Civitas Blog

What is needed is not constitutional reform at the National level, but a return to the powers that councils had before the 1970s, where they were responsible for the setting of their own budgets and expenditure, and where they collected a much higher proportion of their costs in taxation at a local level.

At present, local councils are hamstrung by central government rules on what they can spend and how much, and local politician are becoming increasingly sidelined because so many issues are now ones that have to be taken up at a national level.

This means that MPs are inundated with complaints about local services, rather than national issues, and that although they have little local power to influence them, councils bear the brunt of blame.

Return us to the age where councils have both authority to tax and spend and the responsibility to do so wisely, and it might be possible for local issues to once more be taken seriously. In the end this is the only serious constitutional reform that is necessary.

Oh yes!! PLEASE! I have long complained that our parliamentary represenatives seem to think that they have a private club and that they are free to implement their own private agendas with a careless regard to the opinions of those who (foolishly) elected them. We should be free to say no to proposed legislation - regardless as to how our elected representaives may vote: we should not be compelled, willy nilly, to accept every crazy notion that happens to be included in a party manifesto; we should also be allowed to insist on popularly based legislation that parliament may see no reason for. It would be up to the parliamentarians to argue the pros and cons. Oh, yes, let us have direct democracy and let its first manifestation be to get us out of the EU!