Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between James Grundy and Clive Betts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Grundy]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The issue is that it does not matter what the actual circumstances are. Regardless of the facts on the ground, Mayors are incentivised by the nature of their role to stand up and say, “I am fighting for my area.” It encourages them to concoct fights with central Government, regardless of the issue. Then we end up with this position where there is constant strife between central Government and regional Mayors.

The problem with regional Mayors—a number of colleagues including my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) have made excellent points on this—is that it creates one single figure representing in some cases millions of people. A huge amount of power is vested in that individual, and that is deeply unhealthy.

We have heard the arguments for a sense of conformity across local government. I fear that that approach replicates the errors of the 1973 local government reforms, which created ever-larger local authorities. I remember—it was before I was born—that the campaign against it was, “Don’t vote for Mr R. E. Mote”, because the feeling was that the decision-making process was being removed ever further away from small communities to large, more remote places. As I am sure the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) knows, because we share a borough, the people of Leigh in the 1970s campaigned hard to avoid being merged into the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, and we lost, much to our immense regret. Other communities, such as Warrington, that campaigned successfully to stay out of Greater Manchester are much happier in Cheshire. I know that the good people of Bury successfully campaigned to stay out of the much larger Rochdale borough that was proposed. I fear that we are replicating the errors of the 1973 local government reforms on a county level or, indeed, a multi-county level with these regional Mayors.

I am sure you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there is not universal approval for the idea that everywhere should have Mayors. I spoke on “Sunday Politics North West” a number of months ago, and there was cross-party agreement that Lancashire—your home county, where your fine constituency of Ribble Valley lies—wanted a combined local authority, not a Mayor, and I fully support that. It had universal cross-party approval. My understanding is that other areas, such as Cheshire, are basically not entirely on board with the idea of a Mayor covering the entire county.

We have heard about Cornwall, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth made a compelling case. The only bit I did not agree with was where he said that Cornwall was a special case. I agreed with every word he said except that, because I believe that every part of England that does not want a mayoral devolution settlement should not be forced to have one. Furthermore, I also agree with Opposition Members who said that the best sort of levelling-up deal and funding should not be tied to having a Mayor. That is an obnoxious provision with which I profoundly disagree. I am afraid that on that particular issue, the Government will not have my support. I place my grave reservations about that measure on record.

In broad terms, I think the Bill is superb. A number of improvements have been made during its progress, and as I have said before, I thank Members who have come forward with amendments, and I thank the Minister for her response on how they will address that. As I have said, I have grave concerns about the path of devolution that we are taking as a Government and those issues need to be addressed. One size fits all will not work across the whole of England. We have to address the serious issues at the heart of trying to hammer square pegs into round holes.

The Minister referred to the Greater Manchester trailblazer devolution deal, just as the Chancellor did in the autumn statement, but I would appreciate it if she conveyed to the Secretary of State that I, and other Greater Manchester MPs, would very much like to be briefed on that. While the Government may have spoken to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, I am afraid that consultation on the issue with Greater Manchester colleagues has not been forthcoming—I see the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wigan, nodding. I assume that, like me, she has received very little consultation, or none.

Over the past few years, there has been an unfortunate tendency for Governments and Departments to seem far happier speaking to regional Mayors than to Members of this House. Members of the House should firmly resist the idea of being turned into powerless cyphers. In my view, a Mayor is a part of local government. They should have a lesser role in the governance of this nation than we do as Members of Parliament. To dilute the powers of Members of this House is fundamentally wrong.

After all, the vast majority of Mayors, other than in London, where there is a full Assembly, have scant accountability mechanisms—there is no Greater Manchester Assembly or Merseyside Assembly. Vesting such powers in individuals who negotiate directly with Government Departments, with scant input from Members of Parliament whose areas those mayoral authorities covers, is an unsustainable position. I understand that that is not the fault of the Minister, but I hope she will stress very firmly to the Secretary of State that the issue needs to be addressed, and addressed quickly.

I have covered everything I want to say. Overall, the core of this legislation is extremely sound. I commend the work of the Minister and her colleagues, as well that of colleagues who worked on the Bill before she took up her role. The tension between devolution and localism has come up today and, unless it is addressed, it will continue to come up as we discuss other pieces of legislation. The thing about devolution is that everything tends to get devolved after time and as MPs we get asked about everything. If we become shut out of the discussion and the process, that will present problems, regardless of party and across the House.

[Mr Betts]

We have before us something called a Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. I agree with the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) who said that the Bill might be better if the planning elements had been taken out of it. The problem is that that would not have left much remaining, because essentially it is a planning Bill with bit of levelling up tacked on.

Indeed, as I said on Second Reading, the Bill has no new powers and there is no new money for levelling up and devolution. The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee has launched an inquiry into the funding of devolution and levelling up. We have just started taking evidence and it will be interesting to see what conclusions are found, based on that evidence.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for Leigh (James Grundy) that we are diluting the powers of Members of Parliament. Hopefully, what we are doing is taking powers from central Government and handing them down to local government. I am in favour of that; we do not do nearly enough of that in this country. Indeed, as Members of Parliament we sometimes have to recognise that we do not have that much power. The Government get on with their business, and occasionally they tell us what they are doing.

[James Grundy]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s sentiment, but my concern is that, effectively, devolved Mayors look increasingly like not local government but an interim tier of Government—almost like the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly.

[Mr Betts]

I will return to that, but I will first comment on the planning issues, which we will hopefully come back to at a future date. There are some challenges around housing targets and how we get to 300,000 if we do not have the building blocks at a local level. I am sure that will be an interesting discussion.

I am in favour of building on brownfield sites wherever possible, because this is about regenerating and bringing life back to many areas that have suffered incredible decline. I would say, however—the Government will have to listen at some point—that building on brownfield sites is more expensive. In my constituency, there are old industrial areas with chemicals in the ground and old derelict buildings that need clearing and improving before we begin to put something new in their place. That is an expense. At some point, the public purse will have to find the money for that to enable private sector development.

The other day, I sat almost entranced for half an hour by a briefing from Professor Philip McCann, who is now at the Alliance Manchester Business School but was previously at the University of Sheffield. His description of this country was staggering. He talked about the inequalities between regions in this country that make us different and more unequal than any other country in western Europe. He said that the inequalities between the richest parts of the south-east and the rest of the country are now wider than they were between East and West Germany at the time of reunification, which is staggering. The richest part of the country in the south-east has a degree of affluence, an income and gross value added levels that make it very similar to the richest parts of western Europe. The rest of the country, particularly northern areas, have productivity levels below those of the Czech Republic. It is staggering that that is where we have got to. One of the big challenges is to remove that inequality.

We are one of the most centralised and unequal countries, so the idea that central government is the way to level up is nonsense; we level up only by getting powers down to local communities. To come back to the point of the hon. Member for Leigh, with which I am not sure I totally agree, that probably means that we need something beyond the size of an individual local authority to enable the economic transfer of power on the scale that is necessary to make a difference—to attract overseas investment, to get the skills agenda going, to put the transport infrastructure in place, and to do all the things that we want to see. That is why combined authorities are probably a good way forward—I will put one or two conditions on that in a second—with or without an elected Mayor.

I was against elected Mayors, but I have come round to the view that they work. I would not impose them on an area, but it is right to have that option. Most areas will conclude from what they have seen elsewhere that having a focal point has helped combined authorities to establish themselves in the public mind. Perhaps it does mean that Ministers go to the Mayors, but so what? I would sooner have Ministers going to the Mayor of South Yorkshire than not coming at all, which was probably the case before.

I have some further caveats, because the Bill does not go far enough to address those fundamental inequalities. I will pick up on the point of the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). I remember that, in his time on the Select Committee, we discussed such issues and basically agreed, and I agreed with him today. He said that the Government have a “gradualist approach” and that we have a “patchwork” that lacks clarity, and he is right.

We do not have a framework for devolution that covers the whole country so that we can see where the powers are going to sit. The Select Committee has asked for that and recently asked for it again. I challenged the then Minister, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), when he came to give evidence to the Select Committee on why we could not see the operation of the subsidiarity that people used to argue for when we were in the European Union—the idea that things should be done at a local level unless there is a good reason for doing them at a national level. He said, “Oh that was a bit radical.” Well, it is a bit radical but it is probably right, and I hope that we can get to that position eventually or at least move towards it.