Devolution without democracy

David Miliband says he wants to give power to the people, so why is Labour scared of the local authorities that already exist, asks Sarah Teather
Hold onto your hats, everyone. This week Labour is reinventing democracy.

That might seem like no mean feat for a quiet Tuesday during parliamentary recess, especially given the heavy spin that went into bigging up the "significance" of the proposals for a post-Blair era.

In fact this week's headlines are pretty much the standard Blairite recipe: take one large helping of motherhood and apple pie, throw in a few gimmicks to garnish and roll out as a Big Idea.

We learn that David Miliband wants to "bridge the power gap", while Alan Milburn wants to "come to terms with the world of the 'me generation'".

If that doesn't seem to mean very much, don't worry. It doesn't. But behind these vacuous statements of rhetoric, something genuinely dangerous could be brewing. The reinvention of democracy could turn out to be its emasculation.

The one specific proposal to come out of Mr Miliband and Mr Milburn's posturing is this: "People should be able to trigger a change of service provider when council or health services are deemed ... to be failing."

Perhaps I am missing a trick here, but when Liverpool council's services were failing, the local people got together and did just that. They triggered a change of service provider: from Labour to the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems keep getting re-elected because services are good. If that changed, and people "deemed" that services were failing, my colleagues would no doubt be voted out of office.

It's a little trick I like to call "democracy".

So why not just give more power over local services to those elected local politicians? Like all politicians, they will get booted out when they mess up, and Messrs Miliband and Milburn will get their way: a change of service provider.

The problem is that Labour, like the Conservatives before them, are scared of local democracy. They are scared of any bodies that have the democratic legitimacy to challenge their decisions.

That's why they capitulate at the idea of an elected House of Lords; far easier to have a chamber of appointees who can be overruled.

That's why they will not devolve power to local councils, but only to ad hoc boards, quangos, and neighbourhood groups. Unelected, these bodies can be overruled with impunity.

Mr Miliband declares that he wants "double devolution" - from central government to councils, and from councils to people. His officials must have spent weeks working on that catchy sound bite. The trouble is it is entirely hollow.

The government does not, has not and will not devolve power to councils. It devolves something called "freedoms and flexibilities" which, loosely translated, means: "Agree to do what we want, and we'll give you the freedom to do it - with only 10 or 11 inspectors to check up on your work."

For all the talk of decentralisation, Labour is in the process of regionalising the police, the fire service and the ambulance service, and doing nothing to increase the accountability of the NHS.

Councils, on the other hand, are making efforts to devolve their powers to neighbourhood level - with area committees, devolved ward budgets, local spending ballots and more. But these changes are strongest when they come down from the council, not by order of the deputy prime minister.

If central government bypasses local councils altogether and offers powers to hyper-local neighbourhoods, it merely sets up a power struggle with the council. Countless New Deal for Communities projects ran into difficulties precisely because of these blurred lines of accountability.

Central government could encourage councils to go further with devolution by giving them power to deal strategically with education, health and policing. Then councils will not be so precious about devolving the more local decisions.

To give Mr Miliband credit, he has spotted a real problem. People are increasingly disengaged from politics. The frustration felt by families unable to help themselves, and by local politicians impotent to help, fuels anger and cynicism about the political system and it tears the heart out of communities.

But the answer is not to replace local and national democracy with unelected boards and quangos. It is not to install in place of councils a new magistracy of self-appointed do-gooders.

The answer is to make politics real and relevant to people's lives, by giving locally elected people the power to change the things that really matter.

If we bypass elections, if we bypass the system that gives people power over their local communities, if we try to govern by satisfaction survey, we will do nothing to empower people.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel here. We already have mechanisms in place for local accountability and democracy, if only Labour would stop trying to dismantle them. Instead of setting up a plethora of new community juries, neighbourhood panels and public assemblies, we should be devolving powers to the organisations that exist.

Accountability must not be an after-thought. After all, devolution without democracy is just tyranny on a local scale.

· Sarah Teather is the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East and spokeswoman on communities and local government