Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Scriven and Lord Heseltine
Lord Heseltine
The noble Lord asks me for my personal opinion on that matter and I give him my answer: yes. I think that we would have been incomparably better over 50 years if, instead of taking power away from those authorities, we had concentrated on their leadership and performance. Yes, that would have meant differentiating in the early stages about the financial support that one entrusted them with, but it would have left them with the potential of the power that we have taken away. I have no doubt that if we could rewrite the last 50 years we would have seen much stronger local government. Frankly, for those of us who remember Redcliffe-Maud: well, he was right, wasn’t he?
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendments 3 and 4. I have listened with interest to what the noble Lords, Lord Heseltine and Lord Deben, have said. The amendments are about flexibility—the whole point of devolution is flexibility—and the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, let the cat out of the bag when he said that you would only have a deal if you have a mayor. That is diktat, not a deal: it means that you have to have a particular model. In this new world of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, the conurbations of Leeds, Sheffield and others are coming back to a mayor. That is because they know that they can only have a deal with a mayor.
Not only politicians but business people said on BBC Radio Sheffield this morning, “We do not necessarily want a mayor. It is unfair that we are being told to have a mayor”— particularly only a few years after the people had a voice and said no. This is what Amendment 4 is about. What arrogance to say that this place knows what the better governance arrangements are for cities and conurbations elsewhere in this country. Again, it marks the political class as being distant from the people whose lives it wishes to improve.
I was surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said that he was erecting a ladder for politicians to climb up—the very thing that local governments have done which has failed their areas. It was a very strange thing to say. Again quoting directly from what noble Lords have said, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that we need to do something new. As someone who led a council relatively recently, I agree. However, something new does not necessarily mean one issue in a straitjacket called a mayor.
Are mayors so successful? Tell that to the people of Doncaster, where the Government had to send in commissioners when they had—and still have—a mayor. Tell that to the people of Stoke-on-Trent and Hartlepool, who have voted to no longer have a directly elected mayor. Go down the road and tell that to the people of Tower Hamlets, who have a directly elected mayor. It is not even a panacea internationally. Some cities in the USA have become bankrupt even though they have a directly elected mayor.
The amendment is not against directly elected mayors in areas where people wish to have them. I would not stop people who feel it appropriate and wish to have a directly elected mayor in their area from having one. However, it is arrogant to say to people who may come up with a new model that works for their area that they cannot have the powers because we have decided that their governance model is not correct. It is not only politicians who are saying that. The PwC report by Jon House, its head of local government and devolution, which was published only a couple of weeks ago, said that you have fallen into the trap of moving away from innovation and outcomes when you enforce one model of governance and people start talking about that.
I support the amendments. Amendment 3 gives flexibility and allows for the kind of innovation that the noble Lords, Lord Heseltine and Lord Deben, have talked about—I am sure other models will emerge. Secondly, what kind of Bill sets out the way a locality is governed and administered on the people’s behalf, but does not ask the people what they think about it?
Lord Heseltine
Unlike the noble Lord, I have never served in local government, so I cannot speak with his experience. As I understand it, officials give advice in public, but I do not think that meetings of officials before they formulate that advice are open to public or press scrutiny. I was addressing that concern when I intervened.
Lord Scriven
My Lords, I have some practical experience of this as a former council leader. When I became leader of the council in Sheffield, we had an economic development agency which met in private. Everything was in private—advice, meetings and papers—because it was deemed to be somehow arm’s length and pseudo public sector. Through a very hard-fought and long battle, I thought that it was absolutely right that that was dealt with in public, because huge amounts of public money were being spent on behalf of the people of Sheffield. The reason to write this in the Bill is to open up the advice and the decisions made.
I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, says, but exactly the same arguments were used in another place when what became the Freedom of Information Act was published. With freedom of information, a lot of the advice given now could be made public. This is just the next step concerning that type of advice. I see no reason why, if someone wishes to understand a decision in the area where they live, where multi-billions of pounds are spent on their behalf to improve their lives, they cannot be privy to some of the advice given before someone makes a decision. It is really important that both the press and the public understand the process that has been carried out to reach a decision, not just the decision itself.
My recent practical experience in local government, in an area of economic development, makes me believe that this is the right thing to do. Open decision-making is good decision-making; closed decision-making is bad decision-making, on the whole. It is really important for the press and the public to be able to understand both the decision and the process of how their taxes are spent—to know how decisions are made to improve their area. It is for those reasons, both the practical ones based on what I saw in Sheffield and to take freedom of information one step further, that it is really important that people can understand the advice given to and the process followed by politicians, the mayor or the combined authority to enable them to come to a decision.