Stewart Jackson is MP for Peterborough and Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government
It's probably true to say that the prospect of the forthcoming passage of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill in Parliament, will hardly set the voters' pulses racing and is probably of only marginal interest to a small number of people even in local government and the construction industry.
It's certainly the case that on one level the Bill represents the scrappy afterthoughts of a tired, fag end Labour administration - merely paying lip service to real, demonstrable local accountability, engagement with communities and the need to reinvigorate civic life at local government level.
The widespread ridicule which Hazel Blears attracted at the publication of the Government's White Paper in July - "Free doughnuts if you turn up to vote" - represented the nemesis of Labour's failed local government agenda of red tape, compulsion, centralisation, form filling, duplication and endless performance assessments since 1997.
Perhaps the very opaqueness and vacuity of the Bill - or so it appears - is designed to obscure the continuing insidious transfer of powers from democratically elected local councillors to government-appointed bureaucrats. Labour have no wish to learn the lessons of the emphatic "no" vote in the North East regional referendum in 2004 and the more recent overwhelming rejection of congestion charging in Greater Manchester before Christmas.
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