"On Wednesday this week, I shall be publishing a White Paper on community empowerment, entitled Communities in Control. I thought Total Politics readers might like some advance headlines.

We need some practical ways to rehabilitate party politics, to show that we value political activity as being essential to democracy, and to ensure that more people understand it, value it, and ultimately want to get involved.

We know that political parties struggle to find candidates for every council seat, that party activists find themselves with ever more to do, that turnouts remain too low for comfort. In the May 2008 council elections, turnout was just 35 per cent.

Even the London Mayor election in May 2008, with significant media attention and high-profile campaigns, not to mention highly-visible candidates, only attracted 45 per cent of London’s electors to the polling stations.

At the national level, citizens feel alienated from a political system which seems hermetically sealed and near-impossible to break into. The actions of a minority of councillors or MPs can taint the image of the whole of the political system.

So those of us who believe in the powerful potential of the democratic system, who value politics as a noble pursuit, inspired by great ideals and pursed by decent people, have the greatest duty of all to make the system work better.

This was the point made powerfully by the Councillors Commission, chaired by Jane Roberts, the former leader of Camden council. Their report talks of the ‘anxiety’ about the issue of ‘how we are governed, and the degree of disenchantment, disengagement, and at times mutual incomprehension that now exists between the citizen and the state.’

But it makes the vital point that: ‘without a vibrant and thriving local democracy, we cannot envisage that there can be the greater coherence, understanding and meaningfulness in our governance that is so imperative.’

In other words – without local democracy, there is no democracy – and I couldn’t agree more.

So the white paper will include a new set of powers for local authorities to be able to promote democracy. This ‘duty to promote democracy’ will mean that local councils are placed in their proper context: not as units of local administration, but as lively, vibrant hubs of democracy.

I want councillors to be in charge of councils. That may seem obvious – unless you’ve served as a councillor!

So I see this new duty being interpreted in various practical ways which will help councillors be more effective.

For example, I never again want to hear an officer tell a councillor that they can’t hold surgeries on council premises, or appear on a council website or leaflet because that’s ‘political’.

I want political parties to be able to hold their meetings in council buildings, and to have stalls at council-run public events, so that political parties are seen as every bit as legitimate as the chamber of commerce or the voluntary sector.

I want every citizen to be able to phone up their council, and for the person on the end of the phone to be able to tell them the name of the Leader of the council, the political party they belong to, which party or parties are in control, and when the next set of elections is.

I am making money available to train these council staff in the basics of local democracy.

I want leaders of councillors to have reasonable facilities: a desk, a phone, a computer, support staff.

I want every council (not just the best) to run lively campaigns to explain the voting system, to encourage first-time voters, and to sign people onto the register.

These measures will make it clear that politics is not a dirty word, that councils are political entities, and that councillors, with power on loan from the people, are in charge."