Draft Tees Valley Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) Order 2016

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 General Committees

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend used the phrase “one size fits all”, but I understood that some combined authorities or devolved areas were not having an elected Mayor imposed.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I was going to come on to that point in a moment. A number of members of the governing party have expressed concern about imposition as a precondition, and I hope that the Minister will address that. If the Government are making an honest and true attempt to promote economic growth and rebalance the economy, that should not be a precondition. I am sure that the Minister is aware of concern in his party. From my perspective, and in the light of the remarks by my hon. Friend, that is a key point.

The Government’s approach has been rejected by local government leaders negotiating the deals and by a number of leading organisations, including the Local Government Association, the National Audit Office and the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, to name just a few. I had the opportunity to visit the LGA conference in Bournemouth last week. A number of local authority leaders—not just Labour ones—expressed concerns about the imposition of elected mayors. I hope that hon. Members are aware of the National Audit Office report, “English devolution deals”, which sets out the various packages on offer to different areas. It is clear that there is wide variation, and it seems that the Minister has accepted that the imposition of an elected mayor is not necessarily a requirement before powers can be devolved.

There have been concerns about the creation of a fourth or even fifth tier of local government creating the potential for a complex, over-bureaucratic and costly system of representation that is also potentially unaccountable. The Communities and Local Government Committee has warned the Government that such a system, leading to low turnouts at mayoral elections—as has happened—will have implications for the democratic legitimacy of elected mayors.

In case there should be any confusion, I stress that my party, and I personally, are not opposed to the concept of mayors. In many cases they can provide visible leadership and accountability. However, devolution should mean, if it means anything, that people and communities are free to choose the most appropriate model of governance for their community. The imposition of mayors risks undermining that process and public confidence in it.

I would like to pose a few questions to the Minister. In view of today’s order, I am not anticipating, although I am an eternal optimist, that he will announce any radical changes at this eleventh hour. However, are there any circumstances where he would acknowledge that an elected Mayor might not be the best model of governance? I refer him to examples in the National Audit Office report, where Cornwall and, I believe, Leicestershire have been allowed to proceed without the imposition or precondition of an elected Mayor.

Does he acknowledge that an elected Mayor might not be the best model of governance? If so, although I appreciate there is an eight-week consultation period, will he commit to working with local leaders, at whatever stage they are at, towards a devolution deal, and consider the merits of alternative governance models, where it can be demonstrated that the mayoral system may not be the most suitable, given local geography and circumstances? Unfortunately, without that flexibility, authorities and communities are effectively held hostage, with those opposing elected mayors locked out from accessing substantial devolved powers.

I hope that the Minister is aware of concerns expressed by the Centre for Public Scrutiny. It has warned that

“requiring elected mayors and overview and scrutiny committees may lead to combined authorities approaching governance as a ‘matter of compliance, where no further thought is required’.”

That would be as a sort of tick-box exercise. I believe there should be an opportunity to bring powers and decision making closer to the people. However, the imposition of mayors is a contradiction of the meaning of devolution.

I must also take this opportunity to ask for some assurances from the Minister about the implications of the Brexit vote. A key benefit of the Tees Valley deal was control over EU structural funds. That is absolutely a key issue. Not without justification, the Tees Valley has been a long-term beneficiary of European funding and has secured a commitment of £169.8 million over the current EU funding period.

It is a matter of record that the Minister was a leading advocate for Brexit. During the campaign, the Leave side—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes.

My constituents in Darlington are perplexed by all of this. The awareness of the combined authority is starting to grow and there is a growing understanding in my constituency about what is happening. I must say, however, that the idea of an elected Mayor for somewhere called the Tees Valley leaves many scratching their heads, because they know we had a referendum in Darlington on leythe subject of elected mayors and the idea was roundly rejected. They also rejected wholesale the idea of a north-east assembly. Their appetite for this kind of change and an extra layer of democratic accountability—they would say bureaucracy—is not great. When we have a group of local authorities that have proven they are able to work together over a very long period, collaborate and get their combined authority off the ground with minimum fuss and trouble—and they have worked with Governments of all colours—they question why they need this extra supervision above them for a place that, in my constituency, they do not recognise as legitimate.

I challenge the Minister that in the first three or four years of his role as MP for Stockton South, he led the campaign to get rid of the Tees Valley and replace it with Teesside, which does not include Darlington. Now he says we must have a figurehead for the Tees Valley, a place he did not previously think ought to exist at all. I had some sympathy with his campaign back then; maybe he should have stuck with that.

My constituents are also very concerned as they are seeing the decimation of their local services: libraries, sports facilities, children’s centres, support for families with disabled children and advice services. They are asking me—so I ask the Minister—how much is this going to cost? What will this election cost and how much will the salary of the elected Mayor be? They want to know this as sums of £90,000, £100,000 may not seem like very much to the Minister when he looks at this, but that would keep important services in our constituencies going for a very long time. He needs to think about how this is going to look to residents who are seeing their services removed from under their feet, to be replaced by a figurehead they do not want for a place they do not believe exists, and actually, nor does he. The idea of there being a single voice for the Tees Valley is naïve at best. I can see why the Government would like a single voice for the Tees Valley—it makes their lives much easier if they have one person to deal with from the Tees Valley. As he well knows, we are a collection of towns and we have many shared aspirations, but we have things that identify us separately too.

We want to keep having that direct dialogue with the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government, because sometimes there are things that we do not always exactly share on every level. It may make life easier for the Government but it will disguise many of those wonderful things that are unique to the identity of different towns within the Tees Valley. It would be a real loss if we pretended that the Tees Valley is a single place with one identity when we all know—and certainly the people who live there know—that that is not the case. They are fed up with being told that the place where they live, grow up and work has a different name, “We’re calling it this now, we’re calling it that now.” They are sick of it. My constituents live in Darlington and they are proud to live there. They do not want to have to elect somebody who is responsible for Hartlepool.