Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

Debate between Lord Brady of Altrincham and David Rutley

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

I have great respect for my hon. Friend, who is indeed a great friend. Like him, I would absolutely love to see devolution succeed in Greater Manchester, in partnership with authorities in the counties around it, including East Cheshire unitary authority.

[Mr Brady]

I am glad to have enabled my hon. Friend to speak for himself.

Amendment 42 seeks a very simple and not terribly onerous change. It would simply require the Government to report annually on how they have exercised their functions in order to demonstrate that they have not themselves exercised any of the devolved functions that rightly belong with the combined authority or the mayoral authority. There might be better ways of doing this, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will put forward his own proposals in due course. However, the underlying point is that although the Government have been very pleased to place obligations on local authorities through the process of forming agreements or deals, as the Secretary of State likes to term them, very little in the Bill as it stands provides any mechanism to hold the Government to account and ensure that they fulfil their side of the bargain. I think that would be welcomed by everybody who is an evangelist for devolution—as I am sure we all are.

The Minister alluded to amendments 43 and 44, which seek to provide an easier route for exit. I happily accept that, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said, it would be very difficult for any authority to leave a combined authority, especially a mayoral authority, at some point in the future. An enormous number of functions, agreements, financial obligations and so on will bind local authorities together, increasingly so as the years pass, and therefore no local authority would do this lightly. However, the ability to leave, should the devolution arrangements not work in practice for any one or more of the local authorities in an area, is, in some ways, the ultimate guarantee that no abuse should take place. It is particularly important that we should have such a safeguard if we reach the end of our deliberations without a referendum lock in place. If the public are not to be given the choice as to whether they want to have the elected mayor and this new structure of governance put in place over them, surely there must be a safeguard so that if, at a future date, the new arrangements were not working for the people of Trafford, Bury, Stockport or Bolton, they could seek to leave, without penalty, to find a new way of providing services and representation to the local community.

Amendment 51 calls for a referendum test to be passed. This also relates to Government amendment 4. I think the only reason the Government are so determined to overturn the amendment passed in another place which seeks to prevent conditionality—local authorities being told they are allowed to have devolution only if they accept the model of an elected mayor as a condition—is that negotiations in Greater Manchester have moved as far as they have under those conditions. It seems wrong that the Government are expecting local authorities to accept a particular model of governance as the price for this kind of devolution settlement, particularly if the Government do not have the self-confidence to consult the people and to believe in their own argument such that they could persuade the public that it is something they ought to welcome. This is the ultimate test of the Government’s arguments. The Minister is a very persuasive man, as we have seen in the Chamber today. I am certain that with his enthusiasm, charm and powers of persuasion, he could go out and sell this proposition to the people of Greater Manchester, and perhaps to those in Sheffield and other parts of the country. I wish that he would have the confidence in his own abilities that we all have.