Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Order 2017

Debate between Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Baroness Pinnock

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for coming in slightly late, as the lifts were running slowly. I was inspired to speak because although I seldom agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, I very much do on this occasion, for which I am sure there is rejoicing around the House. I wanted to challenge, or comment on, the position of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I speak as a resident of the city of Norwich, of whose council I was formerly leader, and as someone with strong relationships within that city. I was therefore involved in the discussions—at one remove, obviously and properly—on the inclusion of Norfolk and Suffolk in a greater East Anglia authority. The problem for us, which I regard as a very unfortunate legacy of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is the imposition of the requirement of an elected mayor to be concomitant with a combined authority.

In Norfolk, there were several, rural Conservative authorities—and I am sure it may also be true for many in Suffolk—which were very happy to have a combined authority with an elected mayor who would be Conservative, for ever and a day, representing, to some degree, lower-rate and lower-services authorities. That is their choice. That is not the same for urban authorities such as Norwich, which are effectively regional capitals with the revenues of a rural district council, which have always provided services from leisure to employment—half the jobs in Norfolk are in Norwich—for the whole of the county. We would worry about having an elected mayor over one county, or two counties, of a permanently different, rural complexion—being Conservative would worry me less—running the cities. Those medium-sized cities are the core of economic growth in this country, now and to come.

Secondly, we have a strong sense of place; I believe that some of the alienation that we have seen in politics is because we are losing that sense of identification with place, which the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, referred to. Norwich was for 800 years a unitary authority and then, at the stroke of a pen in 1974, that was abolished, with no respect for place, history or local opinion. Many of us are still fighting to get a more sensible, coherent, democratic, accountable and effective local government system. I have a plea to the Minister, following what the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said. Yes, we are working well in LEPs, which shows that authorities of different persuasions can work together, but we do not want an elected mayor whereby one person, presumably male, will be able to override the views of perhaps 300 elected councillors, at whatever tier of government, who are in touch with their communities in a way that one person cannot be. One person speaking for two counties—which are some 120 miles long—would be absurd and inappropriate.

What we need in Norfolk—it may be true for Suffolk; I cannot speak for Suffolk—is transport connectivity. It is something that the rural authorities want and something that Norwich, King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth also want: to build decent economic infrastructure. We cannot get that if an elected mayor does not necessarily share those ambitions, because they come from a very different local heritage. I respect the rights of those rural district councils to have a different perspective on what they and their communities want from local government. What I fear is that, by insisting on an elected mayor over a county, or even two counties, as the price of a devolution package including transport connectivity, we will not get the focus on economic productivity and growth that, bluntly, only the cities—whether Southampton, Portsmouth, Norwich, Plymouth, Exeter or whatever—can provide.

That is why I beg the Government to disassociate combined authorities from the imposition of the Heseltine elected mayor. We do not want grand leadership; we want collaboration and working together in consensus. That is the best done—in the very words of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit—by local authorities, councillors and staff working together in a collaborative way. The way that the Government are going is not healthy for local government, for a sense of local place or, ultimately, for democratic politics, which should grow from the bottom up. That bottom-up approach is now being undermined by back-door reorganisation in ways that do not fit the needs, views and wishes of local communities.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Baroness with trepidation—I think that, on the whole, what we are looking at today is a practical outcome of the decisions that have already been made in principle. I ought to declare my interest as a councillor in West Yorkshire and an LGA vice-president. While I obviously support the decision of the local, democratically elected councils in the relevant areas of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to go forward with this devolution deal, I draw the House’s attention to what appears to be a lack of support—or certainly a contradiction over whether there is support—from the residents in those areas. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has drawn attention to the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which highlights the lack of transparency—I think those were the words in the report—and certainly a seeming discrepancy between the two surveys undertaken at the time.

The Government ought to reflect on the final paragraph of the report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which says:

“The picture of local views painted by the Department for Communities and Local Government in the Explanatory Memorandum is incomplete and at times self-serving. We look to Government to present a fuller and more accurate account of such matters”.


With that fair comment on what has gone on in the consultation, I will make some remarks about the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. He drew attention to the fact that a mayor who was elected will have a mandate. However, the whole way in which the combined authorities with elected mayors have been established is to have some sort of stop on the mayoral mandate so that they are not people making decisions alone, and quite rightly too. There should be an opportunity for local councils to say, “We disagree with what the mayor is doing” and to veto it. That is an appropriate way to work, given that local councils are allowing some of their powers to be drawn upwards to the combined authority and to the mayor.

In many ways, it is wrong to view the mayors of these combined authorities in the same way as the Mayor of London. First of all, there is no assembly to scrutinise, and secondly, the mayor does not have the same functions: hence the need for a veto in the hands of local councils. This ensures that any decisions which will have enormous impact on local people have the support of those democratically elected councils.

I now turn to the discussions that we have had so far in this debate about layers of democratically elected councils. In my area, there is just one layer. Until the Conservative MPs in Yorkshire stop trying to prevent West Yorkshire from having a combined authority, we have only one layer of local government. It is significantly harder work for those who are elected there than if we had district or parish councils to support much of the work done.

I am a great believer in having layers of councils as long as their functions are very well identified. It enables the places to have a view. One of my concerns is that democracy is moved further and further away from the people whom we represent, so having more councils at real local level to hear views and complaints and to do something about them is the safety valve that many parts of this country are lacking. That is one reason why we are having quite a difference of opinion across the country at the moment: those safety valves are disappearing.

Having said that—because I have concerns about elected mayors that your Lordships might have heard—I will raise one or two questions about this set of powers being acquired by the combined local authority in Cambridge and Peterborough. There is going to be a power of general competence for the combined authority and the mayor. I am concerned as to whether this will be at variance with the power of general competence that the constituent local authorities have, and how those separate interests might resolve themselves if there is a difference of opinion there. My second point is about the scrutiny arrangements, which are not described here. I would guess that they are part of an earlier order and I am concerned whether they are the same as for previous combined authorities. The third point is that there is a suggestion somewhere in the report that further powers are yet to come, which rather puzzled me as I thought they would all be laid out in one go. Why are these not yet identified and what possible additional local powers might there be?