English Devolution

David Simmonds Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

According to the Ipsos MORI veracity index, 41% of our constituents trust local councillors, with just 19% having the same expectation of Government Ministers. That is a reflection of the value we place on local leaders who know and understand our communities. Those local leaders will be getting a clear message from this White Paper: this Government feel that the men from Whitehall know best what their place needs. This is not bottom-up local leadership, but top-down templates for local government. This is not the chance to flourish as a place and a community with a unique identity and history, but an expectation of being subsumed into an anonymous structure that knows and cares little for local areas, focusing instead on Whitehall targets. Through the back door, by stripping local politicians of a say over important planning decisions and by imposing financial assumptions that further constrain local decision making, our local democracy is undermined.

Instead of genuine devolution, this White Paper sets out a reductive approach. It is a mishmash of new tiers and new taxes, taking decision making further away from residents. If the experience in London is anything to go by, it will cost them a fortune at the same time. More concerning still, the approach fails the key test of starting with a clear understanding of what we require our local councils to do. More than 800 services are delivered by each council on average, ranging from education to public health, environmental standards, children and vulnerable adult safeguarding, early years, libraries and museums, not to mention councils’ key regulatory functions, such as trading standards, housing enforcement and acting as the billing authority for billions in taxes. It is hard to see how demanding that all those local officers simultaneously reapply for their own jobs will help them to focus on the needs of their communities, not to mention cope with the huge additional responsibilities heading their way via legislation such as the Renters’ Rights Bill.

The approach also does not build on the successes we already see. It is common for councils to share services and staff to reduce the cost to taxpayers. Breckland and South Holland have shared a chief executive for many years. Trading standards has been a shared service across London for a long time. Those measures, driven by local leadership, are what deliver genuine savings and service improvements.

Let us look at some of the most serious concerns that the Opposition have arising from the proposals, above and beyond the years of disruption to council services and rising taxes. When Labour councils are telling the Government that they are already failing on their housing targets and that their plans are undeliverable, why would the Government be focusing on removing elected councillors’ say on planning, rather than focusing on building the more than 1 million units that already have planning permission? Why elect mayors to a timetable that is not in any way clear?

At a time when our constituents are labouring under a rising tax burden, the Government set out the chilling prospect of mayoral levies. Those are charged at nil rates by Conservative mayors such as Ben Houchen and Andy Street, but now top £471 per band D household in London under Mayor Khan. The black hole in local government finances just got bigger.

Imposing mayoral control over grant funding for housing and regeneration, detaching it from the host communities, and moving those decisions to a remote mayoral tier further undermine the concept of local consent for development. Perhaps most worrying for local council tax payers are the plans around Great British Energy local power plans, with the potential for even more local authorities to be taken to the edge of bankruptcy, as local energy companies have already done in Nottingham and Bristol.

In conclusion, this announcement could have been so much more. It could have been a chance to rethink from scratch the duties, responsibilities and funding of local government, and to ensure that its form follows its function. Our local leaders, many from my own party, will do their best with what is available, and we will have their backs as they do what they can for the interests of the people they serve, but make no mistake: this is a massive missed opportunity.

The White Paper shows that rewiring our state, rethinking our approach to local government and fulfilling the aspirations of local leaders and communities are being put aside in favour of bureaucratic and structural tinkering. The Minister once stood at the Opposition Dispatch Box and called for genuine fiscal devolution of powers across things such as education and demanded more say for local people to hold decision makers to account. Whatever happened to that local champion?