Something rotten
Throughout the country local government is having a general election this month. Although partymachines and individual candidates are doubtless working to the best of their ability, although the outcome is far from being without importance inWestminsterland Whitehalllaswell as in county halls, andialthough,the resultsicould affect all of us, a pall of near-suffocating boredom hangs over the proceedings.`Will or will not London change hands' is not a question occupying Londoners very much, despite the fact that the GLC is up for grabs and both Labour, which hopes to win it, and the Tories, who hope to keep it, claim the election to be the most important for half a century. Similar claims are true enough. Yet the local government elections in no way enthuse the electorate, a minority of which is likely to vote. It is generally said, of general elections, that bread and butter issues determine the result. Bread and butter issues are what local government elections are overwhelmingly about, much more so than general elections; yet the electorate stands about, dumb and impassive as a field of cows, not even as volatile as a flock of sheep. The Labour Party expects to do well, chiefly — indeed almost entirely — on the grounds that it did badly during the corresponding election three years ago.
This Apathy infornii us that the condition of local government is bad. If the people cannot be bothered about local government elections, despite the fact that such elections are about bread and butter issues and that their outcome will affect the quality of education, transport, housing, social services, the local environment (which is the one which matters most to most) and the rates levied and paid,then it can only be because they no longer feel that they have any useful control over local government. Something is very rotten about our local government when eluctions which should matter arouse very little interest.
It is not difficult to see what is wrong, for it has been going wrong for a long time and it is steadily getting worse. What is wrong is that local government raises by way of local taxation less and less of the money it spends.
If local governmentspent only the money it raised, neither more nor less, and if it was responsible for deciding how that money should be spent, precisely; and without central government direction, then interest in local government would depend on how much money it raised and how it spent it. The more it raised — the more its electorate was directly burdened and governed by it — the
greater the interest would be, and the greater the local concern and scrutiny as to how the funds raised were spent. If only a small amount were raised and spent, then local government elections might well be pretty perfunctory, and no harm done. But if the question were to be asked, say, 'How big a police force do you wish? How well are you prepared to pay it?', then those interested in the law and order would be expected to debate the issue with much keenness. If similar questions were to be asked about housing, transport, education, and the local environment, then local political interest might well become intense, quite likely exceeding in keenness and vigour of debate general elections conducted upon more general, national, remote lines. But if local government merely acts as the agent of the central government in such matters, the electorate will become confused and uninterested.
The matter does not rest there. If each local government authority received the same amount of central government revenue per head of the population it served, and if in consequence the difference in quality or quantity of the services it provided depended, to a considerable extent, upon the additional revenues the local authority raised itself, then a degree of responsible local government would still exist. This would particularly be the case if the local authority raised its revenues in a way which involved the consent of the electorate. But the combination of rate equalisation grants and the like with the rating system excludes any real connection of financial responsibility between the local government electorate and those whom that electorate elects. It pays some councils to spend more and more, certain not only that they will get more and more from central funds but also that they will enjoy more and more electoral support from those who benefit from their spending.
It is not only councils in Labour-controlled areas which en joy financial irresponsibility. All local councils do. Even in the bluest of shire county halls, the rate precept is seldom of decisive political importance. Businesses and institu= tions pay rates without representation at all; and the representation of rate-payers itself is almost entirely obscured by the interests of local government beneficiaries. There is no connection between what is raised in tax and what is spent on services. Thus there is no responsible local government, and local government thus bores local democracy to its present death. The funeral is next week.
Previous page
