Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Main Page: Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Labour - Life peer)Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts“( ) Notwithstanding the above, nothing in this Act or the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2015 shall preclude provision for some or all of the functions to be exercised in partnership or on a pooled basis with other combined authorities.”
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 6 and 8. This is a very welcome but rather complicated Bill. As we are at Third Reading, I congratulate—genuinely—the Minister on her efforts in getting us up to speed on it and the helpful and constructive way that she has responded. I know I speak for the House when I say that I am grateful.
The Bill is complicated because it was originally designed to make possible replications, especially in the north and Midlands, of the Greater Manchester powerhouse model with its mayoralties: cities that together form a natural metro area, unitary cities sharing common histories and usually common political values and views, powering economic growth—they are indeed great cities. However, research shows that medium-sized cities, here and on the continent, contribute proportionately more to economic growth than the great cities. If the Government want to fulfil their objective of powering economic prosperity, which we all share, it is essential that we—the 30 or 50 medium-sized cities—are counted in. We form a key cities group; many of our members are stand-alone cities, whose adjacent local authorities are rural. We power, rightly, our local economies and most of us do not have contiguous urban neighbours.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, this has been a short but helpful debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. There is recognition that we need the flexibility that the Minister is offering us to make best sense of the geographical diversity and local government diversity that we have in this country and to build on the our strengths. That is important. The noble Lord is also right to remind us about rural areas. Most of the cities that I have mentioned as seeking additional powers and, alongside them, clarification about the use of them from the Minister, are indeed the powerhouses of their local rural economies. That is rightly so; that is a perfectly appropriate relationship between the one and the other. The noble Lord is right to remind us of that and I take his point.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said—in a slightly downbeat way, if I may say so—that the Bill is a receptacle for proposals coming from local government and that the emphasis was on bespoke arrangements. Of course he is right. My worry is that, at the moment, the receptacle is too much of a lucky dip. I am trying to get greater clarity so that we do not send authorities chasing wild horses and coming forward with proposals that will not be acceptable in the light of the Government’s intentions under the Bill.
We would like as much clarity and development as possible from the Minister as we proceed. That loops us back to a point that my noble friend Lord McKenzie made much earlier in our debates about the need for annual reports to show what has been acceptable, what has been agreed and what is the way forward, so that we can learn from each other in a healthy and pluralistic way. I am sure that the Minister has taken that on board.
My noble friend has handled the Bill with his usual skill and support. I welcome his suggestion for a conference of medium-sized local authority leaders so that around a table, together with appropriate support for the Ministers through civil servants and the rest, they can tease out in detail what may or may not be a runner before they devote quite a large chunk of what are fairly modest home resources to putting forward their bid. It is sometimes hard for large unitaries to understand just how limited are the resources of some district authorities. If we were a large unitary authority, we might have resources of about £200 million; as it is, we have resources of about £20 million a year. It is then hard to appoint staff and devote resources to work where we are essentially duplicating what other authorities have already achieved and established, so we want that to be a continuing dialogue.
Finally, the Minister has indeed clarified the position to be as I understood it: you cannot have overlapping combined authorities. The emphasis will clearly be on joint arrangements between combined authorities established by area. My only concern is whether joint committees will be robust enough in their differential contributions for finance and human resources—staff—to develop their shared goals in a way that can take the test of time. I have been involved over the decades in joint committees between various levels of local authorities. They depend too often on the energy of one or two people. Unless they leave structures behind, although the need continues, the ability to meet it recedes.
We will see whether the joint structures or joint committees which the Minister envisages, as opposed to a joint authority, will be strong enough bodies to power through major transport connectivity and economic development issues and perhaps issues around the integration of health and social care. We will see. In which case, I do not doubt that, if the Minister is then in her current post, she will respond to that as sympathetically as so far she has responded to our amendments. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.