Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Amendment) Order 2018

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 General Committees

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

I attended an event in Manchester on Friday, where the Minister was on a panel debate with the Mayor of Greater Manchester and a number of other Members, and we talked about the impact of High Speed 2 and investment in transport in Greater Manchester. During that debate, I noticed that the balance of power in the relationship between Greater Manchester and Government has changed. On the face of it, perhaps that change is subtle, but it is important.

I think back to when we were negotiating the first devolution deal and the establishment of a combined authority, and the relationship was one of subservience where Greater Manchester would ask Government for powers. It was anyone’s guess as to how certain powers and areas of investment were arrived at, but, by and large, the councils in Greater Manchester waited for Government to tell them what Government were willing to do. On Friday—I give credit where it is due—I noticed that the relationship is one of mutual respect—and also mutual challenge, which is important if devolution is to develop as our great cities need. It is important to recognise how things have moved on.

I found it interesting how different the remuneration discussions were for when the Mayor was brought in, compared to those for councillors. Most people recognise that Mayor of Greater Manchester is a significant role—in my view, it is on par with being a Minister in terms of power, responsibility and accountability to the electorate—and in that context there was a big discussion about how much that person should be paid, which was slightly odd to me, because at that time I was a council leader and Eric Pickles was telling us we were volunteers and boy scouts. The Government need to go back and look at the role of councillors in the new devolved settlement, because, just as Parliament can be disconnected from our towns and cities, I see that within a combined authority the Mayors or the chairs can become very much disconnected from the ward councillors representing their communities at a local level.

There is also an issue about retention and how we attract decent talent to local government to serve as local councillors. The decision to take away councillors’ pensions was a backward step—I acknowledge that the Minister was not in government at that point. That change was very popular with the public as they like taking pensions away from councillors because they are not always quite sure what councillors do.

My view is that councillors play a very important role. Many make sacrifices in respect of their careers and their families, and many give up promotions at work to spend additional time supporting the work of their local authority. Within this new devolved settlement, the requirement on those councillors will increase even further: they will have to contribute to the combined authority and to its sub-groups. Government ought to be proactive and look again at what we view the role of councillors to be in this new settlement. Are they volunteers? Are they there to be appreciated but not really taken too seriously? That was the tone when Sir Eric Pickles was in charge. Is it different now, because we recognise that power is being distributed further down? Will this new settlement reflect that?

On the housing investment fund, clearly any investment in housing is important, but the investment in that fund came at the same time that the housing market renewal scheme was cancelled in Greater Manchester. For those who do not know, the housing market renewal scheme was a programme of demolition, clearance and rebuilding of new, good-quality homes to replace substandard terraced housing that was built during the industrial revolution. In 2010, the housing market renewal scheme was cancelled completely. That meant that money that was due to go into that new housing stock was taken away overnight.

The money going in through the housing investment fund is a shadow of that for the housing market renewal scheme. I mention that in particular because although the housing investment fund has its role to play, we need to reflect the fact that it is about commercially viable sites for developers that are creditworthy and that are charged at a commercial interest rate. If the site is commercially viable, the developer is creditworthy and it will be a commercial interest rate, why does the developer not just go to a bank and borrow the money on the open market in the way that would be expected?

What is the role of Government in this new mix? It ought to be about addressing those sites where there is a commercial viability gap. For towns such as Oldham and many areas and communities in Greater Manchester, there is pressure to build on the green belt, through the Greater Manchester spatial framework, because we need units to be built, but the community wants the brownfield, old industrial sites that do not have value to local communities to be redeveloped. The cost of remediation and taking away contaminated material is so high that for developers it just does not stack up. I urge the Government to look at how they can do more to make sure that funding is provided for bridging the viability gap in those types of scheme.