VIDEO: Curry's local flavour

David Blackman

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LGC's exclusive glimpse of Tory proposals on local government will be a strong foundation for a future white paper, says David Blackman.

Communities secretary Hazel Blears has been in robustly partisan form at this week's Labour conference , telling councillors "the time for 10-year strategies is over, we have 18 months left". She told the party's dwindling member base that it has a vital role in rescuing Labour's fortunes.

The comments, reported by our political editor Dan Drillsma-Milgrom on lgcplus.com, reveal that local government is returning to the political centre stage, whether we like it or not.

This is the backdrop to the Tory white paper on local government, to be published next month.

LGC exclusively reveals this week the report of David Curry's Conservative devolution and localism policy group, commissioned as part of the white paper's preparation.

Mr Curry has certainly delivered a local government wish list. He recommends, for example, giving councils sweeping powers over health and police, which would restore local government to a level of influence it has not enjoyed since the Welfare State's foundation.

The caveat is that the report is written in 2008, not 1996 when the last Tory local government minister had the opportunity to implement this radical vision.

Mr Curry is unlikely to play a prominent part in any future David Cameron administration, given his strident pro-European views. And it represents a philosophical volte-face on earlier centralising Tory policies.

Nevertheless, it deserves to be taken seriously. Mr Curry's handpicked experts include Neil Kinghan, former local government director-general at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

This therefore is the kind of heavyweight advice that the opposition needs as it prepares for power — the theme of the party's own conference next week.

At the very least, the document will show how much Mr Cameron and his local government secretary Eric Pickles have been listening to the party's localist wing when their own white paper appears.
 
Mr Curry's report gives his party the raw material that can give substance to Mr Cameron's localist rhetoric.