Draft Combined Authorities (Finance) Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
I place on the record my thanks to my officials, since this is the last of the devolution orders of which we have had a huge slew over the past few weeks and months, as the shadow Minister and the Whips know only too well. I thank my officials for all their support and guidance throughout the whole process. The draft order before us is the last one, which makes good on our commitments.
On blue light services, yes, the fire and rescue precept will be collected in the way that the shadow Minister highlighted, but it will also be shown separately on the bill so that taxpayers know exactly what the fire and rescue service is precepting on them.
On the referendum and the principles for precept rises, the authorities have to go not to the Government for permission, but to the people.
Jim McMahon
Will the Minister concede that the threshold for triggering a referendum is set by the Government, not the public?
Andrew Percy
It is set by Parliament, actually, which is elected by the people.
The hon. Gentleman talked about accountability. Throughout the debates we have had on these various orders I have made the point repeatedly that we require an elected Mayor at the top so somebody can be held to account for the precepting decision. If it were done through any other structure—a combined authority chair or whatever—there would not be that direct link or accountability.
I am always happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. I will be delighted to meet him to discuss the future of devolution if our constituents do us the honour of returning us here on 8 June. Of course, it is perfectly possible that he could be in my shoes on 9 June, and I could be going to him to express my support for him in his new role as the Minister with responsibility for devolution. I commend the order to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
There is such excitement, among Conservative Members anyway.
As I was saying, the order also provides the necessary powers for the allowances for the Mayor and other members of the combined authority.
The origin of the order is in the governance review and the scheme that was prepared by Greater Manchester in accordance with the requirement in legislation. In 2016, Greater Manchester published two schemes that set out its proposals for powers that could be conferred to Greater Manchester in 2016, as provided by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009.
That first consultation ran from March through to May of last year and the second from July through to August. The combined authority provided the summaries and the Secretary of State considered those, as per the statutory requirements. In conferring those functions, the Secretary of State has concluded that they would indeed be likely to lead to an improvement in the exercise of the aforementioned statutory functions.
In considering it appropriate to confer local authority powers on the combined authority and make constitutional changes, the Secretary of State has, of course, had regard to the impact on local government and communities. Importantly, from a local democracy point of view, all 10 of the constituent councils on the combined authority have consented to the making of the order.
You will be pleased to hear in conclusion, Mr Hanson, that the Government are making good progress on implementing the devolution deal to Greater Manchester. The draft order we are considering this afternoon is a fairly significant milestone, contributing to greater prosperity in Greater Manchester and opening the door for what we want to see, which is a more balanced economy and continuing economic success for Greater Manchester, which is already playing such an important part in driving forward the northern powerhouse agenda and the economic development of this country. On that basis, I commend the draft order to the Committee.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
The Manchester Evening News reported at the weekend pressure from Conservative Back Benchers to scrap HS2 to fund the Brexit bill. Will the Minister confirm that HS2 to Manchester will go ahead, to time and to the budget that has been outlined?
Andrew Percy
There has been no change to the Government’s policy on HS2. I remind the hon. Gentleman that, in addition, there is £13 billion of other investment. Over the next two years, particularly on the trans-Pennine line, there will be new rail, new carriages and new services—a whole new passenger experience. There will be over £2 billion of investment in that important transpennine route under the Government. The northern rail franchise will operate on an improvement basis, unlike the no-improvement basis when it was run by the Labour party.
Draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Functions and amendment) Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman spotted my deliberate mistake. I was making sure that people were awake for this important Committee. I may have inadvertently said Bedford when I meant Bedworth—I apologise if I did indeed say that. It was a deliberate accidental mistake, if such a thing can exist. My geography gets a little pasty south of Sheffield, being a proud Yorkshireman.
I welcome the fact that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, welcomes the draft order. He tends to be consistent in his contributions to these debates: he welcomes the general principle, but then he goes on to criticise the draft order. All I will say is that we must be doing something right with these deals, because two of his parliamentary colleagues have decided that these roles are so important and interesting that they have deserted the parliamentary Labour party to run for Mayor in Liverpool and in Manchester.
We are, of course, attracting big names. I cannot remember the name of the Labour candidate for the West Midlands, but I can remember the name of Andy Street, who is the excellent Conservative candidate. He is obviously the only candidate with a proper vision for the whole of the West Midlands, and we expect him to do very well come the elections. I am sorry that I cannot remember the name of the Labour candidate, but the fact that we are attracting big names to run for these roles is an indication of how much influence the new combined authorities have.
I think the shadow Minister made two policy announcements today: he recommitted the Labour party to the establishment of metropolitan councils, and then he said, “We want to be equals with Scotland and Wales.” I am not sure whether that is a new Labour policy of a Parliament for England, but those were two interesting Opposition policy announcements.
The shadow Minister said that there will be no real powers and he talked about local taxation. Shortly, local authorities will be able to retain 100% of business rates, and the Government have given them much more freedom with business rate discounts. We have given them flexibility to offer reductions, should they wish to do so.
Jim McMahon
Does the Minister accept that there is a world of difference between fiscal retention and fiscal devolution?
Andrew Percy
We are giving much more control and certainty to local authorities than ever was the case when the hon. Gentleman’s party was in government.
Andrew Percy
Well, they were not really good old days. If they were such good old days, Labour would not have left office with unemployment much higher than it was when they came to office, the economy would not have tanked and people would not have voted them out. They cannot have been that jolly. Certainly, the people in my constituency who were sacked on the Labour party’s watch do not think of them as good old days.
Andrew Percy
I am just responding to the hon. Gentleman’s point. I have noticed in a number of these debates that he makes a point, I respond to it and then he has a go at me for doing so. It is an interesting debating technique.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned employment and skills. He said there is nothing in the draft order about the DWP and skills. The truth is that combined authorities will have full retention of the post-19 budget by the start of the 2018-19 academic year, and they will also chair the area-based reviews for post-16 skills provision. That includes the power to co-design employment support for the hardest-to-help claimants. Of course, that will be done in partnership with central Government—the DWP—because, quite rightly, they have a national framework for what they want to achieve in getting people back to work.
The deals confer a power that does not presently exist, which enables the new local structures to co-design that employment support. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the best way to achieve for people who are looking for work or who have employment and skills issues is with a partnership between central and local government. The co-design power, which the hon. Gentleman was a bit sniffy about, is actually really important, and I think the West Midlands will value it.
I do not think there is much more to say than that. I wish the shadow Minister well with his shed building—I am available to come and open it. Come the 2020 election, he will go to his potting shed and prepare for what he will hope will be a flatlining number of Labour MPs. I do not think he will go to his potting shed to prepare for victory.
I commend the draft order to the Committee, and we wish Andy Street all the very best for the upcoming election. I know that the people of the West Midlands will be tuned into this Committee. They will have heard the plugs for both the Labour and the Tory candidates, so we will have made a definitive impact on the election. This is an important milestone and an important step in bringing this devolution deal to fruition.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Tees Valley Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
The shadow Minister generally makes reasonably positive contributions in such statutory instrument debates. I enjoyed his comments about public engagement, in which he seemed to criticise us for having so few people engaging in the process, and then he suggested—I am not sure how this sits with the first comment—that we should perhaps listen to the seven people he highlighted.
There were 1,911 responses to the consultation, of which 74.46% agreed that a partnership approach was important. That suggests that those who took part generally believed that bringing the five authorities together was important. Nearly 65% of respondents agreed that the Tees Valley should strengthen its partnership approach through a new combined authority, so there was clearly strong support for that, and 86.4% agreed that economic development was an important area for—
Andrew Percy
The hon. Gentleman must stop doing this when I am halfway through a sentence. Just let me finish my point and I may give way in a moment.
More than 90% agreed that employment skills were an important area of economic growth for the Tees Valley. There was therefore strong support generally for the content of the order and, among those who took part in the consultation, for partnership working and the construction of a combined authority. I have now finished my point and would be delighted to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Jim McMahon
I interrupted the Minister in mid-sentence to try to save him from the cul-de-sac of a point that he was making by conflating two separate consultations. A consultation was carried out by the local enterprise partnership at local level, and the Minister is right to say that it had a significantly higher response rate than the Government consultation did. However, the consultation on the order before the Committee today received 28 responses—that is what the Government paper says. It was a separate process and a separate consultation. Let us not conflate the two in an attempt to demonstrate that the Government have done better than they have.
Andrew Percy
I am not sure that I follow the hon. Gentleman’s point, because consultations have been undertaken at various stages and I was referring him to the responses, which clearly show that a majority of people in the area understand the need for the local authorities to work more closely together. That is why they have shown support in the consultation.
We have of course debated the public engagement element before. I note that the shadow Minister said that he did not want to repeat his previous comments, and then promptly went on to repeat some of them. When we have discussed such matters before, we have of course traded arguments across the Committee, and I have repeatedly made the point that, as I think he accepts, we must not pretend that the formation of a combined mayoral authority is the talk of the Dog and Duck. It is not necessarily something that many people will get involved in, in a practical sense. That does not mean that they do not understand or agree about the need for and importance of local partnership working; I think that they do.
The example I have used previously is the London mayoralty. There was a lot of scepticism about the position when it was first created, but now Londoners would not wish to be without it. It is difficult to say to somebody in an area, “This is what it will look like.” Once this is actually in place and people see—hopefully, depending on who is elected and how good a job they do—the combined authority and the Mayor working together for the good of the area, with additional money from Government and additional powers, people will be engaged in that.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has put significant amounts of money aside in the run-up to the mayoral elections in May—they will be held in a number of places across the country—to promote them and encourage people to go out and vote. These are new structures that will take time to bed in, but I am sure it is something the public will follow with interest in their localities.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned English devolution. I will take no lectures from the Opposition, having spent 10 years as a local government councillor in the 13 years of a Labour Government—
Andrew Percy
They were hardly the good old days. I do not remember a great deal being devolved to us other than responsibility with no money.
The hon. Gentleman tempted me down the Brexit route. I am always fascinated to hear those people who were on the losing side of the campaign, and who did not understand the people who voted for Brexit, try to interpret why people voted to leave. They now stand up in this place and repeatedly tell me, somebody who did campaign and who represents an area that voted strongly for Brexit, why people voted to leave. It is amazing how they seem to be the only people capable of interpreting the votes of those they did not understand in the referendum campaign. But I am not going to go down that route, Ms Buck, because I can see that you are looking at me to bring me back to order.
As I said in my opening speech, this is an important step in getting the devolution deal implemented and the new money out the door and to the Tees Valley, where I am sure it will be spent for the benefit of the local economy and local people.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
Well, I suppose I should begin by welcoming what seemed to be some positive comments. I am getting used to the shadow Minister in particular being positive, then panning the entire policy for the rest of his contribution, but we are making progress all the same.
One of the things I should have done in my speech, as the shadow Minister did, is pay tribute to the work of those people in the local authorities who have brought this deal into being and have worked incredibly hard on it. I have met them a number of times since I took on this role and have been very impressed by the way in which they have engaged in the process and buried some of the traditional challenges that local authorities sometimes have with one another in neighbouring areas to come together on this deal. Obviously, the Mayor of Liverpool is in the same boat. It is very impressive and they deserve credit for it.
I cannot let the shadow Minister’s comments on northern powerhouse funding and the general commitment to it go answered. It is simply not the case that substantial resource has not been put behind it. Only two weeks ago, I was in Manchester launching the £400 million investment fund that is going to provide anything from £25,000 to £2 million of support—funding and borrowing—to small and medium-sized enterprises across the north of England. It was only at the beginning of this year that we announced how £556 million of growth funding from the Government to the north was going to be allocated.
Jim McMahon
I am sure Greater Manchester council leaders fully appreciate the £400 million—not least for the fact that the Government were cutting more than £400 million from their budgets this year alone.
Andrew Percy
I do not mind taking lectures from people on any area of policy if their own position is consistent, but the Opposition’s position going into the general election was to promise not a penny more for local government. They were elected on the same mandate as we were when it came to local government funding, which was not a penny more. That was their policy.
Andrew Percy
No, we have done this before. That was the policy of the Opposition, so lectures on local government finance when those were the words of the former shadow Chancellor are a little bit difficult to take.
To get back to my point on funding, the £556 million from the local growth fund for the north is the lion’s share of the bigger £1.8 billion pot, and we announced £71.95 million of that for the Liverpool City Region in January. If we consider those funding figures, as well as what my area in the north is getting per head compared with what Londoners got, it is simply not the case that resources are being provided to other parts of England that are not being provided to the north. We did much better out of that funding than many parts of the south of England. We are also committed to £13 billion of investment in Transport for the North and the growth funding I mentioned is part of a broader £3.4 billion package.
I recall that at the 2010 election—not going too far back in history, although I think the Labour party was still electable at that point—the policy of the Opposition, who were the Government of the time, was to cut infrastructure spending if they won. That was their policy. So, again, lectures on infrastructure spending are a little bit difficult to take.
The shadow Minister talked about future devolution agreements and criticised me and the Government, and whoever else, for failing to bring those deals forward. Progress in Cheshire was paused by Warrington. That was not a decision by Government—it was a decision by Warrington. I have met Warrington Council since then. I sat down only yesterday with the Labour leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council. In the case of Warrington, they have now taken that pause off and wish to proceed with a deal and a proposal. It is for the local area to come up what they think that deal should be and what they want to see in it. The Government remain open to that.
The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned Lancashire and criticised me or the Government again. We have not been presented with a devolution deal for Lancashire. We have been presented with a proposal for a combined authority non-mayoral, for which several local district councils have now withdrawn their consent.
Andrew Percy
Well, it is called local democracy. It was a Labour council in Warrington that decided to pause the deal in Cheshire, and it was Labour councils in the north-east.
Andrew Percy
I am sorry. She can keep saying a line but, when everybody has panned this being from our side or from the council itself in the case of Surrey, she should bring forward evidence of a sweetheart deal. I tell the Committee that all Surrey has asked for is exactly what Liverpool is already getting, which is a pilot for business rate retention. The difference is that the Liverpool City Region will get it a year earlier. Unless we have done a sweetheart deal with Liverpool, we have not done a sweetheart deal with anybody else. The Opposition should stop peddling that particular line.
Draft Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Order 2017
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
It is always a delight to debate the future of devolution and the position of the Mayor with the shadow Minister, as we have done when considering every single such statutory instrument, and as we probably will when we debate the next draft order this afternoon. I welcome what I think is his tacit support for the deal and I will try to respond briefly to his points.
The shadow Minister compared the directly elected Mayor with the UK Parliament. As I keep making clear whenever we debate these statutory instruments, and as I will no doubt have to keep making clear in future such debates, the difference is that Parliament is elected from across the whole United Kingdom and is accountable for the decisions made throughout the country, whereas for these devolution deals there is nobody elected from or accountable for the entire geography of the area. When maximum powers and budgets are being devolved—shared funding is an example—we insist on having somebody accountable for and elected by the whole area, which would not be the case if we simply left it up to the combined authorities. His analogy with Parliament falls down at that point.
The shadow Minister spoke about the history of local authorities working closely together in Manchester. Manchester is probably the best example in England of authorities working together over a long period. For the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough deal, we have had to apply the statutory tests, which require that the area covers a functional economic area and that it improves the function and exercise of statutory powers. Both of those tests have been met. He also spoke about the scale of devolution. All I will say about that is that we have an investment fund of £20 million a year, a £100 million housing and infrastructure fund and a £70 million fund specifically ring-fenced for Cambridge City Council. That is substantial and very real devolution.
The shadow Minister asked about skills funding. As he will be aware from previous debates, a number of deals include the devolution of post-16 or post-19 skills funding. As one would expect, there is still a national policy on our education system, but the two do not necessarily run contrary to each other. We have made good on our pledges on devolution in the area of skills.
Jim McMahon
Does the Minister agree that there could be a compromise position? We could meet the objectives of having regional schools commissioners and of having devolved arrangements by allowing the boundaries for regional schools commissioners to be coterminous with those for combined authorities.
Draft Combined Authorities (Overview and Scrutiny Committees, Access to Information and Audit Committees) Order 2016
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
I thank the shadow Minister for his warm words and his support for the provision, because it is important. I am also pleased that he is excited by the creation of combined authorities. I, too, get really excited at the creation of combined authorities. We should go out for a pint some time and discuss it; we can probably guarantee that nobody else would want to join us. [Interruption.] I heard a “Hear hear!” there.
These bodies are important. They will take powers and money from this place and devolve decision making over them to local communities. As I said in the debate yesterday, it is true that a lot of people in the Dog and Duck are not talking about this, but it is a developing process. As the structures come into place, people start to see that the Mayor they are electing is not only somebody with a chain around their neck who goes around opening schools and doing all of the civic stuff—important though that may be—but somebody with real power. The evidence from London shows that, once the structures are in place, people appreciate that and engage with Mayors more.
Although it is strictly outside the subject of the debate, I will say something about the spatial plan. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate that I responded to on behalf of the Planning Minister, spatial plans can be signed off only if all the constituent members of the combined authority sign it off. Those members are the leaders of each individual council. It is not for me to set that timeframe; it is for that combined authority to determine whether it wants the process to go through their internal overview and scrutiny structures. If any council leader who is a constituent member of that combined authority wants to put that plan through the scrutiny functions in their local authority, that is a matter for them. They can do that today; they do not need to wait for other combined authorities, or for those overview and scrutiny functions, to appear.
Jim McMahon
I am not sure that what the Minister has mentioned is quite in the spirit of scrutiny, which allows for members of local authorities and the combined authorities in the measure to hold decision makers to account. Statements from the leaders of the councils on spatial framework scrutiny in Greater Manchester give me the impression that they themselves will decide whether they want to be scrutinised or not before the decision is made. That does not seem to be in the spirit of the measure. At the moment, there is no requirement for the spatial framework to be passed by the component councils; the requirement is only that it is passed by a majority vote at the combined authority itself. Will the Minister give us some clarity on that?
Andrew Percy
I believe each constituent council has to consent to that plan; I will write to the shadow Minister on that. The fact remains that these are not unelected individuals—these are the elected leaders of each local authority that makes up a combined authority, who started this process and who have to agree to it. If they or their constituent councils want to go through the current scrutiny process that they have at the moment, they can do that of course. The situation will be resolved as soon as the elections are undertaken and the Mayor and the overview and scrutiny functions are in place.
It is not possible for me to create a structure now for something that has not yet come into being, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the plan should be subject to public engagement, as should all major planning decisions. There has been a consultation—again, as I said in the earlier debate, I cannot pretend that lots of people necessarily engage in planning consultations, just as they have not engaged in the establishment of these combined authorities, but there is that process. The hon. Gentleman made his point in the Westminster Hall debate, and he has made it again.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman about public access, the final issue that he raised. I am more than happy to support and encourage these combined authorities to make their meetings as accessible as possible, be that online or whatever. Live webstreaming meetings involve cost, of course, and it is for each local combined authority to determine its particular processes and how it wants to do that.
When I was on the city council in Hull, we had live webstreamed meetings; I think we got 60 views afterwards, which was the total number of councillors on the council, so I am not sure how well watched they were. However, the meetings were available to people, and ensuring that there is as much accessibility as possible in the process is important. However, we should remember that the majority of people who will make up these overview and scrutiny committees are locally elected councillors, who are, of course, chosen by the people to represent them, and they will do an important job of holding to account the combined authority and the Mayor.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and amendment) Order 2016
Debate between Jim McMahon and Andrew Percy(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
There are a few issues to address. Not all of them relate directly to the order, but I will try my best to answer anyway.
I congratulate the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, on his appointment. This is the first time that we have faced one another across the aisle since his elevation, and it is good to see him here.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned gaps in the measures, but we have to accept that the process of devolution is incremental. We have been clear about that from the beginning. The fact that Greater Manchester has been through so many rounds of devolution and is so much further down the road than anywhere else in England is something we should recognise, accepting that this is a substantial devolution of powers and cash from Westminster to local people. Manchester is lot further on than other parts of the country—sadly, in the case of some.
Consultation was a matter for the combined authority, which tried hard to engage people in the process. I have to be honest with the hon. Gentleman: local governance structures do not always excite people. I do not doubt that when people in Manchester and across the north of England are asked whether they want more powers and decisions to be exercised locally rather than at Westminster, they express strong support for that, but we should not delude ourselves that people will rush out in their thousands to take part in a consultation about the governance structures of combined authorities and mayoralties. It can be a challenge to engage people on such subjects.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned his feeling that devolution was being done to people in Greater Manchester. I do not share that view. I have met Greater Manchester’s interim Mayor and various members of the combined authority and I find that they are quite proud of what they have negotiated. The process has been very bespoke, which is why Manchester has been able to negotiate things that other areas have not. Only the other week, Sir Richard Leese was in to talk to me about some of his exciting ideas about further devolution of education. I am not promising anything on that, because it is a challenging area given the complexities of having a local approach as well as a national approach, but that indicates that the devolution has been delivered very much from the bottom up, in line with demands on and requests from those in Manchester. Each devolution deal—Tees Valley, Sheffield city region, Liverpool or Manchester—is different, which demonstrates that the process is bottom up rather than top down.
I thought long and hard about the elected mayor requirement over the summer. As I have said in previous debates, the fact is that when someone is exercising powers over a large geographical area from which no one else involved in the decision making has a mandate, we have to have someone whom the public throughout that entire region can hold accountable. No individual council leader, MP or anyone else has been elected across that area, but someone has to be accountable to the public for making decisions and spending cash across the area. That is why an elected mayoralty is the best option and the best way to deliver direct accountability. I have thought about other ways in which it could be done, but I have not been able to come up with one that gives such direct accountability.
The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton also talked about the area-based reviews for his local colleges, but I cannot go into any detail because they do not form part of my policy area. I am aware of what is going on in my own area, of course. He also mentioned academies, but they do not form part of the draft order either. I merely state that many people would argue that academies are anyway a devolution of power to the local level, in a policy introduced by his party. Admittedly his party has gone through a few different guises since the glory days of the Blair years, but it was a Labour policy.
Similarly, health and social care are not part of the draft order, but we continue to work closely with Greater Manchester to implement what we think is quite an imaginative devolution of health—the first in England. From the outset, we have always been clear with Manchester that we expect future health decisions to be taken with Greater Manchester’s input—in partnership, rather than against it.
The hon. Gentleman talked about precepts. The mayoral precept will be treated as are all major precepts, so people will be able to see the amount of it when they receive their council tax bill. The police element will be different and accounted for separately.
Jim McMahon
May I have clarity on that? As the Minister knows, a precept is an amount of money added on top of the council tax bill. The draft order reads as though the precept is a levy that forms part of the council tax, but is not separated out in the council tax bill.
Andrew Percy
The mayoral precept will be treated in the same way and should be identifiable on the bill in the same way as the policing element, but I will check on the wording to be clear with the hon. Gentleman.
As I said, the Government are well aware of the challenges in health and social care at the moment, which is why we have pumped in extra money, but that is not a matter for this order so I will not say anything more about it. The hon. Member for Stockport also mentioned health and social care—
Andrew Percy
It is for each local authority that is represented at the combined authority to determine its decision making behind that representation. If they wish it to be a vote of the full council or a decision of the council’s executive, that is a matter for them. When they are at the combined authority, they must act in unanimity. They are there representing their local authority. It is the same for any other decisions they take at a combined authority level. Decisions taken at the combined authority are not referred back to the local council for a vote on every single occasion. It is for each local authority to determine its processes.
Jim McMahon
This is a really important point. For the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester, the policy framework is a full council decision; it is not devolved to the executive or the council leader. The difference here is that the component councils, not the combined authority, are the decision maker. If it is not in the order, will the Minister at least give us comfort that a letter will go out to the 10 authorities setting out very clearly that the expectation is that each of them will, at their full council meeting, have a vote on the spatial framework? That is really important to give local people confidence in the process.
Andrew Percy
On the one hand, the hon. Gentleman is telling me that the Government should not be telling local authorities in the combined authority what to do, and on the other he is telling me that I should be telling the combined authority members what they should do. We believe in local decision making, so it is for each local constituent council member at the combined authority to determine what its arrangements are for involving the broader council on that matter. The leader of the council is there as the elected leader of the council. Behind their individual authority, it is for them to determine their own process. It is certainly not for me to write to each of the constituent councils telling them that they should exercise this function in a particular way in their authority. It is for each council to determine that.
I think I have dealt with most of the points about where the spatial framework sits. It does not supplant the local plan; the local plan must conform to it, in the same way as it has to in London. This is very much about trying to provide a system in which people are collaborating across a broader geographical area so we can make good on the pledge and deliver more homes for people in Manchester, which we all agree about, and a more integrated approach to planning across this strategic area.