Devolution: English Cities

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in local government as a Local Government Association vice-president. I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, for initiating this very interesting debate.

Giving people greater control to shape their communities is a good thing. It makes decision-making more accountable, allows for local discretion and delivers better value for money. Councils, as leaders of their communities, are best placed to bring communities together and transform lives for the better. Local government already provides more than 800 different services to local communities, supporting residents each and every day. As well as supporting vulnerable and elderly residents, councils also help build vibrant local economies that create the conditions for businesses and communities to prosper.

Frankly, councils continue to do a great job, but local government is ambitious to do more and can do more. Give councils the freedom to decide, certainly over the future and new funding, and local government will build great communities. I welcome the report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. Importantly, it supports the LGA’s case that we have an opportunity for change, so that the most centralised country in the western world, which we are, could become more devolved.

As the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and the LGA both recognise, we need to empower local leaders to deliver better outcomes for their communities. That is why the Government must show more ambition than they have done to date. The combined authorities have demonstrated the real, tangible benefits of devolution, but the combined authority model does not suit everyone. We need a flexible devolution settlement that all areas of England can get behind so that no part of our country is left behind. Put simply, if we are to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities, we need devolution to be made available right across England, including to non-metropolitan areas as well as to our great cities.

At its conference in Bournemouth earlier this month, the LGA launched its manifesto for change, #CouncilsCan. As the LGA’s new chairman, Councillor James Jamieson said in his speech to the conference, this manifesto is a bold call to arms asking the Government for the powers, freedoms, flexibilities and funding to deliver great communities. With the Government absorbed by responding to the demands of EU exit for the foreseeable future, there will not be capacity at the national level to negotiate individual devolution deals. A new localism settlement is needed, a step change in the way we think about devolution that looks to a package of sustainably funded, locally led service reform. #CouncilsCan sets out a positive case for a new localism settlement underpinned by a devolution Bill and a local government finance Bill in the next Queen’s Speech. Of course, by closing the £8 billion funding gap facing councils by 2025, the spending review can deliver financial certainty to hard-pressed councils up and down the country.

It is not just the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and the LGA who are making the case for devolution. I am pleased to say that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Reform, Decentralisation and Devolution, of which I am co-chair, is bringing together parliamentarians and those working on public service reform to look into these issues and build cross-party support for the new devolution settlement the country needs, from a devolved and integrated approach to skills and careers to a revolution in broadband and transport infrastructure, from reform of the common agricultural policy to the future of local industrial strategies. Our group is asking the big questions and helping form the big ideas that will ensure that the LGA’s new devolution settlement becomes reality. In recent years, the pace of devolution has slowed. We need to bring our focus back to this agenda and realise the long-held promise of devolution. This means devolution to all areas of the country, with bespoke arrangements that give us postcode choice, as I much prefer to say rather than postcode lottery.

I bring my remarks to a close by noting that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and organisations such as the LGA, have provided us with a roadmap to achieve the goal of devolved services. I commend them for this. I also support those local leaders, represented through the LGA, who are calling on our new Prime Minister to use the next Queen’s Speech, Budget and spending review to deliver a new localism settlement. I hope the Minister and the Government will act on their advice, thereby ensuring we renew our efforts to empower communities through local government.