Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Lord Mann

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Amendment 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), calls for the creation of a constitutional convention, which I think is very important.

As we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Government’s proposals are likely to end up as a dog’s breakfast. The Bill does not represent a movement for devolution or an attempt to improve local government or governance; it represents a clear political agenda. It is about the Chancellor’s vision of a small state Britain that will make it easier for him to push through draconian cuts. Once he has pushed responsibilities down to local government or regional tiers, he will be able to top-slice the budgets, while the difficult decisions will have to be faced locally, by mayors and councils. Those individuals will get the blame for the tough decisions that will be taken. The Chancellor and this Government will step back and say, “I’m sorry, it’s not our fault; it’s your local decision-making process.”

This is a unique way of approaching the devolution debate in this country. There have been other approaches. There was the Crowther debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which stood back and looked at not only Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but how to devolve power locally. The Redcliffe-Maud reorganisation of local government took time to look at future structures for local government. That was controversial at the time—some of the historical counties were abolished, for example— but at least there was an evidence base.

That is not what is on offer now, which is why amendment 2 is so important. We need a properly thought-out national debate on devolution and what the structures will be. What we have now in this so-called enabling legislation is legislation with a big stick attached to it. Local areas such as the north-east have been told they can have devolution but only if there is an elected mayor, even though the Minister keeps denying that. He said an interesting thing in response to the previous set of amendments; he said no area would be disadvantaged if it did not go down the devolution route. That is not what he has been saying in the region or what his supporters in the Conservative party have been arguing in the region. The argument there is that if these truculent local authorities do not agree to devolution, they will lose out on all this money. The Minister has changed his tune this afternoon and said that is not conditional. It will be welcome if there is still an option to get those extra resources without necessarily going down the route he wants.

This is about local decision making, but what is key in any organisation is who holds the purse-strings. The Chancellor still holds the purse-strings under what is being proposed, and when the tough decisions come down the line his fingerprints will not be on them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) mentioned business rates. I take his point: allowing local councils and others to have the powers to regenerate areas and try to create extra revenue is welcome, but he will appreciate—as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North noted earlier—that there is not a level playing field across the UK. Without any mechanism for redistribution in local business rates, areas such as the north-east—those that have already been hit disproportionately by this Government taking the need element out of grant formula, which rewards richer areas more than poorer areas—are going to lose out.

Westminster city council will benefit if it gets to retain 100% of its business rates and gains from any new development it can have. Its situation will be easy compared with that of the poor people of Redcar; Redcar council is going to find it very difficult to attract new development that plugs the hole left by the closure of the steelworks.

We need to ensure we put in place structures that not only will work and have the support of people, but are practical. If we have a Teesside mayor and a mayor for the north-east, both will have responsibility for transport in their area. Where that will leave the A19, the M1 or any of the other transport links that cross the area, no one seems to know. Will the mayor of Teesside be responsible for the section of the A19 as far as the border of the area? Will the mayor for the north-east assume responsibility for the road network beyond that point? Therein lies one of the issues.

The Government said that they were against regions, but they have now divided quite a small geographical area. Supporters of the proposals have not explained how all this will work in practice. They have been out there in the north-east vigorously putting forward their case. Many of them have been posing as business people while forgetting to tell everyone that they are actually Conservatives.

There is a similar problem with resource allocation. The Government are proposing to impose a new tier of regional government, but how will it relate to the existing local authority tiers? The Minister keeps saying that this will be different because it involves moving power down from Whitehall to the region, but I can envisage people starting to ask whether they really need the large numbers of councils that they have at the moment. That will certainly happen in Manchester, for example. I know that turkeys do not usually vote for Christmas, but some local authorities need to think about where the Government’s agenda will lead. The Conservative party has traditionally been quite passionate about local government—it has always been supportive of it—but I believe that the Bill represents a move to reduce those tiers of local representation.

We need to step back and look not only at how the new system will work in practice but at the levels of local support. The Government are refusing to allow the people of the north-east a say in whether they want an extra tier of local government. The Minister is adamant that he is not prepared to give those people a say over whether they want an elected mayor whose responsibilities would stretch from the Scottish border down to Barnard Castle. As I said earlier, when we proposed a regional assembly in 2004, we quite rightly put it to the people. The Conservatives and their supporters argued vigorously against the proposal, and I am sure that if the then Labour Government had imposed an assembly on the region without taking the proposal to the people, we would rightly have been criticised. There would have been an outcry. Those same advocates who argued against us then are keeping very quiet now, however.

I have some sympathy with the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). He has raised various issues, and I agree that there is a problem. One question that some of the smaller district councils will face is whether they will have capacity as a result of the cuts that will be imposed in the autumn statement, on top of those that have already been imposed. The last Labour Government introduced unitary councils in the north-east, in Durham, and it was one of the best things that happened making decisions more straightforward. I hate to think what some of those smaller councils would do if they were still in existence now, given the cuts that this Government have imposed. I doubt that they would have the capacity to deliver their services.

I put it to the Minister that these larger areas will need an effective mechanism for ensuring that local people are engaged in the decision-making process. I used to work in Cumbria and I know it well. I understand some of the attitudes he has referred to. Having a veto over decisions on what is needed there could be a disadvantage for Cumbria rather than an advantage.

We need the measures that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North is proposing. We should have had them in place before we embarked on this process, but the Government know exactly what they are doing. This is not about devolution. It is about the clear political agenda of the Conservatives and the Chancellor. They know what they are doing, and it has nothing at all to do with the proper devolution of decision making.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I concur that a constitutional convention would be very sensible, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) said.

I hear the idea of a hotel tax in London—I hope it is not on my constituents coming down for a good overnight stay, but on those coming from abroad. I am not sure a hotel tax would work particularly well in Bassetlaw, although it is worth considering. I recall that until the last few years Welbeck Estates levied £3 on every tonne of coal produced for a century. If local government had been allowed to do that, Bassetlaw would be a very different place, because the infrastructure and so on would have been appropriately remunerated for the coal that we provided for the rest of the country in wartime and in peacetime, at great cost. That concept of local decision making is a very good one, so I would accord with the idea, but I hope there would be some exemptions to anything that is done in relation to the good people of Bassetlaw.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

I suppose Bassetlaw would have the option of declaring itself a unitary authority, of getting approval for that and of joining Sheffield city region. There may be routes around it, but the principle is fundamental. We need to have the ability to choose. If those two choices were put to the electorate, I suspect that I know which they would choose, and probably decisively. They may have a different view to me, but that is their prerogative—we have a word for that: democracy. What we do not want is “undemocracy”. Some people are very hostile to what the Government are doing and some are much more sympathetic. Either way, will these two options—is it the D2N2 model—lead to more councillors?

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am very interested in what my hon. Friend is saying. He knows that I am very familiar with his constituency, having grown up there. Does he think that the fundamental weakness of this Bill is that there is nowhere for the people to have a say in what actually happens?

[John Mann]

The Minister will clarify whether, legally, people can have a say, but I am sure that there are ways in which a say can be created to ensure that there is popular consent. There are ways in which we could choose to do that. I am not talking about my own informal consultations, which are pretty huge. It would be interesting to get the Minister’s take on that. Those are key points.

Can we have some assurance that, over time, these measures will not lead to more elected representatives? If people are honest, they understand that if we have a two-tier scenario linked in with unitaries, either the districts or the counties will inevitably go at some stage, and probably sooner rather than later. That is bound to happen. Some may say that that is a good thing. As I have said, I have argued for unitaries before, but it is important that councillors understand that that is what is happening. Similarly, it must be clear that we will be able to choose, and the Derbyshire districts will be able to choose, where we will go. I am sure that the Government want that. They say that it is a brilliant idea, so they must want us to be part of it. It is really how we do that with guarantees. It would be useful to have that on the record.