Devolution in England
Debate between Damian Collins and Graham Allen
Damian Collins
I agree that powers and decisions should not be forced on English communities by MPs who are not affected by the outcomes of their votes. However, I think that there is a case for devolution of the kind that we have seen in the Greater Manchester area to large English authorities—county authorities such as Kent county council, for instance—which should be able to take a strategic lead. My right hon. Friend is right about major infrastructure projects. Local enterprise partnership boards, for instance, are often better placed than someone in Whitehall to know which road and which rail network should be made a priority for funding and investment. Local leadership of that kind is greatly to be welcomed.
Mr Allen
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if all that we do relates to the question of English whipped MP votes for English laws, we may well recreate the worst features of the Whitehall system rather than devolving power to where it can be used more effectively at local levels?
Damian Collins
I think that there are two important debates to be had, and that it would not necessarily be helpful for them to become entirely enmeshed. There is a debate to be had about English votes and English laws, which is very important to the settlement for the whole United Kingdom. As one who believes in the Union, I think that we must get that settlement right. We need to look at it again, and we are doing so. There is another debate to be had about the role of devolution to city regions and larger strategic authorities in England, which might cause some regions to look with envy at others and say, “We wish we had some of those more devolved powers.”
In some respects, that debate is more specific. I think that it should be led by city and other local regions, presenting their own proposals, and that there should be an active dialogue in which the presumption is that devolution should and could be possible for those regions. As I said earlier, I think that health and social care should be a priority, alongside economic development and infrastructure. That is why I was particularly pleased by the announcement about Greater Manchester.
Many local authorities are already considering how services can be better integrated, and, in my area of south-east Kent and in Dover, the Kent Health Commission has examined the issue in some detail. GPs in Folkestone and Dover have been working on a pathway of proactive health care enabling more joint decisions to be made by GPs and social services. Such a system often leads to better-quality interventions, better advice for patients, and fewer occasions on which patients are required to go to a major hospital because of a failure in their treatment and care pathway. Obviously that is not only inconvenient for the patient, but a more expensive and often less effective solution. What I am proposing are common-sense reforms.
We should look beyond the city regions to the county areas. We should consider the role that could be played by more strategic authorities in not only receiving powers from central Government but managing the relationships between county and district authorities, and parish councils as well. In Kent we have three tiers of local government, county, district and town parish councils. We often hear the challenging cry, “Who is in charge?” It can be frustrating when so many powers are split between authorities, or it is not clear which is the lead authority.
I think that a degree of simplification and clearer structures under the umbrella of a strategic authority would make sense. We see that in part already with district councils working together to share resources on the environment and waste management and on housing allocation and provision. In east Kent we have seen the East Kent Housing group bringing together different districts and boroughs to work together on common housing strategies. That is a sensible use of resources and will deliver a better quality of service for local residents, and we should see more of it.
Could there also be scope to look at other central Government agencies working with a strategic authority in areas such as Kent? For example, we already have local flood management run in part by the Environment Agency and by the county council. There are also major strategic national projects that are of great significance to my community but on a scale that makes it right for central Government to take the lead. For example, in respect of the completion of the sea defences at Dymchurch on the English channel coast in my constituency, investment that has already been spent and that is currently planned amounts to around £130 million. That is clearly a significant capital investment. Many other schemes are managed routinely by the Environment Agency, the local authority and the local drainage boards. Do we really need three different bodies to manage some of that work? Could it not be better managed by devolving it to a local strategic authority that could oversee some of the work currently done by Government agencies operating within a national framework? Could not such work be done better locally? Those are issues we should look at, too.
I said at the beginning of my remarks that I wanted to look at the scope for devolving powers to communities. We have seen this in a number of areas, such as the devolution, effectively, of the management of schools to academies, so that schools can now manage their own budgets and, indeed, roll them over. That was a significant reform. There are head teachers in my constituency who say that gives them greater certainty in planning for the future, and they are perfectly able to manage their budgets and are doing so very well.
There are other areas of devolved government, too. In Kent there has been a particular success in devolving youth service provision to local communities. That is contracted out. I declare an interest as chair of the Folkestone Youth Project. It receives a budget from the county council, and I believe it delivers a better and more flexible youth service than was delivered before—it is designed around the people who use it and it is not run by the county council. It is not necessary for the county council to run that. It may be responsible and commission and provide the resources, but the communities can design it. We are already seeing that in library provision on a voluntary basis, where villages and parishes are coming up to take over the provision of their local libraries. Often they can design and run that service more effectively than the council could.