Draft West of England Combined Authority Order 2017

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 General Committees

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Wilson.

Here we are again, seeing the machinery of devolution making progress. Our local leaders are by and large supportive. The quotes that have been published from council and group leaders of different parties are broadly supportive, but they are heavily caveated as well. Although there has been agreement for a devolution deal here, there is still a lot of cynicism about the requirement to have a directly elected Mayor as part of the package. We know that for some people that is a big issue that still needs to be resolved. Indeed, it has been a barrier for a lot of other devolution deals that have not made it through—a barrier that some simply cannot get over.

I would repeat a statement that I have made several times in Committee and on the Floor of the House: we still demand more from our local areas for devolution than we demand from our own Parliament. We do not expect the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be directly elected, but, for a fraction of the power that they hold, we demand that direct elections take place in our areas. If we believe in devolution and in power being distributed closer to the communities that we are there to serve, we need to learn to let go. Part of that is about not putting unnecessary requirements on local areas.

As it happens, there has been consent from the component councils in this case, so it is not for us to block the order, but we want to see progress made on areas where, for whatever reason, a Mayor is not acceptable to those areas. It is wrong that some communities are not being given devolved powers or the investment in housing and infrastructure that we see in devolved areas because of that position.

It is good to see investment in the housing fund. The £30 million is in line with the funding allocated in different areas, although it is over a longer period. It is welcome that the Government are taking a longer-term view on funding and ensuring stability, so that areas can genuinely develop a recyclable fund to ensure housing sustainability in the long term. Will the Minister say whether areas that have already signed up to devolution deals, but which have only a 10-year housing investment fund in place, will have the deal extended in the way that it has been extended in this order?

We need to get the public on side, but there is a long way to go. We might think it is hard to get council leaders to sign up to the deals—we know how painful that can be in some areas—but the public are still not a part of the debate in any meaningful way. The reason why only 1,800 people responded to the public consultation is that they do not feel connected to this flavour of devolution that is taking place. I have a concern—I suspect the Government have the same concern—that because the public have not been brought on this journey, turnout in a lot of areas could be very low. Before the positions can grow and develop, they could be undermined from day one by low voter turnout, affecting the legitimacy of that position.

Finally, we talk about devolved powers, but real power is about the ability to effect change and having the levers of power and control. What we tend to see in a number of the devolution deals agreed so far is not powers being devolved, but local areas almost co-commissioning central Government responsibilities. For example, when we talk about Department for Work and Pensions responsibilities, we are not giving local or combined authorities the power to make changes at a local level; rather, we are effectively asking them to co-commission things such as the Work programme. We talk about health devolution in other areas, but actually it is very narrow devolution and the levers of real change are simply not provided. A lot of the powers that are being devolved are existing powers that are already available to local authorities, whether for policing, fire and civil defence or for transport, in the way that is being packaged in this order.

It is absolutely right that we continue the devolution journey, but we need to accept that we are very early into it. If the principle behind the order and the requirement for a Mayor is about getting the machine going and showing proof of concept, then at some point we will have to come forward with a devolution framework for the whole of England that does not pick areas off against one another, but has an answer from the Government—the Opposition will do our bit too—to ensure that every area gets the type of devolution that is currently available only in some areas.