Houses and Homes

Tweet The announcement by Cameron that council tenancies will be of limited duration in future rather than for life seems to have ruffled a few feathers amongst his coalition partners. It is, though, a natural continuation of the basic hostility to council housing which Thatcher displayed with her 'Right to Buy' legislation, but without the underlying understanding of people.

I was always a bit ambivalent about the 'Right to Buy' legislation, to be honest. On the one hand, as a member for part of the 1980s of the Housing Committee of the Vale of Glamorgan Council, I could see at first hand the effect that it was going to have on our ability to house people. But on the other, I also understood very well how appealing the idea was to a large number of the tenants on the two small council estates where I grew up.

Whilst Thatcher may well have been motivated primarily by reducing the quantity of local government housing, and reducing the power of local government in general, she also touched a chord amongst tenants. It is sometimes too easy for us to overlook that. It was a skilful piece of politics, which encouraged people to put their own immediate interests ahead of longer term collective interests. (And that's actually a neat summary of what 'Thatcherism' was really about – and the impact it's had on society.)

It pleased her party's right wing, of course, and I'm sure that Cameron's announcement will have done likewise. But there, the similarity ends. Thatcher saw families living in and wanting to own their homes, and offered them a large carrot. Cameron seems only to see an insufficiently mobile labour force occupying publicly owned dwelling units, and is trying to wave a large stick.

He's not only wrong – it's not even clever politics.

Rationalisation and centralisation

Tweet The collapse of plans for a number of local councils to pool certain functions has inevitably led for calls from some to force local councils into co-operating. The Western Mail editorial leads the way with a suggestion that if councils won't share functions voluntarily, then the number of councils should be reduced.

There is a question here about whether the proposed rationalisation should ever have been restricted to local government anyway. If we want a single centralised payroll system for ten councils, why not for 22? And why not include the NHS? Why not, indeed, a single payroll system for the whole of the public sector in Wales? What makes one particular combination 'right' and others 'wrong'?

As I blogged recently, I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that Wales has too many councils, and should re-organise them, but I think we need to start by asking what they are for. The problem with most of the calls for a reduction in the number of councils is that they seem to start from a pretty subjective statement such as "Wales doesn't need 22 Directors of Education", rather than from the question "What's the best way of delivering education services in Wales?".

And it isn't just about education, of course. Local government provides a whole range of services - on what basis do we start with the assumption (which is where most seem to start) that the best way of delivering one service is the best way of delivering all services? Does the structure for delivering education need to be the same as that for delivering leisure services, for instance?

We have an Assembly government with highly centralising tendencies, which is regularly reducing or constraining the scope for local government to add value and make a difference. It sometimes seems to me that differences between Wales and England are considered by some to be perfectly acceptable, but differences between Cardiff and Newport are not.

I find it fascinating to see some arguing for allowing the Assembly Government to do things differently, and then arguing that that same government should enforce a standard approach across Wales' local authorities. This is a particular challenge for those like myself in parties which have traditionally called for more decentralisation. Real decentralisation has to be about more than passing money from the centre to the local authorities and then telling them exactly how to spend it.

I'm not against a reconsideration of local government structures - far from it, I think it's overdue. But we need a proper review, not a knee-jerk reaction. And I think that, as Plaid said in our 2007 manifesto, we really need to look at the governance of Wales as a whole.