Elected Mayors

Helen Jones 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.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on securing this debate and on how he has put the case against a one-size-fits-all form of devolution, which is what we are arguing about. I do not believe that what the Government are offering us constitutes real devolution. Real devolution would give powers to identifiable local communities, whether or not they wished to have a mayoral system, and would allow them to work with other local authorities as they wished. That is not what was proposed for Cheshire and Warrington. Instead, we were told that we must have a mayoral model and a Cheshire and Warrington local authority.

Much of my constituency—certainly on my side of the river—was not in Cheshire for a very long time; it was in Lancashire, and many people there still think of themselves as proud Lancastrians. They have little community of interest with some of the market towns of Cheshire, and much more in common with the nearby post-industrial towns across the border in Merseyside or Greater Manchester, yet we are told there is the only kind of authority open to us. No one has asked the people of Warrington whether that is what they want. They would be consulted only after a deal had been agreed. No one has asked them whether they want an elected mayor; I suspect that they certainly do not want one covering Cheshire and Warrington, because that is not sufficient local democracy.

I am profoundly depressed by the idea that power is better in the hands of one man—it usually is a man—than of many people. That is a depressing view of democracy, in my understanding of it. Although it might work in urban areas, it does not work in an area such as Cheshire and Warrington. It is of no benefit to my constituents to be run from Congleton or Macclesfield rather than London. Although a mayor would begin with only a few powers, they would be bound to gather more as time went on. Mission creep is built into the model.

[David Rutley]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

No. I am sorry; I do not have time.

I also want to comment on the deal that the Government are offering us if we have an elected mayor. Much of the deal is about things that are going to happen anyway, much of it retains powers for the Secretary of State and some of it diverts money away from Warrington to other parts of Cheshire. To take transport as an example, we are told that we would get a Warrington rail hub linking High Speed 2 and High Speed 3 or the west coast main line. That is great, but first of all, we do not even have a route for HS2.

[Graham Evans]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

No. I have said that I will not give way, owing to a lack of time. The hon. Gentleman must forgive me.

We do not have an HS2 route yet. HS3, which in my view would benefit the north much more, is still a distant dream, and does anyone really believe that no rail hub would be needed to link the two lines, whether or not we have a combined authority and a mayor? We are told that we will get free passage over the Mersey bridges instead of paying tolls, but we were promised that in the general election. Will the Government go back on that if we do not have a combined authority?

Then there are the areas where the Secretary of State retains powers, such as the housing programme. The combined authority would have flexibility over only 15% of the housing programme, which could—the word is “could”—include some rented property. When high-value properties are sold, a proportion of the sale will be given to the combined authority, but the proportion is decided by the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State must approve the housing programme.

None of that gives Warrington the powers it needs to build the kinds of homes that our communities need. Yes, we need starter homes for young couples, but we are also in great need of social rented housing. I suspect that all of us have seen people crying in our surgeries because they cannot get houses. Keeping power with the Secretary of State is not devolution. We are told that, under the employment and housing programme, 50% of the uplift on Homes and Communities Agency land—that is, new town land—will be ring-fenced for Warrington, but 50% of it will go to the combined authority. That is a transfer, to the rest of Cheshire, of money that should remain in my local authority. I do not see that as a good deal.

We are told that the combined authority can keep 100% of the growth in business rates over target, but who sets the target? The Government do. That is the first problem: there may be no growth at all. The second problem is that as business rates increase, grant will be lost. There is no extra money. The third problem is where that growth will come from. It will come from places such as Warrington, Ellesmere Port and Chester, not from the largely agricultural communities around the rest of Cheshire. In other words, it is another proposal to transfer money from poorer communities to better-off communities, and it is a con. It is a Tory proposal to ensure that the Labour-voting areas of Chester have permanent Tory Government. That is what this is all about. It is not about devolution to communities—[Interruption.] Yes, that is right. That is why my council has rejected it, and rightly so.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Mr Graham Evans, although you committed a dreadful crime in this room a short while ago by using the word “you”, I am sure you will not use it again.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wharton]

I consider my bubble burst, but it was worth a try to take what compliments might be on offer when the opportunity was there. They have eluded my grasp on this occasion. Devolution is an important matter. It is transformational and of constitutional significance for how we run our country. It is important for driving future economic growth and recognises that it is those living in the communities affected by the decisions made by Government at whatever level who are best placed to understand how those decisions should be made and the things that can be done to grow the economies we represent in our different constituencies and different parts of the United Kingdom.

[Helen Jones]

I am grateful that the Minister says it should be people in communities who decide these things. Can he explain why Birmingham had a referendum, voted against having an elected mayor and is getting one anyway?

[James Wharton]

I will explain the difference between the sort of mayors we have had before and the approach the Government are taking to devolution at this time, as well as why that is the right approach. Looking at the history of mayors, we have all known and experienced civic mayors. That important role recognises the contribution that local councillors have often made in representing their local authority. We saw a transition to local authority mayors pioneered under the previous Labour Government. That saw powers taken from local authorities and focused in that executive person. Indeed, the example that the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) gave was of powers coming from a local authority into that executive person, who would then use them in theory for the good of that area, with their democratic accountability and mandate.

The sort of mayors we are talking about with devolution hold powers coming down from central Government that are currently held by Ministers and exercised by civil servants. We want to give those powers to people who are closer to the communities affected by their exercise. We want to transfer those powers down. Where there is a significant transfer of Executive control and decision-making with those powers, we also want to ensure sharp accountability delivered by an elected person with the mandate to ensure that the work that needs to be done can be delivered, but who will be accountable to the electors of the area over which they are the mayor.

That area is not chosen by central Government. The process of devolution for any area is a deal, and that is a two-way process, but we ask areas to come forward and tell us the geography on which they think a devolution deal should be delivered. Rather than Government dictating centrally what the geography might be, we allow local communities, represented by their elected local authority leaders, to look at the geography of the economy in which they operate and tell us what they think is the right geography.

[James Wharton]

It is very clear. The Government do not have the power in statute to force any area to accept a devolution deal. It happens by agreement, working with local authority leadership. If an area is not happy with what is proposed, whether that is the geography, the powers or the mechanism of governance, the Government have no power to compel them to make that deal or to go down that route of devolution at that time. What is so welcome is that so many areas have done that and have recognised the opportunities to choose their own geographies.

Members have spoken about the overlapping and different-layered identities of our constituents. I represent Stockton South in Teesside, which is also within the larger Tees valley. My constituency is half in the old north riding of Yorkshire and half in County Durham for ceremonial purposes. People identify in different ways in my constituency. I of course understand that in any area or geography of any scale or size there will be differences of identity. The point of devolution is to identify the economic opportunities, and we have approached that from the bottom up. We have let those communities come forward, put their proposal on the table and persuade Government why it is the right thing. We do not accept everything that is brought forward. We work with them to test and understand why they want to make that deal, but that is the right approach, because it will give a geography that will last and stand the test of time.

We take the same approach with the powers that we are conferring with devolution. We allow areas to come to us with their bid, and we make a deal with them about the powers they want. There is not some centrally held list. There is not a restricted and narrowly defined number of things that an area can have. They can ask for whatever they want; it is a deal with Government. We have to agree, and we work with them on those areas in which we can find agreement, and hopefully we reach a deal in the interests of that geography and those communities, identifying the powers that will help drive forward the economy in that area.

[Helen Jones]

The Minister is being generous in giving way once more. Warrington would be subject to four different tiers of local government under the current proposed deal: an elected mayor, a combined authority, a council and parish councils. From what he is saying, can I deduce that if Warrington came to him with a proposal for more powers to the local authority, he would consider it?