Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

This is an important debate on an important piece of legislation and, like many of my colleagues, I welcome the devolution agenda. Local accountability is, I think, extremely important and the challenge, as has been repeated across the Chamber, is making it work in practice.

The first stage of devolution started with the local enterprise partnerships. Effectively, we devolved to them responsibility for productivity, growth and, more recently, infrastructure projects. Phase 2—this Bill—devolves responsibility not to unelected bodies, which is what the LEPs were, but to politically elected bodies. We are considering devolving many areas similar to those devolved to the LEPs as well as social care, police and education. If that is to be achieved, there are some concerns and risks about the consequent almost imperative need for vertical and horizontal integration between the different local bodies—the counties, the districts and the unitary areas. I am not entirely convinced that that was what the Government intended, as it seems to me that we risk consolidation as opposed to devolution, and I do not think that we should.

Devon and Somerset have a bid in, involving 20 authorities working together. My concern is that for that many authorities to work together we will need sensibly to consider some functional integration, but who will give up their power base, who will give up their budget and who will share it? More importantly, what about the taxpayer? How will he or she know who to hold accountable and how will he or she do it? At the ballot box?

The Government, quite rightly, are looking to integrate NHS and social care, but will that be more complicated across a diverse range of authorities? Does it mean—I hope not—that we will have to unpick and put together again new deals between the NHS and the local authorities? Will the NHS play ball? Should clinical commissioning groups be required to be part of that? They are part of some bids for devolution, but not all of them.

In the south-west, we have 20 parties working together: 15 districts, two unitaries, two counties and the LEP. My fear is that local accountability will be lost and that we will consolidate not devolve. Our bid has three aims: first, to deliver accelerated economic growth; secondly, to deliver conductivity and resilience for our infrastructure; and, thirdly, to deliver integrated health and social care.

On the growth agenda, there seems to me to be a challenge as the LEP and the other authorities are playing in the same ballpark. How will we deal with that? My other concern is that the rural communities will get lost and the thinking will be dominated by the Exeters, Plymouths and other large cities. How will the funding work? Will it go through the LEP or through the new bodies?

This team of 20 has a very good record of working together on infrastructure. On rail, our peninsula taskforce is delivering seriously good news. On roads, we have the bypass for Kingskerswell and we will, I hope, have the A303 developments. However, my concern is that that devolution still ignores local problems with infrastructure, such as local bottlenecks in towns. Balls Corner in Newton Abbot is a case in point. Focus will be lost on small infrastructure projects and issues, such as my port in Teignmouth.

We also have a number of integrated projects on health and social care. In Torbay we have an integrated care organisation with pioneer status, whereas Plymouth CCG and the northern, eastern and western Devon—NEW Devon—CCG are working together with a one system, one budget plan for £426 million. Somerset has a Symphony health and social care project, while Exeter has its own integrated care project. Will we lose the focus on some of the local differences between the rural communities and the cities? Will we lose the necessary differentiation between how we provide for an ageing population and how we provide for the bustling younger population in cities?

The Government are going absolutely in the right direction, but my concern is how we deliver these measures, how we avoid the pitfalls and how we avoid the consolidation and integration that take away from local democracy and from what I believe the Government intend. The devil is in the detail, and I wanted to ensure that I raised these issues early because although the Government’s intentions are right, I want to avoid chaos and ensure that local focus remains. Finally, I want to ensure that we do not inadvertently consolidate upwards rather than devolve downwards.