European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Committee: 8th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Amendment 227 derives from two problems. The first is the fact that consultation with local authorities has been inadequate in the planning of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Secondly, the absence to date of any mechanism in domestic law to replicate the advisory role conferred on local authorities by the European Committee of the Regions after exit day is becoming a matter of increasing concern.

Local government has in the past been told that there would be a seat at the table for it. That has not been fulfilled. It is not enough for the Government to have occasional informal discussions with some elected mayors in England and dress that up as proper consultation. The Minister will be aware that the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as the Mayor of London, have had detailed consultative involvement in recent months. However, similar involvement has been missing in England and I fear that this results from Whitehall seeing itself as representing all of England as well as the UK as a whole. I have concluded that we need a proper consultative structure for all parts of the UK—the nations, the regions, the sub-regions and the local authorities, right across the United Kingdom.

I accept that, in England, regions and sub-regions may have very different governance arrangements from each other. Nevertheless, we need representative bodies reflecting natural geographies to meet regularly with Ministers. It is very strange that UK Core Cities has found it easier to meet with Monsieur Barnier in Brussels than with UK Government Ministers in London.

There are several very big strategic problems that need resolution if Brexit is to proceed. First there is the replacement of the EU funding streams that currently provide some £8.4 billion in structural funds—mostly ERDF and ESF in the UK—between 2014 and 2020. The aim of the funding streams is to create jobs, support business growth, improve skills and reduce comparative deprivation in poorer areas. The question arises as to how this will be continued if Brexit happens.

Secondly, there are serious issues around workforce planning, particularly in high-tech industries where, for example, graduate retention of international students in our university cities matters profoundly. The immigration and trade Bills must recognise this and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm shortly that they will.

Thirdly, we need structures to permit discussion of exactly those matters that the Committee of the Regions helped to establish across national borders, such as extremist prevention strategies, protection of our steel industry and community energy supply projects. Talking within the EU across national boundaries has produced better legislation for the United Kingdom.

Finally, we should remember that one reason for the Brexit vote was the serious inequalities that have emerged over the past 20 years across the United Kingdom. A lot of places have felt left behind, and justifiably so. But Brexit must not result in those places feeling even more left behind. We have to ensure inclusive growth for all and so I hope that the industrial strategy and the planned shared prosperity fund will help to deliver that. To achieve it will require a structure for shared discussion of the issues by the regions, the sub-regions and local government generally, and I hope that the Minister agrees. I beg to move.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of the spirit of the amendment, but first I need to put on the record that I am the chairman of the Local Government Association and the leader of South Holland District Council. Obviously that is South Holland in Lincolnshire, not south Holland in the Netherlands.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Oh, what a pity.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

It would be better because I would like to have been an alderman, really.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, depending on whether we leave the European Union, the noble Lord might be able to transfer.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

There are some people who have already offered me a one-way ticket.

I should clear up one minor misunderstanding in the previous comments. We do meet with the DExEU team and my local government counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also meet regularly. As noble Lords will know, it is our staff who generally do most of the heavy lifting and they meet continually with representatives of DCLG, as it was, and DExEU. That is not to say that we should not have something not to replace the bureaucracy of the European Committee of the Regions but to strengthen the ability of local government to help the national Government form better policy.

Over the past 10 years national government has managed to give itself 350,000 more staff while in the same period local government has lost 840,000 staff. There are some people who would probably say that the Civil Service has a better capacity to advise the Government, but I would just like to remind them that local government has the capacity to advise them better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I am coming to that point, but I anticipate that they would. I will just deal with this point, because there is a complication here. In devolved areas, many of these issues will be matters for the devolved Administration dealing with the relevant bodies. That has to be catered for too. Clearly some non-devolved matters would be part of the arrangement relating to this legislation, but we have to recognise that there are some that are rightly the prerogative of devolved Administrations.

This is the important point, which I hope goes some way to answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. My colleague in the other place, the Minister for Local Government, Rishi Sunak, will carry this forward with the local government associations’ representatives, and we will update the House on the progress made by the next stage of the Bill. I anticipate that in seeking to replicate the arrangements it will take that forward. We need to allow those discussions to take place with the Minister in charge of local government. I will report back on this on Report.

I will deal with the relevant points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked about the importance of the European Social Fund, the European structural funds, steel, community energy and so on. I anticipate that all these points will come within the ambit of the new arrangements.

My noble friend Lord Porter of, I think, South Holland made it clear that he had consultation and discussion with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the DExEU teams. That is very much on the record.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, talked about the regions of England being left out of the devolution arrangements. I readily recognise that point. It came up in a wide-ranging discussion that, apart from the city mayors—I take the noble Lord’s point about Yorkshire not quite being there at the moment, but it will eventually be there with the might of the whole of the county, so I hope that will progress—there is, I readily recognise, a dimension in England that is not answered by the devolution arrangements that exist for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The noble Lord, Lord Tope, spoke with feeling and passion about the importance of the Committee of the Regions. He was clearly very much part of it. In this House we have the collective wisdom of many noble Lords as to how that operated very effectively.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about the paradox of devolution. I recognise some of the points he made, although I do not necessarily agree with all of them. He talked about the regions of England having some of the highest Brexit votes. That is true, but we should not ignore the fact that some very high Brexit votes were in the valleys of Wales. That happened not just where there was an absence of some substructure of government. I think that the highest yes vote in Wales was in Conservative Monmouthshire, so these things are perhaps not quite as simple as they may seem.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My colleagues in Wales would not forgive me if I missed the opportunity to put it on record that that was probably due largely to the fact that devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland seems to have bypassed local government in all those provinces as it seems to have done in this country. If the vote there was due to people not being consulted, it might be because the Welsh devolution system does not recognise Welsh local government.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I am not going to be tempted too far down that path, but I shall be tempted a little way. The area that has historically been most resistant to devolution is Monmouthshire, the only local authority that voted against extended powers in 2011.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

Let me finish the point if the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, will allow. If what I said is true, the area with the lowest yes vote on devolution had the highest yes vote in relation to Europe, so I am not sure that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Porter, would be borne out totally.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

I think that proves my point.

[Lord Wigley]

It was 49.5% yes in the referendum in Monmouth, so it was almost a majority, while all the other 21 areas voted overwhelmingly in favour— 66% over the whole of Wales. On engagement with local government, it is quite clear that there is a system that works in Wales. Local authorities are brought into consultation, sometimes to an excess—I have heard some complain about the number of times they have to be down in Cardiff to be consulted. It is a question not just of being consulted but of whether the representations lead to change of policy. In those valleys that voted to leave, it was the economic frustration driving them, as in the rust belts in America and in north-east England. Getting the economy right is the key to this.