Commonwealth Local Government Conference - 'Energising local economies: partnerships for prosperous communities’

First Minister, Prime Minister, Ministers, Chair and Secretary General of the CLGF, dignitaries and distinguished guests, and to so many other Commonwealth colleagues from all over the world who deliver local government, or whose ideas and expertise feed into it ... I thank you warmly for this invitation to address you today.

Who is more daunted – you or me – that I am the sixth speaker of nine?!

So let me try and be reasonably concise.

In greeting you all today ...

... I simply say that we 500 or so people here are a Commonwealth in miniature – celebrating both what we share and what makes us different, and learning together because our journey, our aspirations and our challenges are the same.

This conference is the Commonwealth doing what it does best.

When I hear impressive individual stories of Commonwealth sharing – today, I heard about Adentan in Ghana linking with Worcester in the UK, sharing best practice on how to spur local manufacturing and services – then I always know that there are hundreds more, similar, stories behind them.

And in our journeying to Wales ...

... I simply remind myself of the way that so many important decisions that were previously taken remotely, outside Wales, are now made locally, by elected representatives who are accountable to the people of Wales through the ballot box.

This is democracy, one of the great pillars of this association.

I do thank our Welsh hosts, Cardiff City Council and the Welsh Assembly Government, for bringing us this, the sixth Commonwealth Local Government Conference since the first in London 11 years ago.

And in welcoming you alongside the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, the CLGF ...

... I pay tribute to that organisation – which is ‘sweet 16’ this year, and one of the most valued members of the Commonwealth family.

There are many instances of the good cooperation between the CLGF and the inter-governmental Commonwealth Secretariat:

... in the political field (for instance monitoring local elections together – as in the Maldives just a month ago – and also in monitoring the way governments enact their own commitments to local government);

... in the economic field (for instance in our joint work on ‘ComHabitat’, as we look at the challenges of the global phenomenon of urbanisation);

... and in the social field too (in areas like gender and education).

So I warmly thank and applaud Mayor Flowers, the CLGF Chair, and Carl Wright and his staff.

Let us pose one big and simple question: why is it that we in the Commonwealth so greatly prize local democracy, local government, and local good governance?

Surely the answer is that, as former US Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill once tellingly said, “all politics is local”.

Our lives are lived locally, and our governments are experienced locally.

For most people, local government is their first and perhaps only contact with the authorities in their country.

If we are being born, getting married or dying, in most Commonwealth countries we are in the hands of local government.

Its concerns are our daily concerns – roads, transport, water, sanitation, and in many places health, education, jobs, and more.

It goes further still into the realms of conflict abatement and resolution, promoting respect and understanding between different faiths, ethnicities and communities, and disaster management.

And in poorer countries, The Battle of the Millennium Development Goals – perhaps the greatest challenge in which the world and the Commonwealth are engaged – can be won or lost through the work of local government.

And that means that local government, like central government and like the wider Commonwealth, has to be based on principle.

We are first and foremost a Commonwealth of Values – protecting and promoting the democratic culture of freedom and the rule of law which is designed for the benefit of all, and particularly for the benefit of the most vulnerable in our societies.

Our most cherished principles are set down in stone, for local as for national democracy.

No doubt all of you know the 12 points of the Commonwealth’s Aberdeen Principles of Local Government, and some of you by heart ....

But to aid recall, I have distilled them to six….

1. That local democracy should be recognized in a country’s Constitution

2. That citizens should be able to elect their local representatives – and then participate in local decision-making

3. That national, regional and local government should act in partnership

4. That local government should be accountable to the people it serves, especially over how it spends money

5. That local government is for all parts of a community, in all its diversity

6. That local government needs to get better: it needs to be empowered, and its staff need training.

We should not tire of stating these beliefs, because they are our guiding light.

What is more, we all know full well that we can and should apply all of our principles better, locally and especially nationally.

When our Heads of Government last met in November 2009 in Port of Spain, they tasked us to do so, in particular by making recommendations on how we can strengthen the remit of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.

CMAG, as it is called, has taken stands on what we term the ‘serious or persistent violation’ of those values and principles.

In its 15 years, seven countries have been on its agenda, of which five have been suspended.

Our Heads of Government have now asked CMAG to go further, in responding to what they have termed ‘the full range’, of possible violations.

It will do so by being critical where it must be, but also by engaging positively with offers of assistance.

Some of you will also know that our Heads also commissioned an independent Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group to offer new thinking on the organisation, in this, the most important of years, as we approach another Commonwealth heads of Government Meeting in Perth, at a time when our troubled world is still gripped by a confluence of crises.

The first of those crises is economic and financial.

It concerns livelihoods and sometimes survival.

We remain nearer the bottom than the top of a period of serious downturn.

It is a globally acknowledged truth that the crisis came from the richer countries and has hurt them, and a far less known and less palatable truth that those who have suffered most are the low and middle-income countries – those without the inbuilt resilience, the strong institutions, and the capacity and the different options which the larger and richer countries enjoy.

This is the context for your conference today, and its title ‘Energising local economies: partnerships for prosperous communities’.

Yes, there may be principles at stake, and there are indeed eternal debates about the creative tension between central and local government, about the political will (or not) for decentralisation, and the money that is (or is not) available.

But above all we are talking about the practice of local government, and how indeed that practice can energise local economies.

And your title itself points to the nub of the solution, which is a word at the heart of the Commonwealth: ‘partnership’.

At our fingertips today is a fund of wisdom and experience of Commonwealth partnership.

I call to mind impressive public/private partnerships in local services, in areas like water supply in Bangladesh, and solid waste management in places in Ghana and Singapore, or unique government and civil society partnerships, for instance in Pakistan’s new Citizen Community Boards, which receive a quarter of local government funds to identify, execute and monitor projects.

That is civil society being mobilised effectively.

So just as central has to work with local government, so does government have to work with business and civil society (the triad of the public, the private and the ‘third’ sector...), and so do regions and nations have to work together.

You will discuss this properly over the next few days.

Development (economic and human) is the Commonwealth’s work: it is the twin sister of Democracy, and the two go hand in hand.

Many of you will be familiar with our Commonwealth work on trade – helping smaller and weaker countries negotiate regional and international trade agreements, and helping smaller countries diversify their exports.

You will also know how we leverage funds through the Commonwealth Private Investment Initiative, how we train governments in SME strategy, and how we train entrepreneurs themselves, especially women, both in their own business skills, and their planning.

Let me draw to a close by raising one of my priority goals – that of advancing youth enterprise, and engagement with youth.

No doubt we alI feel strongly about the flower of youth, as the inheritors of this Commonwealth and this century.

Yet, well may we ask: ‘inheritors of what...?’

Youth unemployment and marginalisation is the blight of old and new, rich and poor societies alike.

Many of you will have seen that at first hand.

That is why I am delighted to hear that the CLGF has run a young professionals’ forum immediately before this conference, in order to feed young peoples’ ideas into local government and local economic development.

It chimes with our own ideas of giving young people a voice at every turn.

We have the hope that the public and the private sector alike will join the Commonwealth in its work on massively upgrading the support we are able to give to young entrepreneurs.

Our approach is holistic: it involves the identifying, the educating, the training, and the mentoring of young entrepreneurs.

It also involves seeking support from far beyond government sources ... from financial institutions, regional organisations, banks, industry and trade bodies, and businesses.

Last year saw successful Commonwealth models of ‘character lending’ in banks in India and Kenya multiplying in those countries, and steps are being taken to share the experience with other member countries.

You yourselves will bring your own ideas to the table, in the next few days.

And indeed I know that Cardiff itself can talk about the way that national, local and private funds come together in the way that this City Council is tapping the ‘Future Jobs Fund’ run by the Department for Work and Pensions, in partnership with the Department for Communities and Local Government.

I hope we will hear more about this fund designed to create jobs for young people, aged 18 to 24.

The Commonwealth itself is mostly getting younger, and its first thought must be for its young.

Through the CLGF, through the inter-governmental Commonwealth represented in the Commonwealth Secretariat, and through you – local government practitioners from around the association and around the world – we can secure young people’s future.

I thank you, and wish you a successful conference.

My Welsh pronounciation maybe flawed, but my sentiment is not.

Hawwdamor! Good luck!