By Jamie Hailstone David Cameron has warned Labour’s plans for council reorganisation are merely an attempt to bring in regional government by the back door. The Conservative leader, speaking at the LGA conference in Bournemouth last week, told The MJ removal of one tier of local government could herald the introduction of another. ‘The Government’s plans are partly about the regional agenda,’ he said. Pointing out Labour’s failed attempt to introduce elected regional assemblies in the North East had demanded an existing tier of local government be removed, he added: ‘This move is just foisting the regional agenda on councils.’ In his speech, Mr Cameron reiterated his party’s commitment to scrapping unelected regional assemblies and the Standards Board for England. ‘I believe, passionately, that regional assemblies are a costly and unnecessary bureaucratic barrier between local government and local people,’ he said. ‘We will abolish them and return their powers to the local authorities where they belong.’ He also pledged to scrap the review into local government and phase out the ring-fencing of government grant. ‘All in all, we need a bonfire of the directives, audit systems, best value regimes, ring-fencing and all of the stark paraphernalia of the Whitehall control-freak regime that tells local authorities what they can and can’t do. We want to see stability in local government structures, and so we would scrap the review that David Miliband started. ‘It’s wasting time. It’s setting council against council. And it’s a distraction from the real task of improving services and increasing efficiency.’ Mr Cameron called on councils to take the lead when it came to the environment, and praised Barnsley MBC and Woking BC for cutting carbon emissions by using sustainable energy. ‘I want to see these islands of local government innovation become the everyday experience right across Britain.’ j.hailstone@hgluk.com
