Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and amendment) Order 2016

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2016.

The draft order was laid before the House on 21 November. If approved and made, it will provide Greater Manchester with new, devolved powers on planning, land acquisition and housing; transport; education and skills; and cultural events and entertainment. It also provides for supporting constitutional and funding arrangements.

This is a further significant milestone in fulfilling our manifesto pledge to implement the historic devolution deal between the Government and Greater Manchester and to devolve far-reaching powers over economic development, transport and social care to places that choose to have an elected Mayor. To put this matter in its wider context, I recall that we have now reached four historic devolution deals with Greater Manchester. This is the third order implementing devolution in Greater Manchester. Previously we legislated by order for an interim Mayor, and in March 2016 we legislated to establish the position of an elected Mayor who would take over the police and crime commissioner functions too.

With this order, we are for the first time conferring significant new powers on Greater Manchester. Some powers will be exercised by the Mayor, and others corporately by the combined authority. I can tell the Committee that there are more orders to come, conferring further powers on Greater Manchester, as devolution becomes an increasing reality for the area. This is the first time that we are using the powers that Parliament has given us in the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016. They enable the Secretary of State to confer, by order, wider powers on public authorities, including powers exercised by public authorities in other areas, and other powers exercised by the Secretary of State. As required by the 2016 Act, we have in parallel with this order laid a report before Parliament that sets out the details of the public authority powers that we are conferring on Greater Manchester through the order.

In short, the order is a further step for Greater Manchester down the devolution highway. Councils in Greater Manchester have worked together closely for decades—they have a long history of co-operation—and since 2011 the combined authority has enabled Greater Manchester to work formally on the interconnected issues of transport, economic development and regeneration. Manchester’s experience and example is one to hold up for other parts of the country: that co-operation is very important.

In November 2014, the Government and Greater Manchester agreed a groundbreaking devolution deal, which has been followed by three others, as I stated. Under these arrangements, Greater Manchester will receive a devolved transport budget to help to provide a more modern and better connected network; new planning and housing powers and a £300 million housing fund to provide an extra 15,000 new homes over 10 years; extra funding, incentives and support to get up to 50,000 people back into work; and an infrastructure fund of £30 million a year for 30 years.

The statutory origin of this order is in the governance review and scheme prepared by Greater Manchester in accordance with the requirement in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Greater Manchester’s scheme set out proposals for powers to be conferred on Greater Manchester and for associated changes to the combined authority’s governance and funding arrangements. As provided for in the 2009 Act, the combined authority consulted on the proposals in the scheme. The consultation ran from March to May 2016, and the combined authority provided to the Secretary of State, as is required under the statute, a summary of the consultation responses in June.

Before laying the draft order before Parliament, the Secretary of State considered the statutory requirements of the 2009 Act. He considers that conferring these functions on the Greater Manchester combined authority is likely to lead to an improvement in the exercise of the statutory functions. In considering it appropriate to confer local authority powers on the combined authority and make constitutional changes, he has also had regard for the impact on local government and communities, as we would all wish. As required by statute, the 10 constituent councils and the combined authority have each consented to the making of this order, and it now gives effect to many of the proposals in Greater Manchester’s March scheme.

I will briefly outline, in a little more detail, the powers that will be conferred. If approved, the order will place a duty on the Mayor to prepare a Greater Manchester spatial development strategy, enabling an integrated approach to spatial planning. It will confer land acquisition, disposal and housing powers, including a compulsory purchase power, on the Mayor. Those are the same powers as the Homes and Communities Agency and the councils have. They will enable Greater Manchester to take a strategic approach to driving development and regeneration and stimulating economic growth, support effective use of the £300 million devolved budget and to deliver the 15,000 new homes. It will also build on current transport functions. The draft order provides powers over road safety promotion, as well as road improvement and maintenance powers that are to be devolved, and for the Mayor to pay grants to bus operators. That is in advance of the proposals for bus franchising envisaged in the Bus Services Bill, which is currently before Parliament.

The draft order also confers new powers to reshape and restructure skills provision—I know the Greater Manchester combined authority is passionate about that—with the aim of tackling the authority’s most important labour market challenge: youth unemployment. It also builds on the combined authority’s education powers. It will support young people participating in education and training, and also enable the combined authority to take strategic leadership of the former Connexions service. The order will allow the combined authority and the Mayor to promote cultural events and entertainment, and also provides for constitutional and funding arrangements.

In conclusion—you will be pleased to hear, Mr Turner—the Government are making great progress in implementing devolution to Greater Manchester. The draft order that we are considering is a further significant milestone, and as a Government we hope, as does the combined authority, that it will contribute to greater prosperity for Greater Manchester, open the door to a more balanced economy and ensure economic success across Greater Manchester, more broadly across the northern powerhouse and across the country. As a northerner, I am very proud that we are a Government who are devolving more powers to be determined by northerners, because I for one know that when we make these decisions ourselves, we make them a lot better. I commend the draft order to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

There are a few issues to address. Not all of them relate directly to the order, but I will try my best to answer anyway.

I congratulate the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, on his appointment. This is the first time that we have faced one another across the aisle since his elevation, and it is good to see him here.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned gaps in the measures, but we have to accept that the process of devolution is incremental. We have been clear about that from the beginning. The fact that Greater Manchester has been through so many rounds of devolution and is so much further down the road than anywhere else in England is something we should recognise, accepting that this is a substantial devolution of powers and cash from Westminster to local people. Manchester is lot further on than other parts of the country—sadly, in the case of some.

Consultation was a matter for the combined authority, which tried hard to engage people in the process. I have to be honest with the hon. Gentleman: local governance structures do not always excite people. I do not doubt that when people in Manchester and across the north of England are asked whether they want more powers and decisions to be exercised locally rather than at Westminster, they express strong support for that, but we should not delude ourselves that people will rush out in their thousands to take part in a consultation about the governance structures of combined authorities and mayoralties. It can be a challenge to engage people on such subjects.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned his feeling that devolution was being done to people in Greater Manchester. I do not share that view. I have met Greater Manchester’s interim Mayor and various members of the combined authority and I find that they are quite proud of what they have negotiated. The process has been very bespoke, which is why Manchester has been able to negotiate things that other areas have not. Only the other week, Sir Richard Leese was in to talk to me about some of his exciting ideas about further devolution of education. I am not promising anything on that, because it is a challenging area given the complexities of having a local approach as well as a national approach, but that indicates that the devolution has been delivered very much from the bottom up, in line with demands on and requests from those in Manchester. Each devolution deal—Tees Valley, Sheffield city region, Liverpool or Manchester—is different, which demonstrates that the process is bottom up rather than top down.

I thought long and hard about the elected mayor requirement over the summer. As I have said in previous debates, the fact is that when someone is exercising powers over a large geographical area from which no one else involved in the decision making has a mandate, we have to have someone whom the public throughout that entire region can hold accountable. No individual council leader, MP or anyone else has been elected across that area, but someone has to be accountable to the public for making decisions and spending cash across the area. That is why an elected mayoralty is the best option and the best way to deliver direct accountability. I have thought about other ways in which it could be done, but I have not been able to come up with one that gives such direct accountability.

The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton also talked about the area-based reviews for his local colleges, but I cannot go into any detail because they do not form part of my policy area. I am aware of what is going on in my own area, of course. He also mentioned academies, but they do not form part of the draft order either. I merely state that many people would argue that academies are anyway a devolution of power to the local level, in a policy introduced by his party. Admittedly his party has gone through a few different guises since the glory days of the Blair years, but it was a Labour policy.

Similarly, health and social care are not part of the draft order, but we continue to work closely with Greater Manchester to implement what we think is quite an imaginative devolution of health—the first in England. From the outset, we have always been clear with Manchester that we expect future health decisions to be taken with Greater Manchester’s input—in partnership, rather than against it.

The hon. Gentleman talked about precepts. The mayoral precept will be treated as are all major precepts, so people will be able to see the amount of it when they receive their council tax bill. The police element will be different and accounted for separately.

[Jim McMahon]

May I have clarity on that? As the Minister knows, a precept is an amount of money added on top of the council tax bill. The draft order reads as though the precept is a levy that forms part of the council tax, but is not separated out in the council tax bill.

[Andrew Percy]

The mayoral precept will be treated in the same way and should be identifiable on the bill in the same way as the policing element, but I will check on the wording to be clear with the hon. Gentleman.

As I said, the Government are well aware of the challenges in health and social care at the moment, which is why we have pumped in extra money, but that is not a matter for this order so I will not say anything more about it. The hon. Member for Stockport also mentioned health and social care—

[Ann Coffey]

And planning.

[Andrew Percy]

I will come on to planning in a moment.

On the point that the hon. Member for Makerfield made about the spatial framework, we are very clear in the order, which was drafted in agreement with the combined authority, that the spatial framework must be agreed by the Mayor and have the unanimous agreement of the combined authority. Combined authority representatives are all democratically elected in their local area. Local planning decisions will remain a matter for each local planning authority. The council’s local plans will still sit beneath the spatial framework, and they must align with the mayoral spatial framework in the same way as they do in London. Local decision making will still be for each local planning authority.

[Ann Coffey]

May I have some clarity on this? When the Minister says that the decision is going to be taken by the combined authority, will it be taken by the leader of the council, the executive of the council or the council as a whole? That is a really important question and I would welcome an answer on it.

[Andrew Percy]

It is for each local authority that is represented at the combined authority to determine its decision making behind that representation. If they wish it to be a vote of the full council or a decision of the council’s executive, that is a matter for them. When they are at the combined authority, they must act in unanimity. They are there representing their local authority. It is the same for any other decisions they take at a combined authority level. Decisions taken at the combined authority are not referred back to the local council for a vote on every single occasion. It is for each local authority to determine its processes.

[Jim McMahon]

This is a really important point. For the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester, the policy framework is a full council decision; it is not devolved to the executive or the council leader. The difference here is that the component councils, not the combined authority, are the decision maker. If it is not in the order, will the Minister at least give us comfort that a letter will go out to the 10 authorities setting out very clearly that the expectation is that each of them will, at their full council meeting, have a vote on the spatial framework? That is really important to give local people confidence in the process.

[Andrew Percy]

On the one hand, the hon. Gentleman is telling me that the Government should not be telling local authorities in the combined authority what to do, and on the other he is telling me that I should be telling the combined authority members what they should do. We believe in local decision making, so it is for each local constituent council member at the combined authority to determine what its arrangements are for involving the broader council on that matter. The leader of the council is there as the elected leader of the council. Behind their individual authority, it is for them to determine their own process. It is certainly not for me to write to each of the constituent councils telling them that they should exercise this function in a particular way in their authority. It is for each council to determine that.

I think I have dealt with most of the points about where the spatial framework sits. It does not supplant the local plan; the local plan must conform to it, in the same way as it has to in London. This is very much about trying to provide a system in which people are collaborating across a broader geographical area so we can make good on the pledge and deliver more homes for people in Manchester, which we all agree about, and a more integrated approach to planning across this strategic area.

[Ann Coffey]

I would be grateful if the Minister answered the questions that I have asked specifically about planning powers, which are in the remit of this order. I am sorry the Minister is sighing, but this is an important issue. For example, in relation to children’s homes, the National Planning Act used category C1 and C2 which has created a lot of confusion over what children’s homes applications can be accepted or not. Will that devolution of planning powers continue under the present Planning Act?

The second question I asked, which the Minister has not answered—

[Ann Coffey]

I will ask it again, then.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the hon. Lady for intervening before I sat down. I have been absolutely clear in responding to her. This is a strategic framework. It is the model we are broadly operating in London. Local planning decisions of the nature to which the hon. Lady refers will be taken by the local council in the same way as they are taken at the moment. The local plan, which has the particular detail in it below that strategic overarching level, will set out the framework for each individual borough. The decision will be the same as it is now, with the example the hon. Lady has highlighted.

[Ann Coffey]

Can I ask a further question?

[Andrew Percy]

Because I am such a generous young man, I will give way one more time.

[Ann Coffey]

It is not a matter of generosity on the part of the Minister. These Committees are quite important in enabling the scrutiny of secondary legislation, so it is not a question of generosity.

In relation to the green belt, I asked a very simple question. We have a green belt strategy nationally. For example, a developer applied to build on green belt in Stockport and the council refused permission. If that developer then appealed against the decision to the Planning Inspectorate, it would not be granted permission because of the local plan. Is that going to be altered by the devolution of powers to Greater Manchester, and if not what is the point of a Greater Manchester strategy?

[Ann Coffey]

I did—I fully accept that, Mr Turner.

[Andrew Percy]

I have answered the hon. Lady’s point a couple of times already. It is set out in the explanatory notes with this order that the issue of local planning decisions is unaffected and the devolution policy, as is also very clear in any of the background papers, makes no change to green belt policy. The protections that exist today will remain, and they are very high protections, as the hon. Lady will be aware.

If the strategic plan wishes to make any changes, as the emerging plan appears to do so, it is, of course, a matter for the local decision makers in Manchester to determine that. However, the protections that exist across the rest of the country will remain unchanged by this order. I commend the draft order to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2016.