Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett]

Of course; I said at the beginning of my speech that we are a pro-devolution party, but we want a comprehensive settlement. The people who must not be excluded from any new settlement are the citizens. The citizens of Greater Manchester should be part of any settlement. Indeed, where possible, power should be passed down to those citizens through what the former Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), has described as double devolution.

The programme motion allocates only two and a half hours in Committee—albeit on the Floor of the House—to debate all the amendments on the powers, functions and reporting mechanisms of any mayor who happens to be elected. That is clearly inadequate for such discussions.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the provisions relating to elected mayors in clause 3? Subsection (2) states:

“An order under subsection (1) shall not be used as a condition for agreeing to the transfer of local authority or public authority functions.”

Subsection (3) goes on:

“A mayor for the area of a combined authority is to be elected by the local government electors for that area”.

Does not that provide sufficient cover for what the hon. Gentleman is asking for?

[Jon Trickett]

Every one of the leaders I have spoken to—they have been negotiating with the Treasury, by the way, rather than with the Department for Communities and Local Government—has told me that, despite their objections, they have been told that they cannot have devolution unless they agree to a new form of governance, namely a metro mayor. That may or may not be what is on the face of the Bill, and we will see what the Government do in Committee and what amendments are tabled, but the truth is that this is a fait accompli. A single model has been imposed from on high. I invite Conservative Members to reflect on whether the only possible model for city and town governance involves a directly elected mayor with no accountability to a wider assembly. That is a presidential, not a parliamentary, model of governance, and it is anathema to the British constitution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am glad to have caught your eye in this very important debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am delighted to follow the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). His experience clearly showed through during his speech, and I largely agree with everything he said.

I am delighted to join my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in his enthusiasm for this concept, which is one of the largest devolutions of powers to local government since the 1970s. We have to be careful how we do it, because we want to get it right, but I have no doubt that, for example, in Gloucestershire, to which more than £1 billion of public spending may be devolved, there is considerable scope for innovation to deliver better services on behalf of the people of Gloucestershire.

In Gloucestershire, the county council, six district councils, the local enterprise partnership, the clinical commissioning group and the police and crime commissioner have worked hard during the summer to produce a very credible, 75-page document, “We are Gloucestershire”, in which they set out their bid for devolution to Gloucestershire. On Monday, six of Gloucestershire’s MPs met to discuss the document. I must tell my right hon. Friend that there was a large measure of agreement, although we have some concerns, which I shall elucidate in my short speech.

Approximately £3 billion of public money is spent in Gloucestershire. However, taking out the Department for Work and Pensions budget for pensions and benefits and certain parts of the education budget, we estimate that about £1 billion of spending is likely to be devolved. As my right hon. Friend knows, Gloucestershire has the considerable advantage that all the institutions I have mentioned are coterminous with the county boundary, which makes our bid considerably easier. However, the document that has been produced is very light on governance. On this I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). The devil is in the detail: how is this thing going to be managed? A delivery board will be needed, and all the partner institutions involved must be part of it.

We already have several joint structures in Gloucestershire: the £200 million business rate pool is one, and the joint working of Cotswold—my own council—West Oxfordshire, Forest of Dean and Cheltenham Councils is another. However, the really big prize in Gloucestershire would be the devolution of health and social services. That would be much easier under one authority, and it would stop the gaps that are currently emerging between different authorities.

There are two areas of concern: planning and elected mayors. Gloucestershire’s devolution bid states:

“We will integrate leadership and direction of the planning workforce across all agencies and appoint a Strategic Planning Commissioner to lead this work for Gloucestershire.”

That makes me uneasy. The district councils have local democratic accountability for planning. In my area, 80% of which is an area of outstanding natural beauty, planning is an extremely difficult and controversial matter. I would therefore be very uneasy to see it merged into one Gloucestershire-wide planning authority.

The second area of concern, on which I made a rather impish intervention on the Opposition spokesman, is elected mayors. I read out what the Bill says on the matter, so I will not do so again. The Government did make some concessions in the House of Lords by putting that clause in the Bill. However, I say to the Secretary of State that my feeling, from speaking to the authorities, is that if an elected mayor is imposed on Gloucestershire, this bid will not fly. At the moment, we want the leader of the county council to be in charge of the organisation. That is not to say that we will not move to an elected mayor in the future.

I think that having an elected mayor would have two consequences for Gloucestershire. First, we would have to move rapidly towards having a unitary authority, otherwise Gloucestershire would have too many democratic tiers. Secondly—I am not averse to this, I must say—we would have to lose our police and crime commissioner, because there would be no point in having another elected police body.

I want to raise one really important point with the Secretary of State that has not been aired in this debate, and that is the business of administrative savings. Whether the budget is £1 billion or more, there are currently a lot of Government mandarins administering it. When those people no longer have to administer the budget, I would like some of the savings to go to Gloucestershire. After all, Gloucestershire will have to employ extra people to administer it. It is only fair that some of the savings that the Treasury makes be devolved to Gloucestershire.

Finally and importantly, I point out to the Secretary of State that this excellent document was produced largely without consultation with Gloucestershire’s Members of Parliament. By their nature, Members of Parliament know better than almost anyone else what is going on on their patch and what their patch needs. It is therefore incumbent on any devolved organisation to have the closest possible co-operation with its Members of Parliament. I would like it written into any bid that Gloucestershire makes that the devolved organisations have to consult Members of Parliament on a regular basis. That must be meaningful consultation that they have to take notice of.

I warmly welcome the Bill. There are some difficulties with it and, inevitably, the devil is in the detail. However, it is a great concept that up and down this great nation of ours could unleash the potential of local enthusiasm and generate once again the Victorian idea of competition between local authorities to deliver better services on behalf of our people. That is surely what all of us here are all about.