Devolution: Yorkshire
Debate between Clive Betts and John Grogan
John Grogan
Interestingly, none of those nine local authorities has yet withdrawn its name from the 17 that signed up to explore the Yorkshire deal. Some have admitted to me that they have benefited from re-education at last week’s Conservative party conference and now better understand the Government’s position, but Councillor Carl Les, who is a very good friend of mine from my days in north Yorkshire, said today that he still favours the widest possible deal. He doubted whether he could persuade the Minister, but I am more confident that we can do so.
It is interesting to look at the geography, because it includes the north of the Humber but not the south, and I recognise that there would need to be strong links between the north and the south however this plays out. The proposed combined authority would control things such as transport. On the basis of deals elsewhere, it might have £150 million to spend that is currently spent by Whitehall. It would look after skills, and there are some imaginative proposals, including that the regional schools commissioner should report to the mayor because we need to improve the performance of Yorkshire’s academies. The mayor would also oversee the team that promotes international trade in Yorkshire.
There are lots of exciting ideas, but it is Yorkshire’s identity that matters to me. Whether at Keighley Cougars, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday or Leeds United, people do not chant, “Sheffield city region!” or “South Yorkshire!”; they chant, “Yorkshire!” [Interruption.] Anytime that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) wants to intervene, I will obviously take that intervention.
John Grogan
I thought so.
One newspaper that comes out of this whole saga with credit is The Yorkshire Post, and I want to read just two sentences from its editorial this morning:
“This debate is a litmus test which will define the future relationship between Ministers and Yorkshire. While the city-region model is working elsewhere, a Yorkshire-wide devolution deal has the potential to be truly transformative and Ministers will not be thanked if they’re unable to recognise the once-in-a-generation opportunity that exists at long last.”
John Grogan
I agree with the hon. Gentleman, although I would say that Keighley Cougars will rise again. We are missing out in Yorkshire. Take the Commonwealth games. They are possibly going to Birmingham; Yorkshire was not even in the frame, and that is because we do not have a strong, powerful voice arguing that things such as the Commonwealth games should come to us. I would want a competitive election, which a devolution deal based on the whole of Yorkshire would bring.
John Grogan
I was about to move on to to the Sheffield city region deal, so this is the moment for me to give way.
John Grogan
Perhaps to encourage my hon. Friend to do so, let me say that I am afraid that the Sheffield city region deal is much diminished. Obviously, Barnsley and Doncaster signed up, and there was the hope that various authorities in Derbyshire would be involved. Sadly, that has now changed. Although the deal is about the same in terms of money—slightly more than Manchester, but quite a bit less than the west of England—if we look at the powers we can do better in the whole of Yorkshire. There is no housing investment fund in the Sheffield city region deal, no control of railway stations and no community infrastructure levy. All those things are held by the Mayor of Manchester, so why do we have to have second best in Yorkshire? We can negotiate better than that across the whole of Yorkshire.
Mr Betts
I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. He accuses the Government of not talking, but they have talked at great length to the leaders of councils and to councils in the Sheffield city region. When the deal was signed up to by the four council leaders in the South Yorkshire districts in 2014, that was before Chesterfield and Bassetlaw came in. They came in at a later stage and if they had not, the deal would have been agreed and an election would have been held this year for an elected mayor. That will now happen next year. All those four leaders signed up to the election and the statutory instrument is being put through. I ask my hon. Friend to do a deal for his constituency and the rest of Yorkshire, and not to let our deal be held up on that basis.
John Grogan
I am slightly disappointed, as I was hoping that my hon. Friend would announce his candidature for Sheffield city mayor, but I will give way if he decides to make such an announcement tonight. The plain fact of the matter for my hon. Friend and for the Government is whether they are seriously going to impose an expensive mayoral election on the people of South Yorkshire when two of the four authorities are opposed to it. Are they seriously going to do that for a mayor who will have no powers and no money?
I am all in favour of all-party talks and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East has been working closely with the Government on this, but I would ask him, the Government and John Mothersole, who is the chief executive of South Yorkshire and a distinguished public servant, but perhaps a little too associated with one deal, whether we could try another plan—the best chief executives always have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C and a plan D—which I will suggest in a spirit of compromise. Members of all parties at a local and national level have been ringing me up over the past few days. Some have suggested a staged approach if there was a commitment to all-Yorkshire devolution. My hon. Friend has said himself that he would not rule that out in the future. Our good colleague, and former MP, Richard Caborn, has said the same. He would not rule that out. Could we not do it now? We could bring it in very rapidly. Perhaps we could have that staged approach with a mayoral election in South Yorkshire followed by an all-Yorkshire election a couple of years later. Those are possibilities.
I have one more suggestion to make to the Minister in a moment, but I just want to look briefly at one other factor. I said yesterday that an idea is serious once people start betting on it, and I noted today that a book has been opened on the first Yorkshire mayor. I was rather surprised that I was at 4-1. I am not sure whether anybody, even a member of my family, has put a bet on today, but I am ruling myself out. Various other hon. Members are on the list, but I will not embarrass them. I will say only that Jessica Ennis-Hill is at 33-1 and it surprises me that she is the first woman on that list, because there are many, many strong candidates. I can think of four women council leaders in Yorkshire off the top of my head, and it would be something if Yorkshire were to have the first female major metropolitan mayor.