LGA Conference: David Miliband MP speaks on devolving power

This is what he said:
"When I addressed this conference on July 7th last year, our thoughts were with the victims of the terrorist attacks on London. On Friday, we will honour those who lost their lives in the appropriate way.

Today, I want to continue the theme I talked about last year – how to renew the spirit of democracy, and take the big opportunities we confront as a country, by devolving power to communities and citizens, matching national purpose with local innovation and individual empowerment to meet the great challenges of the modern world.

As the Minister for Communities and Local Government, to argue for the devolution of power may have seemed like part of the job description. As the Environment Secretary, it is perhaps more counter-intuitive. There is much in Defra's brief that I could highlight, where local government has an absolutely central role:
> through its housing strategies promoting affordable rural housing
> through its economic influence and planning powers supporting sustainable land use and farm diversification
> through its environmental health role in promoting local liveability; ‘cleaner, safer, greener' could be Defra's slogan if the ODPM/DCLG had not taken it first.

But I don't want to just do a tour of Defra's priorities. I believe double devolution is essential to the ultimate global challenge – climate change. At first sight this may be surprising.

The impact of climate change and the depletion of natural resources does not stop at the boundaries of towns, cities or even nations. It is perhaps the best example of an issue which requires action nationally and internationally – with Britain playing a critical role as part of a strong European presence on the international scene. Climate change is the ultimate global issue; after all Britain is responsible for about 2 per cent of the carbon emissions problem.

But I believe double devolution - devolution from central to local government, and from local government down to citizens and communities – is as relevant for public goods such as the environment, as it is for public services such as education and social care. Global action and a European contribution to it must provide the framework for local innovation. But the global nature of climate change will impact in a different way in different localities – so they have to prepare to adapt their lifestyles to the consequences of climate change. And different local communities bring different resources to the table to tackle the causes of climate change at source. So if we are to meet environmental challenges, it will require the energy and innovation of local communities and citizens, not just the determination of international negotiators to come to agreements.

Let me show you what I mean by global change and differential local impacts.

It is easy to feel fatalistic about our ability to meet these challenges. Politics is often dominated by the next announcement or the next election. By the urgent, not the important. That is why we need to rethink where the power and responsibility for tackling climate change should lie. While citizens enjoy more freedom over their individual lives, they feel pessimistic about the major challenges we face collectively as a society.

The best way of framing the challenge of climate change I have come across since starting this job is what the WWF call ‘One planet living'. The idea is simple: if everyone in the world were to consume natural resources and generate carbon dioxide at the rate we do in the UK, we'd need three planets to support us. We are depleting our natural resources at a far faster rate that we are replenishing them. We need to move towards a one-planet economy and one planet living.

Today I want to talk about three environmental challenges where the move to ‘one planet living' will require us to engage local communities: energy, waste, and management of green spaces. In each, the principle is simple. We need to extend the powers and responsibilities of citizens in relation to the environment – so that the polluter pays, and those that contribute positively are rewarded.

First, energy production. Since the opening of the world's first thermal power station in London in 1882 by Thomas Edison, the trend over the past century has been towards increasingly centralised power generation. Scale economies have driven the construction of large power stations and the transmission of energy through a national grid.

But in some countries, with the emergence of new technologies we are increasingly seeing more decentralised and distributed power generation – from biomass fuelled combined heat and power stations serving a community, to individual citizens producing energy through solar or wind power and selling their energy back onto the grid. In the next thirty years, we could see the same transformation in energy production that we have seen in computers over the past generation – with a growing reliance on small computers connected via a network rather than a traditional mainframe. For instance, a large proportion of energy in Denmark and the Netherlands is produced on a decentralised basis – a transition that took around 20 years.

The Climate change and sustainable energy act which gained royal assent last month aims to ensure that electricity suppliers offer a fair price for electricity from small generators and empowers government to force all energy suppliers, through license modifications, to acquire exported electricity. The energy review will look further at the role decentralised energy could play in meeting the dual challenge of reducing C02 emissions and finding new secure energy sources. But what is becoming clear is that in future energy policy will not just be a national issue, it will also become a local one. Local energy policy must go alongside national energy policy.

Some councils are already taking a lead.
> 16 councils are now part of a British Gas scheme that offer citizens £100 off their council tax bill in return for households implementing energy efficiency measures.
> Woking Council, which through the creation of a private electricity supply network, the establishment of an energy services company and a range of energy efficiency measures has reduced energy use by half and C02 emissions by 77 per cent since 1990.
> Alan Jones – the person behind the Woking programme, has now been asked by the Mayor of London to head the London Climate Change Agency and apply the same dynamism and innovation across London.
> Nottinghamshire Council has negotiated one of the largest local authority supply contracts for green and Combined Heat and Power electricity in the country.
> Cornwall Country Council has set a county target to achieve 93 to 108 Megawatts of renewable electricity by 2010.
> Or take Merton Council which in 2003 created a requirement that all new developments above a threshold of 1000 square meters must incorporate 10 per of predicted energy requirements from renewable on-site sources. The Merton rule has now been adopted, or is being progressed, by more than 80 local authorities.

Over the next year, we need to work closely together to look at how local energy policy, ranging from housing investment, planning, and procurement can help foster more local decentralised energy production and energy efficiency. This will require local authorities to show leadership and make choices between competing objectives. Energy efficiency starts at home – with the local authority estate; being in favour of renewable energy is incompatible with neuralgia about the site of windmills; theory and practice need to meet.

The second area where we need to look at the devolution of power and responsibility to local communities and citizens is waste.

This is an example where progress relies increasingly on individual citizens separating and recycling their waste, and local authorities making this as convenient as possible for citizens to change their behaviour. It is astonishing and appalling that 10 years ago our recycling rate was only 7%. It is encouraging that this has now more than tripled. But we have much further to go.

We need to change the norms of what is acceptable behaviour. The failure to recycle is essentially an example of anti-social behaviour – imposing costs on the rest of society by your own behaviour. So we need to think about the lessons from other examples of anti social behaviour in promoting recycling.

For years people wanted the law and authorities of the land to take a stand against spitting in the street, vandalising homes or abusing neighbours. Now the laws are in place, the police and local authorities are working together in new ways, and in a number of the most blighted areas the balance of power is beginning to change.

In smoking, we have gone from smoking being accepted on the underground or on planes to a full public ban in public places. This shows that the bar on what we expect of each other as citizens can be raised. It is time we applied and nurtured a new framework of citizenship rights and responsibilities in respect of the environment.

This is something I know the LGA has raised already. The LGA has called on Government to extend their powers to meet these responsibilities by allowing them to introduce household waste charging schemes. There are a number of variants – including but not only charging households according to the amount of black bag waste they produced, with recycling being collected for free. But the principle is simple: the polluter pays.

There are a number of important practical concerns that need to be addressed. Clearly we cannot pre-empt Sir Michael Lyons' recommendations regarding future funding and functions of local government. Variable waste charging must be looked at in the context of wider changes to local government finance. But I am personally interested in the idea and I would like to hear from the LGA and local authorities more detail about the pros and cons of household waste charging, looking at examples from other European countries. We can take account of this, alongside Sir Michael Lyons' findings, to determine whether there could be benefits for England.

Finally, let me talk about the more immediate environment – the parks and green spaces in our communities. Access to green spaces is an asset all communities, urban and rural, value. Green spaces improve quality of life, and they help to bring communities together. But in the past, many of our green spaces suffered from decline. Graffiti, litter and vandalism, were often the result not just of a lack of resources in managing green spaces, but also a weak sense of ownership by the local community.

But as the National Audit Office recently set out, the decline of urban green spaces has now been halted and there are now signs of a recovery. The point also made by the NAO is the critical importance of community engagement and community management. We are now seeing new ways of managing parks and green spaces, with more involvement of the voluntary and community sector working in partnership with local authorities.

I know this is something that Ruth Kelly is keen to look at as part of the Local Government White Paper. We intend to work closely with DCLG in the coming months to see how citizens and communities can gain more power and influence over their local environment.

Conclusion
When I came to this conference last year, I said that renewing our democracy required devolution: ‘power devolved is energy released'. Devolving power brings innovation, it brings efficiencies, and it brings responsibility. This is about the reform of government not the dismantling of it. I believe these principles are as true in my new role, as it was in my previous position - for energy, waste and green spaces, for public goods such as the environment, as well as public services. I look forward to working with you over the next year to apply this agenda to the environment. "

Related links to this article:
Local Government Association
The presentation is at this link in pdf format

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