'SET COUNCILS FREE FROM WHITEHALL' - Clegg

Councils should be set free from depending on Whitehall funding by raising three-quarters of their money locally, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said today in a speech to the Local Government Association Conference in Bournemouth.

Explaining the Liberal Democrats’ position as the only party willing to properly devolve power and money away from central government by re-localising business rates and scrapping the council tax, Nick accused the Government and the Tories of only ‘talking the talk’ about empowering communities. Nick also labelled the regional ministerial posts introduced a year ago by Gordon Brown as ‘pointless gimmicks’ and call for them to be scrapped. Nick said:

"Centralised government simply doesn’t work to deliver the change I want for Britain. It doesn’t improve services fast enough.

"And it certainly doesn’t deliver fairer outcomes - where everybody gets opportunities no matter what their background is.

"If the New Labour decade has taught us anything - this is surely it.

"The great experiment of trying to improve our public services for everyone by pouring money in through a tight funnel in Number 10 Downing Street has failed."Speaking about radically reforming how local government is funded, he will say:

"The Liberal Democrats are committed to scrapping Council Tax. It’s Britain’s unfairest tax. Based on property values nearly twenty years ago, instead of what people can afford to pay.

"But our commitment to Local Income Tax isn’t just about fairness. It’s about localising power, too. Because with a local income tax in place, we can decentralise our tax system. Transferring tax-raising powers from national to local government.

"My ambition is to switch from a regime where councils raise just a quarter of the money they spend, and get the rest in handouts from the centre. To a regime where they get a grant for just a quarter of the money they spend - and get the rest from local taxes, decided by local people."

Calling for regional ministers to be scrapped, Nick said:

"It’s time to scrap regional ministers and spend the money on something useful.

"Devolving power isn’t about having a national minister ‘advocating’ national policy in the regions.

"It’s about letting the regions - and below them, councils, communities and people - make decisions for themselves.

"I’ve looked into this - and by the time of the next general election we taxpayers will have spent well over two million pounds on this futile project. In fact, it’s not clear what these pointless gimmicks spend their time doing. Except costing us a lot of money."