Oral Answers to Questions

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I know that the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), has had discussions with the Solent local enterprise partnership on exactly that point. Although this is of course a bottom-up process and we are reluctant to impose too many conditions in an old-fashioned, centralising way, he is making it very clear to everybody who is working towards local growth deals or new city deals that they must be based upon a partnership in the area. We want to ensure that the deals act as a catalyst for people to work across local authority boundaries, and indeed across political boundaries.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

6. What discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the role of decentralisation in the implementation of the Heseltine Review.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

I am deputy chair of the Local Growth Committee, which my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister chairs and which brings together Ministers from a wide range of Departments to focus on local growth programmes, including the delivery of recommendations of the Heseltine review. Local enterprise partnerships are submitting their strategic economic plans at the end of the month, and announcements on the growth deals will be made later this year.

[Bob Blackman]

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the review that the Communities and Local Government Committee is undertaking on devolving fiscal responsibility to London and cities throughout the country? Does he agree that this gives us the ideal opportunity to put back into the hands of local authorities the power that was taken from them?

[Greg Clark]

I do agree. I am looking forward to giving evidence to my hon. Friend’s Committee next week in pursuance of that. However, I do not think I am letting the cat of the bag when I say that I am strongly in favour of the direction of the inquiry. The fact that the Mayor displays his usual muscularity in forcing this on to the agenda is very much an illustration of the power of the devolution of powers that has already taken place.