Perhaps to really wind things up we should start with what can't be devolved to Parish or Town Council level. I live in Speen - a tiny village on the edge of Newbury with its own Parish Council. It's currently a ward with two district councillors.

In 1795, they invented their own social security system (the so-called Speenhamland system). [See http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/speen.html for details].

So... social security can be run on a parish level. What next?

Wasn't part of the thrust behind the whole raft of social security reforms from the poor laws onwards a drive to deal with the inequalities caused by parish-level provision? If you were lucky enough to be poor in a parish with a suitable benefactor, you could survive. So I don't actually think that social security can be run at parish level (it should be integrated into the income tax system, but that's another debate)


But at parish/ward level, there could be:
- traffic: the parish decides what restrictions apply and where, and awards enforcement contracts;
- local roads maintenance: as in france, where "C" roads are maintained by the commune.
- planning: the parish vets all planning applications.
- primary education: the parish is responsible for providing elementary education for all its children.
- primary health: the parish employs the doctor, the nurse, the pharmacist and provides their premises.
- public transport: the parish awards the contract to provide a bus-service into town.
but not:
- secondary schools;
- hospitals;
-

I think you're right about social security (a point made slightly in jest to test this system). It does show the benefits of allowing local innovation even if the consequence was an early form of the postcode lottery.

What do you think could be done about crime on a parish level? Prevention? Agreeing priorities for local policing?

And do towns/cities need their equivalent of parishes?

We must always bear in mind what we are asking of the electorate in any case. More layers of government asks the electorate to keep many more people operating under different (sometimes highly arcane) structures to account. Folk need to be clear who does what for them, and too many layers actually get in the way of democracy.

This is one reason why we must look skeptically about any proposal that introduces any tier of government.

With respect to how 'low' power may be exercized, I suggest that there are two strands: efficiency and accountability. Efficiency demands bigger areas (populations) covered by the same service, accountability demands similarly sized and usually smaller areas covered bya service. Our task must be to look at each service currently provided regional, nationally and locally and work our the maximum and minimum size (area, population): only once we know this can we even start commenting upon structures.

I'm not sure one can be so technocratic about it. For a start, I don't think the economics of public service provision are consistent, either geographically or over time, so the political structures need to be responsive enough to adapt to changing economics.

The argument for localism is that it lets more people be more directly involved in decisions that affect their day-to-day lives, and the strength of the parish, or neighbourhood, as a unit of government is that is practical for most of the electorate actually to know the people in power: as neighbours rather than as politicians.

If you then gave the parish council the responsibility to provide all public services, they could - if the efficiency of the situation demanded it - delegate upwards.

I think we could usefully look at how things are run in France. Communes have a lot of responsibilities, including waste collection and mains water and drainage, but often these need more capital than the commune itself can provide. So groups of neighbouring communes get together to award contracts of an economically-efficient size to private companies or cooperatives to provide the services for which the communes are responsible.

We have a chap at Brookes, a professor of the history of welfare, Stephen King, who gave his professorial lecture a few weeks ago on the pensions crisis and put forward his radical suggestion of returning to the sort of parish poor law provision. He says universalism is all very well but doesn't really reflect differences throughout the country in things like cost of living, opportunity and so on. I'm not really advocating that, but as an advocate of Citizens' Income, I do think there needs to be a local link in welfare, perhaps a national Citizens Income supplemented by more local "doles" in order to top the national one up to local standards of living. Areas of high cost are, I would suggest, typically areas where there is high wealth cheek-by-jowl with relative poverty, often created by things like land values driven up by the wealthy.

It is far from clear that "efficiency demands bigger areas" in my opinion. Efficiency, more than anything else, depends on scrutiny. And scrutiny, to an extent, depends on locality.

I cannot imagine a national media campaign pressuring for an independent review of why the resurfacing of Cornmarket in Oxford cost twice as much and took twice as long as budgeted, for example. Five million pounds would just be lost in the bureaucracy of the Whitehall/Westminster machine. Yet here it's the same as our annual cost for homelessness, so it's a significant sum locally.

Nowadays I can get fantastic deals from the other side of the planet using the web for purchasing, or research local suppliers and find they are grateful for the trade and willing to do deals.

A different structure in something like health might answer some of the efficiency concerns. Local purchasing and provision of front line services, accountable locally, coupled with freedom for expert and specialist provision to organise itself in firms and compete nationally against other similar providers for custom from local purchasers for example.

I think we also need more localism in public service pay.

We keep hearing that nursesteachers/policemen> etc. can't afford to live in a particular area because all the people in that area earn so much and put house prices up.

This suggests a simple application of market forces might be in order:
- If you can't get people to do particular jobs - raise the price you are offering
- Given that it's the wealth in particular area that makes it hard to get public sector workers, raise the extra locally (from all these people earning extra money and pushing up the house prices in the first place).



Martin

I completely agree that greater localism requires reform of local government to give people more confidence in it.

STV so that you vote out lazy incompetents without needing to change party - and eliminate unjustified one party (complacent) states - would be a good start.

There would need to be fresh elections (and fresh selections) in all authorities given more power and responsiblity.




Martin

>> (from all these people earning extra money and pushing up the house prices in the first place).

OR from those rising land values. LVT