Devolution: North-east England

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, other areas—Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley—have come to an agreement and are pursuing the need for an elected mayor. It is regrettable that the north-east is not doing so, but we do not impose these things—they are to be bottom-up—but I appeal to the north-east to come together so that we can proceed with this deal, perhaps in 2018.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister not consider detaching the issue of elected mayors from devolution? As we warned when the Bill was going through, the devolution proposals for Norfolk and Suffolk have fallen through, mainly because a mixture of Tory councils and Labour councils were not willing to go ahead with an elected mayor. As a result, some areas, particularly in Norfolk, which are among the poorest in the country, will not get the resources or the powers they need, particularly to provide transport connectivity, because the Government are hung up—stupidly—on the concept of an elected mayor, which may make sense for London and the great conurbations but does not make sense for large parts of the eastern region.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, whatever else has been happening in the north-east, I do not think there has been a disagreement between Conservative and Labour authorities—I wish that were the case in some ways, but this has all been disagreements among Labour authorities. I remain of the view, as do the Government, that the best way to proceed, as we are in the urban areas where we need this concentration of powers, is to have somebody accountable as a mayor, just as we have in London. We have had other agreements where there is not a mayor—for example, Cornwall—but then you do not get all the necessary powers, so that is not the way forward.