Localism agenda would hit housing workers
Conservative plans to hand power to local communities would heap radical change on council housing workers.
Shadow communities secretary Caroline Spelman told delegates at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week that her party would sweep away top-down decision making if it wins the next election. ‘We want to revive democracy with the oxygen of localism,’ she said.
Her prescription for change included allowing councils to abolish existing cabinet structures in favour of committees and increasing the number of elected mayors.
Pledging mayoral elections in 12 areas, she added that the winners could dismiss local authority chief executives should they see fit.
Council chiefs and their senior staff came under further fire from shadow chancellor George Osborne who said a Tory government would impose a two year pay freeze on senior public sector managers and civil servants.
A Conservative government would also force town halls to disclose all spending over £500, Ms Spelman announced. ‘We will legislate for councils to publish [it] on line.’
Ms Spelman failed to heed the advice of her boss to avoid using conference speeches to criticise the Labour government’s policies, laying into empty homes powers, quangos and waste disposal rules.
Minutes earlier party leader David Cameron had used an impromptu conference appearance to urge: ‘Let us not make this the week… when we spend all the time talking about what our opponents do.’
Otherwise Ms Spelman stuck to the party script: ‘The battle lines for localism have been drawn,’ she said.
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Readers' comments (6)
Peter | 08/10/2009 11:10 am
'...revive democracy with the oxygen of localism.' and legislate councils to publish spending over £500 on line? ( most of us would prefer to see MPs expenditure on line). 'The battle lines for localism have been drawn'.
Dear God, is the best the Conservative could come out with? Call me a cynic but this is an insult to anyone's intellect!
Mr Cameron and your party may have won the next general election but can you please come out with some practical and decent policies before the election?
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Joe Halewood | 08/10/2009 11:29 am
Localism? Localism? No - what this is is subsidiarity, remember that? The scourge of the Maastricht Treaty according to its biggest opponent, Mrs Thatcher.
Subsidiarity is the principle of devolving power to its lowest (acceptable) level with no interference from any body above. This is now what Ms Spelman refers to as Localism because (a) its correct term subsidiarity is a huge no-no in Tory-speak and (b) perhaps because it sounds like Localis the think(?) tank used as the mouthpiece for Mr Greenhalgh.
Two very interesting points here. Firstly this is a huge about turn in conservative thinking that is is highly coincidental with them having many more local councils. Secondy, the other story today is that Boris Johnson has done exactly the opposite to this by overruling a council - is this called reverse localism then?
It seems even the highly vague social housing policies of the Tories that we have had a glut of recently hold no principles whatsoever. Not that i have a problem with that as what works, works and by all means remove dogma. Yet when the apparent party of next government change policy from week to week, announce a policy principle then do the opposite on the sameday - "Reviving democracy with the oxygen of localism?" - Please, desist the flowery language that clearly means nothing in theory and even less in practice.
FFS what next "right to move" - oh yes we've had that one, the policy that guarantees the opposite....maybe the tories are being consistent here after all.
One final point on this utter nonsense from Ms Spelman or indeed any other politician. We are sweeping away top-down decision making!!!!!
Anyone who is fighting to attain an elected office that says we will take away the powers that office has....is either a barefaced liar, an incompetent buffoon or will change their mind when they reach that office. Which one Ms Spelmaan?
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Bernard Townroe | 08/10/2009 11:31 am
The quality of irony is not so much strained as shattered into a billion fragments by this laughable talk of 'localism' by those who did more than anyone to take power away from communities... Laugh? What else is there left to do?
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Bernard Townroe | 08/10/2009 1:55 pm
Can we have a Private Eye-esque speech bubble on the photograph of Ms Spelman? Any suggestions apart from "Does my expression look vacant in this [photograph]?"
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Joe Halewood | 08/10/2009 2:19 pm
Bernard such cynicism! Language evolves so that subsidiarity becomes Localism, and Society (or there being no such thing) becomes 'communities' -
As for speech bubbles we could have "who eat all the pies" for Stephen Greenhalgh or "who's got his fingers in all the pies" for Boris, or "half-baked pie" for Ms Spelman or "pie in the sky" for right to move Mr Shapps.
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Bernard Townroe | 08/10/2009 8:12 pm
Joe, I bow in the presence of cynicism of truly epic proportions! I can only gape in wonder at the work of a master...!
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