Constitutional Commission

Debate between Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and Lord Shipley

Thursday 9th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for enabling us to have this debate. I agree with him about the need to set up a commission and consider options for a new constitutional relationship for the four nations of the United Kingdom. I want to add to that list the urgent need for a devolution settlement for the regions and sub-regions of England. Doing that requires a commission.

As my noble friend Lady Humphreys has just said, there has never been a place for England in the devolution process and there needs to be one. In three of the countries, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we currently have a block grant system, and we need a block grant system for the regions and sub-regions of England, to be controlled and managed more locally. To do that requires a commission to examine the options. You cannot run England out of Whitehall; it is simply too big. All the key decisions impacting on England are taken in Whitehall on a hub-and-spoke model in which Whitehall is the hub and elected mayors of combined authorities become the spokes. They compete with each other for resources at a time when budgets are being cut.

My attention was drawn to a report from March this year by the Institute for Government on the theory and practice of the Barnett formula. I will quote two paragraphs from it.

“Our view is that, in principle, Barnett should be replaced by a system that shares out resources in line with a clearly stated set of funding principles, applied consistently and transparently to devolved governments across the UK and to the cities and regions of England”.


I agree entirely. We have now reached a point where this has become essential. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, referred to the shared prosperity fund and the figure of—I think I quote him rightly—£770 million lost to Wales as part of the loss of direct European funding. Of course, that has impacted on England. It would be helpful if the Government wrote to Members taking part in this short debate to explain what has happened to the loss of ERDF and ESF funding because it is very serious for the rest of the UK and, in respect of what I am trying to argue, for the regions and sub-regions of England. They have also all lost the six-year programming they had from European structural funding.

I am very concerned about how decisions are made in Whitehall. On the shared prosperity fund, yesterday the Public Accounts Committee said clearly that the total sum is lower than the European funding produced by the ERDF and ESF, so some facts and figures from the Government would be helpful. The Public Accounts Committee criticised the ill thought-out levelling-up plans through the allocation of funding yesterday, saying they were “unsatisfactory”. One reason for that is the excessive central control exercised by the Government.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord could come to a close. We are very short of time today.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

I am sorry; we have no clocks in front of us—that is the problem. In conclusion, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, talked of the stark political differences there are now. He talked of the clawing-back of devolved powers and he is absolutely right. That commission is needed more urgently than it has been for many years.