Local Government Finance

Debate between Tim Farron and Jake Berry

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

I will get on shortly to the issue of council tax referendum limits. We continue to engage with colleagues across our local government family, on both sides of the political divide. If we have not engaged directly with Gloucester yet, I will ensure that we do so as part of our discussions.

Building on the mandate given in December to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I want to set out how we will unite and level up our nation. We will devolve more power, money and influence back to communities across England. We will restore opportunity to our towns through our £3.6 billion towns fund, and we will work with every single local authority to make sure that they are the engines for economic growth in their community. This will be supported by the most generous financial settlement for a decade, while always ensuring that they have the resources to support the most vulnerable in society.

This Government are proudly the father and mother of English devolution to our regions. In the past three years, we have seen the creation of powerful metro Mayors in Liverpool, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle North of Tyne, the West of England, the West Midlands and Tees Valley. Together, those mayoral combined authorities have access to £6.35 billion of investment funding, more than £1 billion of the transforming cities fund, and £1.5 billion of the adult education budget.

We understand, however, that it is not possible to measure how well devolution is working simply by looking at how much money is being received. The real power of devolution comes through putting power back in the hands of local people, and that is why devolution works.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am fully supportive—as we were during the coalition—of the Government’s plans to devolve power to the regions of England and to local authorities. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, though, that if this is about local people making local decisions, they should not be forced to accept a Mayor or, if they are a rural community, a particular urban-type structure in order to get those powers?

[Jake Berry]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will welcome the recent discussions that have taken place with local authority leaders across Cumbria. I know that he has influence over his own local authorities, and I am heartened by the open-hearted and open-handed way in which they have approached those discussions. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been clear that we should seek mayoral combined authorities across the entirety of the north of England. It is my view that if we want to truly empower communities, a powerful, locally elected, singularly accountable individual is the best way of doing it. I hope that we will shortly be able to progress further devolution deals and discussions across Cumbria.

As I have said, devolution does work. It is already paying dividends, with funding and metro Mayors delivering programmes that local people want. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish might want to listen to this. I am sure that the completion of the A6 relief road to Manchester airport in Greater Manchester has assisted him and his constituents to get around the north-west of England. I know it helps me. It was done by the Labour Mayor for Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

In Liverpool, we are supporting new rolling stock on Merseyrail. That is important to me—I went to school on those trains and did not know that 35 years later people would be going to school on the same trains. There is a new train maintenance and technology training academy and the largest rolling stock modernisation facility in the country, creating hundreds of new high-quality, high-skilled jobs, in co-operation and collaboration with Steve Rotheram, the Labour Mayor of Liverpool. In the west midlands, the extraordinary Andy Street is investing £207 million to extend the West Midlands Metro system, re-opening railway lines and stations. That is all being done by metro Mayors.

Of course, those decisions could have been made in Whitehall but, I think as everyone knows, the process would have been slower, they would not necessarily have reflected local priorities, and crucially, picking up on the hon. Gentleman’s recent comments, they would have lacked the local democratic legitimacy of decisions made by single accountable elected individuals. It is precisely because devolution works that we intend to go further and faster. We will unleash the potential of all of our regions, delivering on the priorities of this people’s Government to level up everywhere.