Bill for the long term

In the revolving door that was the secretary of state’s office responsible for local government under Labour (Prescott, Byers, Prescott again, Miliband, Kelly, Blears, Denham) each new incumbent tended to regard having their own white paper as a badge of office.
The coalition in contrast appears to have decided that one local government Bill is quite enough for one Parliament. Considering that it is both unravelling 13 years of Labour policy (and in the case of scrapping the Audit Commission previous Tory policy as well) along with setting out its own stall for local government until 2015 it is hardly surprising the Localism Bill is due to run to 200 clauses. Indeed the diminutive local government minister Bob Neill joked last week at a conference that although he had a copy of the Bill on his desk he could still see over the top of it.
Actually, most of the Localism Bill’s contents have been fairly straightforward to put together and much has already been well trailed. The stumbling block which has delayed its publication to the point at which civil servants fear they might be sharing the Christmas Day turkey with Eric Pickles has been over creating directly elected mayors in the 12 English cities outside London. Big city councils do not like them. They did not like them when they were Tony Blair’s Big Idea a decade ago either. And you can be sure Eric and his team have not been shoe-horning mayors into the Bill only to see the only take-up come from shire districts.
But despite its breadth, will the Bill live up to its name? Despite their insistence on a localist agenda coalition ministers have been tempted so far to intervene on anything from council newspapers and chief executive salaries to council tax levels and fortnightly bin collections. Is Big Society an opportunity or a threat to councils? And the absence of any serious push towards Total Place or community budgeting outside the 16 pilots is disappointing considering how many savings have been identified from previous studies.
However the biggest challenge by far is implementing these changes in the midst of unprecedented cuts in public spending. That will be the real test both for the Bill and for localism.