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The Prospects of English Local Government*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

F. W. Holden
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Extract

Periodically the reform of English local government makes its appearance in English public life. A Royal Commission sat for nearly the whole decade of the 1920's and its labors produced three reports, which ultimately led to the Local Government Act of 1929. Similarly, the 1939–45 conflict has raised again the question of what, if anything, should be done about the reform of English local government. In 1943, Mr. Churchill expressed the view of the Coalition that no major reconstruction of the structure was necessary, nor indeed could it be undertaken in the immediate postwar years. In January, 1945, Mr. Willink, Minister of Health, produced for public discussion a White Paper on the whole problem, the main burden of which was in line with the Churchillian dicta of 1943, but which proposed the creation of a boundary commission with power to recommend alterations in the status and areas of local authorities after suitable local inquiry. These proposals were debated in the House of Commons in February, 1945, with little significant difference of opinion becoming apparent on the fundamental problems involved. Before the end of the Coalition, a bill creating the Local Government Boundary Commission had passed into law.

Type
Foreign Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , June 1946 , pp. 533 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1946

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References

1 Cmd. 6579, “Local Government in England and Wales during the Period of Reconstruction.”

2 Cmd. 6579, p. 12.

3 Hansard, 15th February, 1945, col. 424.

4 Ibid., col. 434.

5 8 & 9 Geo. 6., Ch. 38. Mr. Bevan announced in the House of Commons on October 24 that the members of the Commission were to be: Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve Bart, M.C., T.A., K.C. (chairman), Sir Evelyn John Maude, K.C.B., K.B.E. (deputy chairman), Sir George Hammond Etherton, O.B.E., Sir James Rees, and William Holmes. The Ministry of Health included £10,000 in its current estimates to meet the expenses of the Commission.

6 Within these limits, there will be 11 non-county boroughs eligible for promotion to county borough status and to county boroughs faced with the possibility of demotion to municipal borough status—a situation not likely to alter the number of county boroughs substantially.

7 Clause 1 of the act establishes a Local Government Boundary Commission “charged with the duty of reviewing the circumstances of the areas” into which England and Wales are divided for local-government purposes “and exercising, where it appears to the Commission expedient so to do, the powers of altering those areas conferred by the following provisions of this Act.”

8 S.R.&O. 1945 104717, dated November 15, entitled the Local Government (Boundary Commission) Regulations, 1945.

9 Thereby being threatened by the Treasury Solicitor with an injunction for infringement of Crown copyright, after the Webbs had decided to publish the Minority Report on their own account. Sidney was able, however, to draw the attention of the solicitor to a minute of My Lords of the Treasury, dated 1887 and never rescinded, in which My Lords had disclaimed any privilege of copyright monopoly over Blue Books, holding that the reprinting of them would be to the public advantage. See Cole, Margaret, Beatrice Webb (London, Longmans, 1945), p. 103.Google Scholar

10 Idem, p. 146, the main ideas of which, it is suggested (p. 114), flashed into Beatrice's mind when listening to a paper by H. G. Wells to the Fabian Society in 1903 on “The Question of Scientific Areas in Relation to Municipal Undertakings.”

11 I am indebted to the Labor Research Department for this information. See Labour Research, Dec., 1945, for a full analysis of the results.

12 Mr. Bevan, in the House of Commons on November 30 (Hansard, 30th Nov. 1945, Col. 1795) said that the poor law burden would be taken away from local authorities by the new National Insurance Bill. It is not clear whether this would cover institutional relief, on which the Beveridge Report was vague.

13 The work of J. R. and U. Hicks is quite the most fundamental published on English local government during the war. Their Standards of Local Expenditure (Cambridge University Press, 1943), Valuation for Rating (C.U.P., 1944), and The Incidence of Local Rates in Great Britain (C.U.P., 1945) constitute a body of work indispensable to present and future students of English local government.

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