Richard Kemp, Liberal Democrat group leader, LGA We've just held our second Liberal Democrat local government conference in Birmingham. This included a meeting at Birmingham Council House – an excellent example of Victorian municipal architecture, and a reminder of the work carried out by Joe Chamberlain in his days as a radical reforming Liberal. One of our guest speakers, Baroness Ros Scott, reminded delegates that Mr Chamberlain, and his colleagues, didn't need a Whitehall performance-management regime or best value indicators to build the Council House or dramatically improve the city's water supply – they just got on with it. So, for this year, a key priority for the LGA Liberal Democrat group is looking at what can be done to improve local democracy, so present-day councils can also get on with it and make a difference to people's lives. We will continue with our programme of promoting best practice in Liberal Democrat-run or influenced councils. And we will continue our work in influencing the Liberal Democrat manifesto for the next general election – whenever that is. But, of course, events this year in Parliament will give us further opportunities. As I reminded a meeting of key local government research officers in Birmingham, for every pound spent by democratically-elected local government, four pounds is spent by unaccountable Whitehall departments or Quangos. A crucial task in improving local democracy has to be making sure that elected local councillors have greater influence on how that 80% of public money is spent. Legislation in this year's Queen's Speech includes Bills on policing, benefits, NHS reform and schools – and crucially, a Bill on community empowerment. That's a large part of the 80%. There are plenty of issues in these Bills for us as a group and, indeed, as a Local Government Association, to get our teeth stuck into. For example, making police and the health service accountable through directly-elected local government. There must be the opportunity for local people to influence what the police do, where they spend their money – and residents must be able to feed back their experiences. We also have the opportunity to be bolder over the Government's current plans on business rate reform. But, as with so many things that come from national government, it is too timid. The proposal is only 2p in the pound of rateable value but, as a group, we think the government must go further than this. But above all, let's build on the excellent work already out there, and remind local government that it already has power to effect real change. We will use the coming year to remind councils what can be done.
