Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has just said about the need for spatial planning across the whole country, and I remind your Lordships that it was the current Government who abolished regional spatial planning to the disadvantage of many local councils. However, I will address my comments to the two orders in front of us today.

I turn, first, to the Liverpool City Region. Following the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, it struck me that we ought to develop a new collective noun for mayors, and I have a couple of suggestions. Should it be “a charm of mayors”, as with goldfinches; “an obstinacy of mayors”, as with, I understand, buffalos; a “gaggle”, as with geese, or—perhaps not—a “murder”, as with crows? However, as has already been pointed out, there will be too many people in an area with the title of mayor and people will be confused.

Most residents think of a mayor as the civic mayor, and we ought to have come up with a different title for the ones whom we are proposing should be elected for the combined authorities. The difficulty that Liverpool may suffer from is having elected individuals with large egos—it already has one with a very large ego. The consequence will either be energetic co-operation or a dysfunctional system. I hope that the Government are thinking very carefully about how elected mayors will be able to co-operate effectively for the benefit of local people and for the regeneration and economic development of their areas.

We discussed some of the functions at Tees Valley two or three weeks ago in your Lordships’ House, and today I want to draw attention to the comments of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It draws to your Lordships’ attention that it was very clear that residents in the Tees Valley, when consulted, opposed by a clear majority having an elected mayor. The committee’s report says that,

“many people have in effect answered a question, ‘Do you want an elected Mayor for the Tees Valley?’, with the vast majority opposing it”.

Despite that, their views have been ignored. It is dangerous for local democracy to pose a question, get a response and then ignore it completely and do the opposite. They should not have asked the question if they did not want to respect the answer.

This is a very unsatisfactory way to proceed. The consequences are that Tees Valley will have an elected mayor, but that elected mayor will have to work extremely hard to gain the trust and confidence of local residents who, as we heard, opposed the measure. Huge effort will be needed and it may drag on the ability of the mayor to enable the development of economic regeneration and transport facilities, because that effort and energy will need to go into convincing local people that this is the right way to proceed. With those comments, I wish both areas a successful devolution, but have considerable concerns about the models that have been adopted.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, turning first to the Liverpool order, I certainly support the arrangements before the House today. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I obviously wish the Liverpool and the Tees Valley combined authorities every success in the future. But I want to put on record that this is no giveaway for Merseyside local authorities from the Government—nothing could be further from the truth. As we have seen, local councils have suffered huge public sector spending cuts in recent years and Merseyside has not escaped that. Cuts to police and fire services, primary and secondary schools, Sure Start and so on far overshadow the comparatively small investment that the Government are making today. That investment will not deliver the Government’s vision for the northern powerhouse, although we seem to hear that phrase less and less from the Government. The foundations for devolution are being cut away by the Government every year, which is not helpful. It just makes the challenges faced by local government that bit harder. Having said that, I welcome the arrangements before us for devolution.

As I said in a previous debate, however, I am concerned about the whole question of patchwork. I accept that there can be difference, but I still think the Government should set out a framework. We have a messy patchwork, which does not bring the best things forward. We should set out what we want from devolution for England and how we see the country going forward. I certainly recall that in a debate last week on Cambridgeshire, the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, referred to four tiers of local government in that part of the country. It is all a bit of a mess. We are not clear where the Government are coming from. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned that in the debate as well. This is all a mess and we need some clarity from the Government about where they want to go in terms of devolution.

There has been a distinct lack of public engagement in the order for the combined authority for Tees Valley. It is important to engage the public in devolution discussions particularly where we propose to have mayoral elections. We want to get the agreement of the public because we will ask them to go out and vote for these people at some point in the future. It would be nice if the public engaged with that and agreed that they wanted this form of government. I think about 2,000 people responded to the local authority’s consultation but only 11 members of the public responded to the Government’s consultation, which from a population of 670,000 seems a derisory figure—0.001%, which is poor by any stretch of the imagination. Of those 11, seven had a negative view of the Government’s proposals. The Government should take account of consultation but also ensure that the consultation is done in a way that engages people and enables them to give their views to us.

As I said, it is necessary for the Government to set out clearly where they are going in England with devolution, and they are just not doing that. That is why we have these problems in understanding what is going on with devolution. However, I certainly wish Liverpool and Tees Valley every success in the future.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate and I shall try to respond to the issues that have been raised. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, we will keep this issue under review. Under the devolution deals, the Government of course stay in touch, and an evaluation of progress is made every five years. As this is a relatively new innovation, we will be particularly interested in seeing how it pans out. The noble Lord reminded me of my time as a junior Minister with Michael Heseltine in the 1980s after the White Paper into the riots, and he is right to point to the transformation that was undertaken in partnership with the local council and local MPs. As a result, substantial investment was made in the city. I am grateful for what he said about that.

My noble friend Lord Deben made a thoughtful comment in which he suggested, I think, that central government should seek to mirror centrally the sort of structure that is being developed locally. I have some sympathy with that. Against that, however, one of the signals we have been getting in central government is a plea for stability and certainty rather than further reform. One has to try to balance a move towards the sort of approach my noble friend has advocated with the plea for stability against a background of several planning Bills which have gone through the House. I say to my noble friend that the White Paper on housing is quite clear that neighbouring authorities should work together constructively. We are also going to look at the NPPF so that authorities must prepare a statement of common ground to work together. I will certainly feed in what he has said as we do that work on the NPPF.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and to some extent the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, I should point out that there is some tension between the reported views of local residents, which both noble Lords referred to, and the views of the locally elected councillors. Of course, that reaches us only if the locally elected councillors have decided that this is the way they want to go. The Government’s view is that it is legitimate to look to the locally elected representatives to come to a strategic view of where the authority wants to go rather than to a whole series of local opinion polls. I do not know whether the noble Baroness is a vice-president of the LGA—most people who speak in these debates seem to be. A long time ago, back in the 1980s, I was a vice-president of the AMA, but I think I was expelled when I abolished the Greater London Council. However, I think that the view of the LGA would be that it is perfectly legitimate to look to locally elected councils to reflect views.

I turn to the issue of having lots of mayors in one place. In London we have a Lord Mayor of London and a mayor, Sadiq Khan, and some boroughs have locally elected mayors. I think that people understand what is going on and while we could try to find a new name for mayors—the chain gang, or whatever you call them—if this is the way local authorities want to go, it would be a very brave central government that forbade them to do so, even though in some areas this does result in parish, district, county and combined authorities.

These draft orders confer further new functions on to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Tees Valley Combined Authority, some of which are to be exercised by their respective mayors. The first ones are to be elected in May this year. I commend this order to the House.