on the DCLG website.
There are significant structural reasons why people nowadays tend not to think about standing for election to local authorities. First, as one person giving evidence to them said, councillors these days do little more than act as agents for central government, and cannot respond to the wishes of local electorates. Central government not only dictates what local authorities should do, it carries out countless inspections to make sure that they do what they are told; central government not only controls their finances, but insists on year-on-year cuts.
Second, local authorities are so large that members cannot possibly fulfill their representative role in any meaningful way. Chris Game, at Birmingham, told the Commission that local government today "is as remote from [people's] daily lives as it is possible to be while still daring to call itself local". He under-states the case: some county councils now preside over populations of a million or so people.
Third, the major strategic policies and decisions at local and regional level are essentially in the hands of government regional offices, major quangos and the very largest local authorities; and at a more local level, lesser quangos and partnerships (within which councils work with voluntary, private and "community" interests) run all but the most basic services.
The Commission report does touch on the first two of these barriers to local democracy, but leaves them both aside as they are, surprise, surprise, outside the remit that the DCLG gave them. Oddly, I couldn't find any reference to the role of the local and regional quango state in the document, aside from the occasional platitude. Perhaps I missed it as I scrolled through - but I suspect that would have been outside their remit too.
I should say that a lot of able and dedicated people do still devote their lives to public service on local authorities, and they do "make a difference" where and when they can. But similar younger people are not now queuing up to join them. In part for the reasons I have set out above, as well as for a range of other reasons that this report deals with very well.
The government has pledged to devolve more powers to local authorities. But only if they prove themselves able to attract "able and talented people" - the very people that its stranglehold on local democracy alienates!
