Devolution to Councils

The White Paper released yesterday looks good on paper but there are two reasons not to welcome it as I might:

1. This government is astoundingly poor at actually giving powers away.


2. Those of you who are unfortunate enough to live in places like Richmond are likely to suffer.

Richmond's recent decision to charge fuel-guzzling cars more for parking permits may make environmental sense if you believe Chris Huhne, but it's not reasonable to make people change the car they already own with this sort of underhandedness. Imagine what Richmond would do with these powers! Democracy is supposed to protect the minority from the majority.

Let's allow Councils more powers over the day-to-day running, not necessarily give them power to impose on their citizens. Anyway, devolution ought to be done to the national level — to England.