In one of the Commons committee rooms there is a huge portrait of Joseph Chamberlain, the Birmingham MP and father of the infamous Conservative Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

“Our Joe” as I am told he was affectionately known by his supporters, was also the Mayor of Birmingham at the height of municipal greatness; perhaps local government’s finest hour! For example, Chamberlain established a municipal gas supply by forcibly purchasing the two private gas companies on behalf of the city for £1,953,050, even offering to purchase the companies himself if the ratepayers refused.

In 1876, Chamberlain also forcibly purchased Birmingham’s waterworks for a combined sum of £1,350,000, creating Birmingham Corporation Water Department, having declared to a House of Commons Committee that “We have not the slightest intention of making profit…We shall get our profit indirectly in the comfort of the town and in the health of the inhabitants”.

By the late nineteenth century, these kind of improvements were being replicated in towns, boroughs and cities around the country. Local government had the power to act – and it did.

Looking at local councils now, they are huge organizations – often the largest employers in their communities after the NHS; and yet they are, sadly, a shadow of their former self. In part, it is because they are less ‘local’ than they once were. The large authorities created in April 1974 may have made sense in terms of introducing proper economies of scale, but at best it made councils seem even more remote from the communities they seek to serve. My own council, Tameside Metropolitan Borough, in Greater Manchester is a collection of nine towns – five from the old Lancashire side of the river Tame; and four from historic Cheshire. I’m sure you can imagine the civic rivalries!

And in the brief time I was a councillor (from 1996-2008) I have seen leisure centres, housing provision and other key functions lost to non-elected bodies, Trusts, or even centrally managed by Whitehall.

The main parties all say they support localism – it’s the new buzzword, but what does it mean, and why do so many policies put forward by the parties contradict it? If we believe in localism, then let’s stop capping Council Tax increases. I know in some areas, that may be unpopular but I say let the people decide if they want to pay more for better services; if they don’t, then vote for someone else. It may actually start to increase local election turnouts.

In fact, isn’t it a scandal that our councils are so heavily dependent on central government funding that in order to increase their annual budgets by just one percent, they have to increase the Council Tax by over four percent!

Others argue that the Council Tax is unfair and regressive – and I understand that position – but want to replace it with a local income tax which – wait for it – would be administered through PAYE or self assessment via HM Revenue and Customs, effectively stripping local authorities of even their revenue collection functions. More centralisation!

There is a real danger that our local authorities will merely be administrators for central government. The time is now right to have a debate about what powers our local councils should have; what size our councils should be, respecting community ties but maintaining those economies of scale (maybe by joint commissioning); and let’s have a proper discussion about how local services are funded.

If “all politics is local” then let’s start to prove it!