Devolution in England

Austin Mitchell Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I want to speak as a partial and not wildly enthusiastic supporter of the Select Committee’s report and as a very long-standing advocate for devolution. In 1974, with the late Richard Wainwright, I formed the campaign for the north, back in the days of Redcliffe-Maud, beyond recall, in a first example of the Lib-Lab pact. When the Labour Government had the Prescott proposals for regional government, I was an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign for Yorkshire. It was unfortunate that the then Prime Minister, who was more enthusiastic for invading small countries than he was for giving us devolution, so watered down the proposals that they were not worth voting for. In the end, they were duly not voted for in the north-east.

That is my history of campaigning for devolution, but that does not make me enthusiastic about the caution of the Committee’s report or about the proposals for Greater Manchester. They seem to me to be something of a deathbed repentance by a Government who have centralised continuously in a country that is over-centralised already. We must be one of the most over-centralised countries in the world. We are more over-centralised than Monaco or Luxembourg, two capitals without countries. Cobbett’s Great Wen has always drained ability, money and investment away from the rest of this country and concentrated them on London and the prosperous south-east. That process has gone on for far too long. It has been heightened by this Government and needs to be reversed so that the rest of us can have a chance. It might be a mistake to start building the northern powerhouse on the wrong side of the Pennines—the wet side—rather than the hard-working, intelligent and serious side, but I do not begrudge regional devolution to Manchester, because what Manchester thinks today, Yorkshire certainly thought yesterday, and it deserves better than what it has been given.

What is proposed is not really devolution, but another example of Conservative tinkering with local government, which has been going on for so long. Their attitude to local government reform is like the hokey cokey—you put your whole self in, your whole self out, and then you shake it all about. They created the metropolitan counties, then they abolished them, and now they are bringing them back. They created Humberside, then they abolished it, and now they are effectively bringing it back.

What we need is serious thinking—the Select Committee has begun this, but it really needs to be done by both parties and into the next Parliament, when it will become more relevant—about what the framework of devolution should be and what exactly should be devolved. We need to think about what powers should go to local government, because we have to transfer them down from the centre to where the people can handle and control them democratically, because they know their needs far better than Whitehall does. That should be the process of devolution, but this is not it. This is another piece of tinkering, with an elected mayor—an eventually elected mayor, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) pointed out—sitting on top like the fairy on a wedding cake, with inadequate powers and no democratic control. That is not real devolution for Manchester. We have to think seriously about what real devolution is.

What is proposed is a coalition of 12 boroughs with minimal powers and financing and an elected mayor. I do not know whether the £6 billion will be enough to cover the cost of the health service or just enough to distribute blame downward when things go wrong, but certainly the powers and the financing are inadequate. There is no elective democratic accountability, because control is indirect through the coalition of boroughs, and that is not effective control at all.

If what is proposed is devolution at all, it is asymmetric devolution that will end up creating a patchwork of devolution, with different powers all over the country, a kind of one-winged bird that can flap but cannot fly. As other Members have pointed out, it leaves out large areas of the country. For example, the best and most important part—Grimsby—has nothing to gain from it. Huge rural areas such as Lincolnshire and north Yorkshire have nothing to gain from it. They all want more power, but they are outside this new system.

Therefore, we must first ask what we can learn from this Manchester situation for Yorkshire and then ask how we can create a national framework for devolution for those areas that want it. I am not saying that devolution should be forced on people, because it is more important to the north and to Yorkshire than it is to the south, to which all blessings flow anyway, but we must ask what example we can set that other areas will want to follow. What can be the framework for English devolution to turn this unitary state, in which some powers have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, into one of devolution all round in which Yorkshire can show the way? We could call it “devo-tyke”—I do not see why not, if we can have “devo-Manc”.

On the table at present are proposals for city devolution—city regions for Sheffield and Leeds and a big Newcastle-Tyne-Tees area—plus minimal proposals for Humberside. I would like to see greater Yorkshire as a devolved region. That would include Sheffield, Leeds and both sides of Humberside, because our interests on the south bank lie to the west rather than to the south. They lie with Yorkshire, and we are Yorkshire’s gateway to Europe. Greater Yorkshire would provide a firm, strong base which would be able to take on a variety of powers and functions over which we could have an elected government, which would control those functions for the purposes of the people—in other words, democratic accountability and democratic control—and which should have revenue-raising powers to finance what it wants to do.

A bigger area can take a broader view and be a firmer and more effective base than a smaller, more parochial area. That is the way we should go. The current proposals are a beginning, but no more than a beginning, which we need to follow up and build on in the next Parliament so that power passes from London, to which it has been so remorselessly transferred over the years, to the regions and to the people so that they can control their own destiny. In that way we will get the synergy and energy of democratic control of government functions in the north, where it belongs.