Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Shipley and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to this very good and interesting probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Young, who I know has great expertise in local government. We represented different parts of the London Borough of Ealing in different capacities over many years.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has not compared apples with apples but apples with pears. We are a unitary state—we are not a federal state like Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy or France, where they have regional government and a culture of accretion of power to the local level. Therefore, we have to have some central sanction and control of the disbursal of funds. So I do not think that the noble Lord is necessarily comparing the situation that we are in wholly accurately.

However, the noble Lord makes a very astute point about the hoarding of power, particularly financial power, by the Treasury. Any Minister will tell you that, over the years, the Treasury has not wanted to give power away and has wanted to bring in power. The noble Lord is absolutely right that far too much of the funding of core local services is in effect subject to the begging-bowl approach, as enunciated by Andy Street, the executive mayor of the West Midlands.

The problem with the situation that we now have—the disparity of local councils being responsible to their electorate for decisions, in effect, taken centrally—is that central government of whatever party is in power gets the income in and can make those judgments based on its manifesto, but it is local councillors and officers who are accountable and often take the brickbats for failures. For instance, many people have argued for many years about residential real estate investment trusts leveraging private sector money to provide new, good-quality housing for young people in particular. The Treasury has never really advanced that properly, and local government could be very much involved in it. Social care is another area. All Governments should look at tax breaks for providing extra care facilities—in terms of nutrition, housing, exercise and so on—for old people from the age of 60 all the way through to death, as many countries have across the world. That is an example of a central government policy that could also help local government.

I have great sympathy for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I hope there is further debate on it. It cannot be right that we cannot follow other modern liberal democracies such as the United States where local authorities and mayors have the capacity, for instance, to raise funds for the issuance of bonds, local infrastructure and capital projects. We have very restrictive financial and legal rules in this country that prevent us doing the same. On that basis, we have begun a good debate and I look to my noble friends on the Front Bench to run with it and, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, show some ankle, as it is long overdue.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, we have begun the debate. That is the intention of this probing amendment, because we must have it.

Today’s Budget decentralises—but does not devolve—some powers, although not fiscal ones, to combined authorities, which is welcome but comparatively minor. In other words, if a combined authority was able to adjust a block grant and make different decisions on how to commit expenditure from it, that would be welcome. However, it is not a fiscal policy. As the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said, it would be helpful if the Government could explain their thinking on devolving real fiscal powers.

I would pick up the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, on one statement. He said that we are not a unitary state. That would be hard to explain in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, and it goes to the heart of the problem as I see it. Substantial devolved powers, including fiscal ones, reside in Scotland, Wales and, theoretically, Northern Ireland that do not apply in England. Yet England is a country of 56 million people. It is far too big to operate out of centralised control in Whitehall, but there is a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of Treasury control and the Government’s desire to do things on a hub and spoke model in which all the financial resources are controlled in London, England is a unitary state.

I want to add one thing to the excellent contribution from my noble friend Lord Scriven and the other contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, which I really appreciated. Can the Government explain why Scotland and Wales can have fiscal powers but no constituent part of England is permitted to have them? That is the nub of the problem, and it is why starting the debate on this issue is very important.