The Institutions and other aspects of Democracy
Local Government
As the nineteenth century progressed, the tendency
to create new specialised agencies for each new service was replaced by a
tendency to concentrate services, especially after the creation of county
councils in 1888 and county district councils in 1894. At the same time, central government
recognised increasingly the need to ensure uniform national standards and
created the methods to do so, by guidance, conditional grants, inspectorate,
appeals, systems and default powers. At
the beginning of the twentieth century we appeared to be in a golden age of
local democracy and accountability. The
Labour writer Sydney Webb described the scenario as follows:
The
Individualist Town Councillor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by
the municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water, and
seeing by the municipal clock in the municipal market that he is too early to
greet his children coming from the municipal school, will use the national
telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park but to
come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the municipal reading room, by
the municipal art gallery, museum and library..
It was not to last. The rivalry between Central and Local
government would soon raise its ugly head.
The introduction of more and more local services
was counterbalanced by the transfer of some services to central government (for
example, prisons (1872), trunk roads (1930), gas and electricity (1947) and
hospitals (1948)). In 1929, the
abolition of the Boards of Guardians consolidated local government services, in
large towns, county borough councils and, in London and the metropolitan
counties, the London County Council and metropolitan boroughs. Outside these areas the abolition of the
Boards of Guardians consolidated local government services for county councils
to county district councils and (in rural districts) parish councils and
meetings.
Elected
councils governed in the big cities with subordinate urban councils, County
Councils controlled local areas with subordinate rural districts. These bodies between them were responsible
for education, social services, planning and development amongst a host of
other matters. They levied their own
property taxes (rates) and received money from central government. In 1958 the monies received from the centre
took the form of a block grant and were meant to equalise the income of the
poorer authorities with the wealthier ones.
There was an annual settlement between central government and local
government on the level of expenditure.
A sample survey of 4,000 councillors undertaken in
1964 for the Maud Committee found that councillors did not constitute a fair
cross section of the community. Only
12% were women, and the average age of all councillors was 55 years. Of male councillors, 20% were retired,
whereas only 5% were under 35 years.
They tended to be immobile; two thirds lived within the area they
represented for over 25 years. Certain
categories of occupation predominated – employers, managers, professional
workers and farmers – because these can adjust their hours of work to fit in
with council business.
The Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 had been
based on two basic principles: local democracy and the separate government of
towns and rural areas. By 1972, as
regards the first principle the degree of participation was disappointing. Only a third of the electorate troubled to
vote, and in the counties and rural districts over one-half of the councillors
were returned unopposed. Attempts were
made to combat this apathy by the creation of a local ombudsman and provision
for the public and press to have access to committee meetings of local
authorities (Local Government Act, 1972)
In 1972 Peter Walker MP the Minister for Local
Government was determined to redraw the map of local government. “Big
is best” became the slogan for local government reorganisation.
In
place of a Royal Commission recommendation of single-tier authorities, each
uniting a city and its hinterland, Walker set up two tiers on a fairly uniform
pattern across the country, adopting the London pattern for the conurbations
and a system with stronger county authorities for the rest of the country;
Conservative strength in the shires ensured that Walker would be receptive to
the case for continuing with county councils, even though there were some
fierce battles over boundaries and mergers. "The Winds of Change" by J.Ramsden
This two-tier system causes considerable confusion
with the electorate. Most of them are
unsure as to which tier is responsible for what. A number of authorities have moved to a
unitary system. The London pattern
changed with the abolition of the Greater London Council but now there is a
Mayor for London and a London Assembly as well as London Borough Councils.
In the 1970s and 1980s a battle developed between
central government and local government about the level of expenditure and the
amount central government would finance.
The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was in a continuous
argument with local authorities such as Liverpool, which were mainly Labour
controlled, over their level of expenditure and rising levels of debt. From 1984 onwards rates were effectively
capped, thus putting a limit on the level of expenditure. Central government took more and more
control. Simon Jenkins quotes Michael
Heseltine in his book Big Bang Localism
as saying: “Elected bodies look too much
to the past and too exclusively to the aspirations of the existing population….
We took their powers away from them because they were making such a mess of
it.” Heseltine went on to say that
the new Urban Development Corporations would be “free of the inevitable delays of the democratic process.”
At the end of the 1980s Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher proposed to abolish the “rates”
and introduce a “poll” tax. The proposal was met with riots and
demonstrations, the worst of which took place in Trafalgar Square in
London. The aim of the tax was to increase
local accountability for local expenditure.
It brought into the tax net many people who had previously been exempt
from the rates. Rates were a property
based tax whereas the poll tax was based on individual householders.
In 1990 Mrs. Thatcher was replaced as Leader of the
Conservative Party and Prime Minister by John Major. Many believe that it was the unpopular poll
tax, which brought about her demise. On
taking office John Major immediately amended the poll tax with exclusions,
rebates, subsidies and safety nets to mitigate its effect, but in doing so he
reduced the democratic accountability for the tax. By the time the poll tax was replaced in
1993 by a banded property tax the proportion of local spending met by the local
authorities themselves had decreased from 55% to 20% and the discretion of
local councils to spend money as they wished was down to negligible amounts.
Local
democracy suffered a massive decline during the course of the 20th
century. Take London as an example. In
1900 there were 12,000 elected officials running the public services. In the 1940s Prime Minister Attlee halved
this number when the Labour Government centralised health, social services and
public utilities. In the 1980s and
1990s the Conservative Governments continued with this trend so that by 1997 there were only 2,000 elected
officials running London. However
the number of officials did not drop in total.
10,000 unelected officials also running London in addition to the
elected ones made up the difference.
The unelected officials sat on new boards and Quangos. (Quasi government
organisations). Because these officials
were appointed democratic accountability was drastically diminished.
At
the local level democracy in the United Kingdom differs considerably from that
found in other countries in the developed world. There are approximately 23,000 elected local
government officials in the United Kingdom.
This does not include parish councillors for they have effectively no
executive authority. Compare this with
other countries:
In
his book Big Bang Localism Simon
Jenkins points out that in 1997 the
United Kingdom had 2,605 electors for each elected official. Sweden had 667, Germany 250, and France 116. It is often said that we have too many
politicians, but the reality is that compared with other countries we have too
few. You might think that in these
other countries the people would be bored with politics and not to turn out to
vote in local elections. Not so. Turnout in local elections in Sweden was
80%, Germany 70% and France 60%. In the
United Kingdom it was a miserable 35%.
"Meanwhile
Britain’s local councillors are outnumbered three-to-one by 60,000 unelected
people serving on roughly 5,200 local quangos.
To them are ascribed functions that may be local but are no longer under
local democracy, such as the health service, housing, prisons, training and
economic development. There are a
further 35,000 unelected magistrates, 345,000 school governors and 30,500
members of centrally appointed quangos.
Government patronage – exclusively from the centre – dwarfs the elected
sector. The impact of this evolution is
specific. While elected councillors
divide their time 17 hours with the public to 8 hours with officials, quango members
do the opposite, 4 hours with the public to 11 hours with officials. This is the extent of Britain’s “democratic
deficit”."Big Bang Localism" by S. Jenkins
The
Single Transferable Vote (STV) was introduced for elections to local
authorities in Scotland from 2007. By this
system of proportional representation the vote of every elector counts, which
gives every elector an incentive to participate in the electoral process. This is a good and sensible step forward and
should be followed in the rest of the United Kingdom.
In a report on local government in The Guardian in
April 2004 it stated that “The average age of elected members in England and
Wales is 57, with only 14% under 45. In
Scotland the average age is 55. Perhaps
if there were greater powers in local authorities these average ages would come
down so that Councillors were more representative of the country as a whole.
There
is a never-ending conflict between central government and local
government. Both claim to have a
democratic mandate and both claim to know what is best for the people. Local government wants to provide the
relevant services for their locality and to prioritise them. Central government wants to retain financial
control and to ensure that national standards are met. After all, 80% of local government finance
is now provided by central government.
The bulk of the expenditure is on education. Take education out of the equation and local
government could be self-financing, itself raising the money that it
spends. In such a scenario there is a
strong case for as much power as possible to be transferred from central
government to local government and in order most closely to meet the wishes of
the people that power should be devolved to the lowest level of local
government as possible. Democratic
accountability would then ensure that those responsible for raising the moneys
locally were also accountable for the way those monies were spent. As far as education is concerned the money
central government spends could go directly to the schools and the expenditure
in the schools controlled by elected governors. The responsibility of the governors would be
to meet national standards set by the government. By these measures the aims and objectives of
both local and national government could be reconciled and there aims and
objects clearly delineated.
Power
should be devolved from central government and the higher levels of local
government to the lowest practical local level. Education should be financed by central
government. All the expenditure of
local government should be financed out of taxes raised by local government
subject to an adjustment for special needs financed by central government.
Devolving power carries with it a greater
responsibility on the citizen to participate, so when power is devolved:
Local
citizens should be left in no doubt that their system of government is going to
change. The change will involve them
taking greater responsibility for their environment and services. They must be left with no excuses if they
refuse to participate. Localism tends
to involve, most immediately and controversially, variations in local
taxes. Such variations concentrate the
democratic mind. That is the franchise
biting. That is what drives people to
vote. "Big Bang Localism" by S. Jenkins
GREATER LONDON
Major
aspects of government have been devolved in Northern Ireland, Wales and
Scotland. In England the only major
region with similar major devolved government is London.
The system used for the
election of the Mayor of Greater London is the Supplementary Vote (SV)
system. Under this system, each voter
has two choices and they cast an X vote for their first choice in one column on
the ballot paper and an X vote for their second choice in another column. If no candidate polls 50% of first
preferences, all but the top two are eliminated and the second votes of the
eliminated candidates are transferred, provided that they are for one of the
two remaining candidates.
One
of the most notable aspects of the mayoral election in 2004 was the high number
of rejected votes. 56,862 (2.96%) of
the first choice votes were rejected and 329,090 (17.14%) of the second choice
votes were rejected.
A
number of different errors amounted to a massive number of wasted votes and
suggests that the system needs to be changed.
To
complicate matters the system used to elect the Greater London Assembly is the
Additional Member System (AMS). There
are 14 single member constituencies decided by First-Past-The-Post. There are then 11 London wide members who are
chosen so that each Party has a number of Assembly members in proportion to
their share of the London-wide vote.
Voters are supposed to cast two votes, one for the constituency
candidate and another for the London-wide list. There was however an artificial threshold
which required Parties winning list seats to have at least 5% of the London
list vote.
In
the 2004 Assembly elections we also saw a high number of rejected votes. In the constituency vote 118,535 (6.17%) of
the votes were rejected and for the London wide vote 48,536 (2.53%) of the
votes were rejected.
This
is scandalous and it is quite clear that the way these ballots were conducted
was very poor, both confusing in the way the ballots were described and faulty
in the way the votes were counted. The
design of the ballot papers should be looked at and improved. To use different methods of voting systems
on the same day in different ballots is asking for trouble. It makes a mockery of democracy where every
vote should count. Clarity of the
voting system is essential in any democracy.
CITY OF LONDON
The
City of London is the oldest governing body in Britain, with 25 wards dating
back to Saxon times and a 112 member elected common council. It has a unique political status, a legacy
of its uninterrupted integrity as a corporate city since the Anglo Saxon period
and its singular relationship with the crown.
Historically its system of government was not unusual, but unlike the
rest of the country it was not reformed by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835.
In 2002 the electorate
was changed and 16,000 new business voters created.
The City’s electoral
system follows very few of the usual forms and standards of democracy. Most of
its voters are representatives of businesses and other bodies which occupy
premises in the City. Its ancient wards
also have very unequal numbers of voters.
The principal justification put forward for the non-resident vote is
that approximately 450,000 non-residents constitute the city's day-time
population and use most of its services, far outnumbering the City's residents,
who are only about 9,200. So what? Nevertheless, the system has long been the
cause of controversy. The business vote
was abolished in all other United Kingdom local authority elections in 1969 and
was retained only in the City of London.
Abolition of the business vote was a step forward for democracy;
retention in the City of London was a setback, but an indication that wealth
and influence can still pull the strings.
A private Act of
Parliament in 2002 reformed the voting system for electing Members to the
Corporation of London and received the Royal Assent on 7 November 2002. Under
the new system, the number of non-resident voters has doubled from 16,000 to
32,000. Previously disenfranchised firms (and other organisations) are now
entitled to nominate voters, in addition to those already represented and all
such bodies are now required to choose their voters in a representative
fashion.
Bodies employing fewer
than ten people may appoint one voter, those employing ten to fifty people may
appoint one voter for every five employees; those employing more than fifty
people may appoint ten voters and one additional voter for each fifty employees
beyond the first fifty. This pyramid
form of democracy is a distortion of democracy.
The Act also removed some
anomalies, which had developed over time within the City's system, which had
been unchanged since the 1850s.
Under
the changes brought in, the big City and foreign banks will be able to dominate
the electoral process by being able to appoint up to 70 voters each to
represent their company. There is no
requirement by companies for direct elections in the workplace to choose the
new voters that will represent them.
Aldermen
and members of the City’s common council are often elected unopposed in many
wards because partnerships, mainly of older law and accountancy firms, can
dominate the electorate.
The
present system is widely seen as undemocratic, but adopting a more conventional
system would place the 9,200 actual residents of the City of London in control
of the local planning and other functions of a major financial capital which
provides most of its services to hundreds of thousands of non-residents. As they are the residents they should form
the electorate. Some would argue that
this issue illustrates the complexities and problems of democracy, but the
principle of each vote having equal value should not be compromised. Wealth should not be allowed to buy
votes. That is why the business vote
was abolished elsewhere and is why the business vote should be abolished in the
City of London.
Proposals to annex the
City of London to one of the neighbouring boroughs, possibly the City of
Westminster, have not widely been taken seriously. However, one proposal floated as a possible
further reform is to allow those who work in the City to each have a direct
individual vote, rather than businesses being represented by appointed voters. This latter would be an improvement but it
is unsatisfactory and does not meet the principle objection, which is that the
residents of the City cannot control their own affairs.
The City has gone
backwards in time by resurrecting wealth and influence into the democratic
process, but in doing so it has made itself totally undemocratic. Because there were so few residents in the
City of London they could possibly have a big influence on what is done in the
City. It demonstrates that even in the present day the power of wealth
and money talks. The system should
be abolished and genuine democracy introduced.
If the objection is that the electorate is too small then the City
should be amalgamated with a neighbouring borough or split up.
For all electoral purposes the City of London should be
amalgamated with the City of Westminster.
REGIONS
REGIONS
The United Kingdom is divided up into 12
Regions. They were originally
introduced to bring the United Kingdom in to line with the rest of Europe. The European Union is divided into
Regions. At present within the United
Kingdom the Regions are run by Regional Development Agencies. They have a pivotal role in influencing
policies in transport, environment, land use planning, and house building
requirements, waste disposal and economic development.
There is a European Union Committee of the Regions on
which the United Kingdom has 24 nominated representatives and there is a
European Union Economic & Social Committee also with 24 representatives.
The Labour Government wanted the 12 regions of the
United Kingdom to have elected regional assemblies. The campaign for these was lead by the
Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott MP.
To promote the cause the Government launched a consultation exercise in
three regions in the North comprising 14 million people. A derisory 3,329 people responded positively
to the idea. To everyone’s astonishment
John Prescott thought that there was an overwhelming case for a referendum on
the matter. The North-East was thought
to be most in favour of regional government, so a referendum was held there on
4 November 2004. The electors were
asked the question “Should there be an
elected regional assembly for the North East region”?
In a turnout of 48% on an all postal ballot 197,310
were in favour of a Regional assembly and 696,519 opposed one. The defeat was all the more emphatic because
the NorthEast was carefully chosen as the Region most likely to embrace
devolution. Had it been successful,
referendums would have followed in Humberside, the NorthWest and
Yorkshire. These were abandoned. The people thought the regions were too
remote for them to be a democratic unit.
Nevertheless there is still a problem; the Regional
Development Agencies spend some £2.9 billion per annum on housing, planning,
education, transport, health and economic development. People appointed to them, mainly consisting
of elected local government councillors run them, but these people are
unaccountable for their actions to the people.
Democracy is nonexistent.
The
Regional Development Agencies should be abolished and their functions
transferred to local Councils.
By transferring the functions of the Regional
Development Agencies to local councils, Councillors would be democratically
accountable for the way in which the functions are handled.
Shires and
Districts
The methods chosen for elections at Shire and
District level vary considerably, but mainly they are based on the First Past
the Post system of election. Like with
the House of Commons this produces much distorted results. In the 2006 local elections in the London
Borough of Newham, Labour with 41.8% of the vote got 90% of the seats. At a National level, in the 2002 local
elections the Conservative Party got 72.2% of the seats with only 43.9% of the
votes. It is one of the scandals of
local politics and no doubt contributes to the reason why turnout in local
elections is so low.
This
is clearly wrong and produces wholly unrepresentative local government. In future:
Local government
elections should be conducted under the Single Transferable Vote system of
proportional representation with three members in each ward.
Assemblies
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in
the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
H. L.Mencken. Mencken was an
American historian of language.
WELSH
After
the 1997 General Election, the new Labour Government argued that an Assembly
would be more democratically accountable than the Welsh Office (set up in
1964). The Welsh Office was a government department controlled by a Minister of
the Government who was answerable to the House of Commons. As the Prime Minister appointed the Minister
he was only ultimately only accountable to the Prime Minister. Members of the assembly would be directly
accountable to the Welsh electorate.
A referendum was held on
18th September 1997 in which voters approved the creation of the
National Assembly for Wales by a majority of just 6,721 votes on a low turnout
of 50.1%. 559,419 voted in favour of an
Assembly with 552,698 voting against.
There was clearly no great enthusiasm for an Assembly. In an earlier referendum in 1979 the people
voted against one.
In spite of the low
turnout, the Government of Wales Act 1998 was passed by Parliament,
establishing the Assembly. Most of the
powers of the Welsh Office and Secretary of State for Wales were transferred to
the Assembly. When first created, the
Assembly had no powers to initiate primary legislation; however, following the
passing of the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Assembly now has powers to legislate
in some areas, though still subject to the veto of the Secretary of State or
Parliament.
The
Welsh Assembly Government is responsible for most of the issues of day-to-day
concern to the people of Wales, including the economy, health, education, and
local government.
In Wales, as in England, local authorities set the
rate of Council tax, but since the Assembly largely determines the level of
grants to local councils, it can influence the level of local taxation
indirectly. It also has some discretion
over charges for government services. Notable examples where this discretion
has been used to create significant differences from other areas in the UK
include:
1.
Charges for NHS prescriptions in
Wales — these have now been abolished.
2.
Charges for University Tuition — is different for Welsh resident students studying at Welsh
Universities, compared with students from or studying elsewhere in the UK.
3.
Charging for Residential Care — In Wales there is a flat rate of contribution towards the cost of
nursing care, (roughly comparable to the highest level of English Contribution)
for those who require residential care.
The National Assembly for
Wales comprises 60 members, who are known as Assembly Members, or AMs. Members are elected for four-year terms under
an additional members system, where 40 AMs represent geographical
constituencies elected by the First past the Post system and 20 AMs from five
electoral regions using the d’Hondt method of proportional representation. An Assembly Member is paid just over £50,000
per annum.
The Welsh Assembly has no
taxation powers and, in effect, ensures a minimum of democratic control over
the allocation of a centrally determined and allocated block of expenditure
which had previously been administered by the Welsh Office.
The
National Assembly has created a strange anomaly. It can pass primary legislation for a part
of the United Kingdom and such legislation does not go through either the House
of Commons or the House of Lords, unlike legislation for England.
In addition Wales is over represented
at Westminster. This should now be
remedied. If all the constituencies in
the United Kingdom had an equal number of voters the number of Welsh MPs would
drop from 40 to 33. The average size of
a constituency in 2005 in England was 70,154.
The average size of a Welsh constituency was 55,616. If Wales were put on a par with England, it
would have 33 seats, 2 below its current legal minimum of 35 seats.
Wales should have the
same number of MPs proportionate to its population as the rest of the United
Kingdom.
The people of the United
Kingdom should have votes of equal value.
What appears to have been created is a “West Cardiff” problem similar to
the “West Lothian” question in Scotland.
The question is “Why should a Welsh MP in Westminster have the right to
vote on matters affecting England but English MPs have no right to vote on
matters affecting Wales?
No comments:
Post a Comment