Devolution: English Cities

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, for the report and for giving a good profile to this issue, which I think has faded a bit in recent months—not surprisingly, with the attention being on Brexit. There have been myriad reports from organisations that have been working to promote greater devolution to cities. The spotlight has also fallen on this idea through the experience of some of the people that we have heard about through Brexit. In our own cities we have seen disenchantment and disillusion, often symbolised by boarded-up high streets, no local facilities to support people in poverty, food banks and all the other things that tell us that parts of our country are in great need of attention.

The whole issue of devolution, as my noble friend Lord Tyler has said, is one that we very much support but, as he also said, we mean devolution, not delegation. We have seen that through all parties’ attempts to give powers, such as the recent assemblies. I served on one in the south-west and actually it had no powers, so no one could really see the point of attending it. What happened was that all the powers went to the RDAs and the assembly, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, has said, was given powers to discuss rather than to act. In my view it is essential that any devolution is about transferring powers.

I know that in my city, Bristol, when I have gone out for election, all the matters that people raise on the doorstep are things that we have very little power to do anything about. Transport is the biggest but there is also housing, schools—they are not in democratic control locally—and social care. One of the issues that we felt was important was that taxes should raise money locally. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, talked about this: in France, three times more finance for local government is raised locally, while in Sweden the figure is 12 times as much. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, was saying, the money coming from the Government is not so much what people are looking for from devolution, although there would have to be equalisation as some parts of the country are much wealthier than others.

Some devolution has taken place but if you are a city leader then my suspicion is that you feel that the most enormous amount of time, attention and resource has been put into devising schemes where very little power is actually handed over to elected representatives, whether mayors, city leaders or councillors, along with a whole panoply of contracts with rules, conditions and teams of lawyers to ensure that these are adhered to. A lot of this stifles local imagination, local creativity, and local solutions to local problems. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said, local business finds exactly the same thing.

The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, talks about other European cities. I used to represent my city in EUROCITIES and heard about the powers that other European cities have. They are astounded, and some are bemused, to hear that the Mayor of London has to go to the Government cap in hand and ask for money to support essential infrastructure. As for provincial cities, they have even fewer powers; London has actually not done too badly out of it. It would be ridiculous to expect the mayors of Hamburg, Toulouse or Lyon, as in the report, to have this much sticky tape, as I always think of it, from central government preventing them finding local solutions, unleashing energy and harnessing the creativity of their own areas.

I welcome the fact that some local tax-raising is mentioned in the report. However, until locally elected representatives—whether they be mayors, councillors or leaders of combined authorities—can raise their money and be accountable for it, borrow money locally and raise taxes to pay for it, we are seeing only a delegation from central government and not true devolution. I very much welcome the report and hope that it is a long stride on the road to what I see as real devolution.

In my city of Bristol, we have five mayors over the whole combined authority, which the public sometimes find quite difficult to understand. With accountability must come clarity of roles, transparency of powers and the recognition that one elected individual, although they may be accountable to government, cannot be the only person accountable to the people. The big responsibilities of education, social care, the environment and all the services that underpin the least well off, cannot be managed by only one person. They must have a properly accountable team, enabling decisions to be taken to provide the resources to provide that. As many organisations have said, not least Core Cities, of which I used to be a member, the enormous power to the economy that our cities could give, the pride of ambition, the feeling of recognition by people in those areas that they are not secondary to London and do not see all the money going back there, is essential and, I believe, will motivate people. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, goes into this, too, in his report. “Breathing life into devolution” is essential, and I totally agree that we need government confidence to take this forward. The only way that unleashing local energy will really happen is if there are real powers—if people feel that they are in the driving seat and have a say and, if they do not agree, can throw people out.

I am very encouraged by the noble Lord’s report and hope that we are going to advance further on this agenda. I look forward to seeing the effect, which I believe will be transformational.