Sustainable Communities Act (Amendment) Bill

Today I wrote to Government Ministers Ms Harman and Mr Denham, to ask them to ensure that the Bill receives the Parliamentary time it needs in order to become law before the General Election.  The Sustainable Communities Act is an important piece of legislation and we must ensure that the innovation that it can enable, can continue – which is why the amendment bill is so important.

All public spending should be published

This Wednesday there will be a motion in Parliament that MPs will debate and vote on regarding the publishing of Local Spending Reports.  These reports will show a breakdown of how ALL public money is spent.    The motion is set out in Early Day Motion 1064 – which has cross party support.

The breakdown of public spending has never been available before, but the Local Spending Report is required under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 and the Government promised they would include a breakdown of all public spending – however, the work needed to publish this information has not yet been done by government officials.

The Early Day Motion is as follows:

Early Day Motion 1064

Local Spending Reports and the Sustainable Communities Act 2007

Sponsors:

David Drew MP, Labour

Nick Hurd MP, Conservative

Julia Goldsworthy MP, Liberal Democrat

“That this House welcomes the provisions of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 requiring the publication of local spending reports; believes that people have a right to know how their money is spent by public bodies; especially welcomes the assurances given by the Minister for Local Government, the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth, that the local spending reports will include all public agencies; further welcomes the Minister’s assurance that the purpose is to achieve a report that identifies how much will be spent in each area by the authorities; is therefore very alarmed that the consultation now issued on the local spending reports proposes only to include local authorities, including fire authorities and police authorities, and primary care trusts, and to exclude all other public bodies despite the assurances of the Minister; believes it to be unacceptable that this document is now in blatant contravention of the expressed assurances of the Minister; and calls for proper local spending reports to be published, which give effect to those assurances.”

I have written to our local Labour MP to ask her to support this motion at the vote on Wednesday.