Elected Mayors

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on securing this debate. It is better that we discuss the issues in this way than on “North West Tonight”. He started by saying that this debate was not about devolution, but it is about devolution, as well as about accountability for devolution. It appears from his remarks that he is in favour of devolution, which I am pleased to hear.

It is worth remembering the problem that the Government are trying to solve with this process. Secretaries of State already have all these powers, and the Government are going through this process because we live in a very centralised country—the power of Whitehall is unique. We see that in the gross value added performance of the regions versus London, with the difference between London and the north-west reaching its peak in 2009. Cheshire and Warrington has a local enterprise partnership and a strategic plan, and it is a relatively affluent part of the country, but its relative affluence has decreased over the past 20 years. All of us who represent the area should be concerned about that and should be considering ways to remedy it.

The fact of the matter is that our civil service is London-centric. Even now, London has higher public spending per head than any other region, including, amazingly, Scotland. That is revenue spend; on capital spend, we have seen IPPR reports stating that more is spent per capita in London than in the north-east and parts of the north-west by orders of magnitude. This measure is an honest attempt to fix that. If we proceed on the basis that we all want that, we can start to work on how we achieve it.

We have had two decades of failed regional policy, whether we are talking about the regional development agencies or whatever. The last Parliament started the devolution process with regional growth funds, the LEPs, city deals and growth deals. Some Labour Members opposed the process more or less at every stage—it is interesting that the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) apparently still opposes the Manchester mayoralty. The Government therefore had to engage with local leaders such as Howard Bernstein in Manchester. In 2014, he said that there had been more progress on the devolution agenda in the previous two years than in the preceding 20, which is a good thing. It is good that we are continuing to try to make progress on that.

Devolution is asymmetric, and everywhere is a little different; it is complicated, but that is probably right. As we proceed with implementing the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, there will be more devolution. A clear principle of the Act is that the devolution has to be asked for. I am not here to support Government policy particularly, but the devolution has to be asked for. There is no question of doing something without consent, as we have just seen in Cheshire and Warrington—a mayor will not happen in 2017 because the local council has said that it does not want one. So be it. The council is accountable, and it needs to take responsibility for its decision, but to say that a mayor is being imposed is a little rich; it really is not true. The phrase “At the heart of devolution is democracy” has been used. That is right, and it seems a bit harsh to take the Government to task for wanting to have an election, but there we are.

We are going ahead with devolution in East Anglia, Liverpool, Manchester and various other places. The areas that are being devolved—skills, transport, health, housing and planning—are things on which local people want local representatives to have a say. It is absurd that decisions on, say, skills and the sorts of things that businesses in Manchester need are made by people in Whitehall, rather than Manchester. Exactly that principle applies to Cheshire.

It is true that accountability is a sticking point, because even in Manchester and Liverpool there has been an issue with elected mayors. I mentioned “North West Tonight” at the start of my speech; I saw Joe Anderson, the Mayor of Liverpool, on it. He was arguing with a Labour party colleague who was against elected mayors and he said, “Why should Secretaries of State devolve large chunks of their powers to committees of local authority leaders who might meet every so often?” Joe Anderson put that well. There has to be accountability for the aspects of power being devolved from Secretaries of State. None of this makes any difference to the powers of a local authority—there is no upwards devolution, or upward movements of power to the Mayor—but there is accountability. Apart from anything else, the National Audit Office will not let the Government devolve this stuff, or will give the Government a hard time, if there is not clear accountability for that responsibility.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The National Audit Office does not make laws; the Government do. The Government can legislate for what they want to do.

[David Mowat]

That is correct. The Government can and should do what they want. My point is that we are talking about transferring power over hundreds of millions of pounds from Secretaries of State, and it is reasonable that the Government and the National Audit Office, as part of the process of government, should take an interest in ensuring that there is clarity about accountability.

Accountability works both ways. Just as the Government are right to impose or request accountability, those who decide that they do not want these powers, or who do not wish to ask for them, are also accountable. Warrington Borough Council, my own council, has voted down the proposal, which is completely its right. The council has an elected mandate, and the Government will not impose the measure, because it must be asked for. All I will say is that those people involved are also accountable to their constituents and to their region, with all that goes with that. If they have missed an opportunity, they are accountable for that, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Dorries.

I thank all the hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon—the contributions have been very thought-provoking—and I thank the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) for securing this important debate. It is important that he said that mayoralty was not suitable for all areas. He gave the example of Cornwall, which is not being forced to have a mayor. The cities in Scotland that have been offered city deals, with funding contributions from the UK Government, have not been asked to have a mayor either. It is not within the civic tradition of Scotland to have a mayor. Quite often, we will have a civic head in a Lord Provost and a political head in the leader of the council, but we have not been asked at any point to have a mayor as part of this process.

A very interesting report was brought out just yesterday by the Scottish Cities Alliance, called “Empowering City Government”. It contains significant discussions about what more the seven cities in Scotland might get from the powers coming to the Scottish Government as part of the devolution process, and about what more they might ask for. Mayors are not one of the many asks in that report. So this issue is not only being discussed in England.

It was also very interesting that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston referred to the Communities and Local Government Committee report and mentioned consultation, because when the Committee, of which I am a member, held a public session in Manchester about the city deal there, members of the public, trade union representatives and a range of interested people expressed a huge amount of concern especially about health devolution. The people there did not quite understand what was being offered to them, how it would benefit them or what the full implications might be. What exactly it will mean is still being teased out. I share the concern that the hon. Gentleman expressed about the lack of transparency about the process, what is being offered and where the public fit in the whole scheme of things.

It has been said that perhaps not everybody can name their council leader. I can assure the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) that the council leader in Glasgow, who is a Labour council leader, is well known. The janitors in the city are currently out on strike and they are wearing face masks with the council leader’s face on them, so he is well ken’d and well known, although that is not perhaps working out the best way for him.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned how centralised the UK is, which is true—London is the great sucking machine that takes all the spending and all the jobs. It is very interesting that he made a comparison with Scotland, because we know anyway that we are subsidising London and have been for many years. The civil service is also in London—the hon. Gentleman mentioned that too—and the Government are intensifying the situation, with the HMRC closures, and other Departments locating back to London.

[David Mowat]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

There is not a great deal of time, and I want to let other Members speak.

[David Mowat]

I thank the hon. Lady. For the avoidance of doubt, if my constituency and that of the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) were in Scotland they would both receive massively more money per head than they do through the Barnett formula. The notion that Scotland subsidises London is bizarre.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman might find it bizarre, but people in Scotland do not. The Aberdeen region city deal was £550 per head, whereas the figure for Manchester was £2,130 and for Bristol £1,207, so Scotland is losing out compared with city deals in the rest of the UK.

The point about democracy and the chaotic structures that are being created has been well made. The now many layers of local government in England increase the lack of democracy in many cases, and powers have been transferred away from and above local people and local government to a layer that is further away from them. I understand that the Public Accounts Committee has challenged the effectiveness of the devolution deals so far.

The hon. Member for Warrington North argued against the one-size-fits-all approach, and I absolutely concur with her. She mentioned the notion that power devolved is power retained, with local authorities perhaps not getting all the things they expected and hoped for, and that certainly seems to be the case with some of the deals—more things have been asked for than have been allowed. The question whether it will be a Labour or a Tory mayor is interesting to observe from my position, because when local government reform was taking place in Scotland in the late ’90s, there seemed to be a bit of a sense that some areas had been pockled in favour of Labour or Tory councils-to-be. There are still issues there, with Glasgow not doing as well as its wealthy neighbours and people from round about using the services there. There remain issues about who pays for the services.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) blamed many people for the loss of industries in his constituency, but he did not blame central Government, which I find curious. Responsibility is important; a mayor should have responsibility and accountability, but the buck must stop with central Government and the job policies that they create. They must ensure that the conditions are correct. In Scotland we have also seen the loss of heavy industries, but we are now in a position to make a bit of a difference. The shiny example is the saving of the Ferguson shipyard in Inverclyde, which had been run down over many years. The Scottish Government put in investment and found a buyer, and the shipyard is now thriving and taking on apprentices.