Devolution (East Anglia)

Heidi Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and I pay tribute—

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jackson]

May I just finish the tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham)? He raised this issue very forcefully and robustly in the Budget debate in March, and I pay tribute to him for that. He is absolutely right.

[Heidi Allen]

I am just a turkey voting for Christmas, because following on from that point it occurred to me that there will also be a debate between MPs and the mayor. Who will be fighting for the infrastructure? I do not understand where the demarcation will lie.

[Mr Jackson]

That is a superb point about competing mandates, which was eloquently made in an erudite fashion by our hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk on the “Today” programme this morning. It is a very important point.

We also need to look at democracy and accountability. I repeat the point that there was very little discussion or debate with important people in local government before this deal was announced at the Budget, and I deprecate that. It is not right when we are talking about a potential expenditure of £7 billion that will affect 2.3 million people. We do not know what primary legislation will be needed, and we do not really know what the powers, duties and responsibilities of the elected mayor will be. I will develop that point a bit later.

There is also a question about resilience. One of the issues that the NAO brought out in its report was whether there is the resilience in the civil service at departmental level—between the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government—to manage this very complex issue of different deals across the country, because of the heterogeneous nature of each of the areas involved. I am referring to the Cities and Local Growth Unit in central Government, but also to local government. The NAO wondered whether there was the capacity to deal with this sustainably. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) knows that on the Public Accounts Committee we have seen that, in straitened financial times, when we do not have a benign environment, there have been significant problems about the sustainability of big projects, whether they are projects involving fire control, the fire service and fire authorities, the police, further education in particular, or of course local government. That is the case now, so what will it be like when we have really big budgets and functions across different boundaries?

The question is this: will devolution of the

“planning and organising services across institutional and geographical boundaries…lead to more integrated and efficient services”?

That question was put by the NAO. One only has to look at the health economy in the eastern region—at the problems at Norfolk and Norwich University hospital, at Hinchingbrooke hospital, and at Peterborough City hospital—to see how difficult it has been to align geographical areas to clinical care and to work between acute district hospital care and primary care trusts. But we are looking to do something on a much bigger scale in the future.

Of course, I welcome some aspects of the proposal—the devolution of local transport budgets, skills, adult further education and business rate retention. However, there is a lack of specificity, as well as an ambiguity, about these proposals. The Government say that over time funding streams will be put in a single pot in sectors such as transport and local growth. However, the NAO says that

“the government needs to provide a clear statement of the new accountability arrangements…aligned and coherent across government…many of the assumptions about devolution deals are untested.”

That raises great concerns about scrutiny and oversight. We got rid of the Audit Commission six years ago. We do not have a body that can look in detail at the spending priorities of the elected mayor and his cabinet. It is no good saying that we will have a scrutiny panel of, frankly, under-resourced Back-Bench MPs and small district councils to oversee these huge budget decisions and infrastructure projects. That does not really wash. We only need to look at some of the problems about cronyism and inappropriate contracts in some academy chains, and most recently the problems with the fire and rescue service in Cambridgeshire, to see that without proper accountability and oversight things can go wrong.

We need to ask questions about why there is not a proper timetable and timeline. Also, there is no clear statement of objectives. The NAO says that the Government do not have

“a clear framework for how the deals will link to other ongoing localism initiatives.”

That is an important point. The NAO also says that

“The expected…pace of future devolution deals is not known at present.”

I do not want to take too much longer, but it is important to put this point to the Minister. It is not good enough to rely on good will and a statement of intent, which is what most of the deals now are relying on. As I said, we got rid of the Audit Commission and despite improvements there is not an effective process for accountability system statements. It is no good the DCLG saying that it is reviewing accountability system statements and that it does not require any more primary legislation for oversight. I do not think that that is good enough.

More importantly, given that this major issue is about driving up economic performance and macroeconomic strategy—that includes infrastructure, regeneration, new housing and so on—no performance or cost data are outlined at the centre so that economic performance can be properly measured. In particular, no data are outlined for the proposal’s value for money to be assessed.

I will finish with a few questions for the Minister. I know others want to speak. I say in passing that we are in the middle of the EU referendum campaign, and we take different sides. I believe that in politics most things are a cock-up rather than a conspiracy, but I have to say that it is strange that those most in favour of the European Union are those most in favour of this regional governance scheme. I wonder why that is. They include the council leaders who wrote to the East Anglian Daily Times saying how wonderful the European Union was about six weeks ago. The small print says that the new East Anglian combined authority would be the intermediate body for the European social fund and other European structural funds. I see the fingerprints of a well-known former Deputy Prime Minister all over the proposals. I am young, but I am way too cynical.

When will we see primary legislation come forward to allow the mayor to fund infrastructure through business rates? What non-statutory spatial framework and what local plans will be put in place? What non-statutory supplementary planning documents will be produced? What will the joint investment and asset board do? What will its powers, duties and responsibilities be? When will we see a garden town in Fenland or west Norfolk? When are we going to see a taught degree university in the city of Peterborough? That has been an omission by the Peterborough Development Corporation over the past 30 or 40 years.

Will the Minister tell us about flood defence and coastal management? Will he tell us about the potential role of the regional schools commissioner? A lot of people are concerned about that. Surely the employment and skills board will duplicate some of the work of the local enterprise partnership. There is also the Orwellian-sounding, Stalinist tractor organisation that is the productivity commission. No doubt the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) would like that organisation; it is right up his street. The productivity commission—very Fidel Castro.

I generally welcome what the Government are doing, but I think there is a compromise.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wharton]

I am happy to confirm that to my hon. Friend. The Government have made a deal, and signatures were added to the document. We want to deliver on that deal and to meet the obligations to which we are committed by the deal, but we do not expect or plan to reopen discussions and to start again. Other areas want to talk about devolution and to secure deals of their own. It is very positive that East Anglia is forging so far ahead with that policy agenda, but we must recognise that if areas want to go back on deals that have been agreed and want to reinvent them before they have been enacted, we will have to look at the allocation of our time and resources to other areas that have not yet reached agreement and need attention and focus.

[Heidi Allen]

To be absolutely clear, I thought I heard music to my ears a moment ago—that devolution deals should come from the regions that want them. Given that all the parties that have signed a tentative document are not happy, for whatever reasons, what is stopping us from going back to the drawing board? I think what would work for us all would be Suffolk and Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire-Peterborough-Huntingdon. With that, we could find real traction and make things happen quickly.

[James Wharton]

I am conscious of time, but I want to be very clear: a deal has been agreed, on a geography that has been agreed, and it is not the intention of the Government to reopen discussions of geography. We will not compel any area to agree a devolution deal, and we do not have that power—the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 does not allow the Government to do so, and nor would we want to. If devolution is to last, it must be done with local agreement. When those agreements are reached, however, just as local areas expect us to meet our obligations as a Government, we expect them to deliver the devolution deals to which they have agreed.