Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, my name appears on both Amendments 1 and 2 and we give our full support to both. The amendments require an annual report on the progress of devolution, and require that Ministers consider when they introduce a Bill whether that legislation is compatible with the principle that decisions should be made at the most local level possible. Both amendments seem to us to be entirely reasonable.

In Committee, we moved an amendment to create an independent panel that would review proposals for devolution and assess the Government’s record. We now have this amendment, which achieves broadly the same objective. It is important because devolution must not be unnecessarily piecemeal—that is, it needs to be clear what responsibilities are being devolved, or not devolved, to whom, and why. That, in turn, will help to define the criteria that the Government are pursuing—and that will help other authorities to frame their own proposals.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, that the point which the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, raised in Committee on Amendment 2 is a very important statement of principle and I am glad that it has been included in this group in the form of that amendment.

I hope the Minister will take seriously the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that the Government should accept the amendment, which is entirely reasonable. I declare again my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend’s amendment. This is a very welcome Bill and we are delighted that the Minister—together with her boss, the Secretary of State—is so committed to localist values. That is great, and it is very welcome.

However, one of the problems that we found in Committee is that—because of the desirability that the energy in the Bill should come from the bottom up, from localism and from local authorities trying to establish what works best in their patch—it will be very difficult for those of us outside the great authorities to know what will or will not be acceptable to the Secretary of State as future patterns for combined authorities. No general principles of any sort are laid down in the Bill—anything may go, or nothing may go. We do not want to descend into ad hocery, and we do not want to descend into blueprints, but we do need to learn from what the Secretary of State is supportive of in other bids so that those that follow in the wake of those bids can devise a structure of combined authorities that are more likely not to waste our time, waste resources or raise false hopes in our local taxpayers but will command the support and, I hope, the assent of the Secretary of State as the way forward.

If the Minister is not willing to do this—and she has very good reasons not to be willing—and lay down principles by which local authorities may guide their submissions to the Secretary of State, it will be important for the rest of us to learn through example which submissions have been successful with the Secretary of State so that we can model ourselves on the best practice that he has commended. It seems to me that this amendment is entirely in the spirit of what the Minister wants and what the Secretary of State should follow. It is the route forward to combine the best of localism and a bottom-up approach, while avoiding a straitjacket of top-down structures and allowing us to learn from each other what is going to be best practice in the eyes of the Secretary of State. I hope very much that the Minister can support something that seems very strongly to support the path that she wants to go down and we want her to go down.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Local Government Association.

Noble Lords will know from my maiden speech my passionate commitment to devolution and support for this Bill. It is because I support devolution that I think we should support Amendments 1 and 2 today. An annual report and a devolution statement seem to me to be entirely practical and sensible additions that will further devolution, not hinder it.

The exam question before us is: why, given that all three of the main political parties have supported devolution for as long as I can remember, has progress been so slow and uncertain? Here are four quick reasons. The first is the silo nature of central government. Departments think “police, health”, but they never think place. Secondly, devolution is inherently disruptive. I recall a senior official saying to me that he was very supportive of the city and local government deals provided they did not get in the way of delivering his current programmes. I did say that that was the entire point. Thirdly, there is a dislike of difference in this country, and devolution is different in different places. Fourthly, there is often nervousness at local level, particularly in voluntary and community organisations, that this will be a cosy deal between central and local government that will leave them on the sidelines.

What is proposed here is a powerful antidote to those very powerful pressures and is designed to keep the Government to their intent as set out in the Bill. If agreed, these amendments will advocate and ensure transparency and reduce the risk of one step forwards, two steps backwards, which has bedevilled the devolution debate. Indeed, the Secretary of State, Greg Clark, produced something very similar to annual reports on progress in departments in the previous Government. We should support both amendments as practical and sensible moves that will keep the Government to their intent and advance the cause of devolution.

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The noble Baroness also talked about not setting principles on devolution because it is a waste of time. We do not intend to waste anyone’s time—

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me, but I think that she has slightly misunderstood me. I accept for the sake of this argument her position—that the Secretary of State does not want to lay down principles—but what you actually have to do is deduce from the examples he has accepted which principles and action he is motivated by. That is best done in an annual statement to bring them together, which may or may not be accompanied by any contemplation that the Secretary of State may have had about the offerings. That is the way we learn from each other. I worry that small seaside towns do not have the resources of Greater Manchester to do the sort of heavy lifting that this work might otherwise require.

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It is worth taking what for the party opposite is a risk. If we go down the route followed by that party we will never get there at all. We will go on fiddling about with the system. We will not make the changes necessary and the people of Britain will continue to live in one of the most centralised societies in western Europe. I do not think that is right. I believe in devolution, but devolution needs people to lead, and that is why this amendment should be opposed.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I support my noble friend’s amendment. I was not expecting to speak on this but, if I may, I want to challenge the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. As far as I can see, it is a view supported very strongly by former Secretaries of State, who think that basically local government should be led by people like them, ideally swishing round in cars and flying off to Japan to make contracts and so on. However, that is not what local government is about; it is about a sense of place.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, seemed to suggest that local government has declined since the 1960s—when I came into local government, and stayed with it right through to the 1990s—because of a lack of local leadership, but I say to the noble Lord that the primary reason local government has declined is that my Government to some extent but his Government notoriously have taken away our powers, our responsibility, our finance and our accountability. They have centralised us in field after field after field, and have tried their best to turn us into postboxes of central government decisions.

I respect the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in favour of devolution. However, if his answer is that leading local authorities should be strong people—mainly male, I guess, but not necessarily so—who are just like Secretaries of State so that in local government we get a mirror image of what is happening in central government, then I say as someone who has lived my life in and trained in local government that that is not the route that I want to follow. A sense of place means collaborative, consensual arrangements that local people want and support. If they choose to have a mayor, that is fine by me, but if that does not fit their sense of place then it should not be imposed on them by the swagger factor.

[Lord Heseltine (Con)]

I have listened to the noble Baroness with interest and I wonder whether she has not caught up with the news that both Alan Johnson, a former Cabinet Minister in the Labour Government, and Liam Byrne, the very perceptive Chief Secretary who noticed that there was no money left, have said that in the circumstances of there being mayors they would be interested in a nomination. The fact is that creating the job of mayor has attracted a degree of interest at the very highest level in government and opposition politics. To me, one of the attractive ideas of a mayor is that it will be a ladder up which budding national leaders will climb on their way to another place, or it will be the opportunity for people who have served at the highest levels of government to serve their local communities with all the experience that they have gained in government, having ceased to be members of a Cabinet. That is an interesting evolution of our constitutional practices that would enrich the political process. I very much hope that my noble friend will resist Amendments 3 and 4 because—let us be frank—they are wrecking amendments.

This Government were elected on the basis that there would be a deal—I quote the noble Lord, Lord Smith—of a sort “unimaginable” to local government in his experience. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said on this issue, we have taken power away from local government decade after decade after decade without a referendum and without any sort of consultation; we did it because we did not think local government was doing a good enough job. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, rightly said that it was done by both parties and admitted that her party played a part. But her party never did anything to restore any of the powers that my party had taken away; it loved it, shared in it and wallowed in it, as it exercised the powers that we had extricated from local government into the hands of central government.