English Devolution

Debate between Jim McMahon and Chris Curtis

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

There is nothing in the White Paper that is about decrying the work that has gone before. In fact, there is a great deal that celebrates the work done by local government, such as the community leadership provided by frontline councillors, council leaders and council executives on a range of issues. They are the builders of devolution, so this is not about something being done to them from the top; it is about local areas coming together and making a request to the Government for local government reorganisation and/or devolution. As a Government, we will work as partners in that development, but we fully appreciate that district councils across England are doing a very good job of delivering good public services, but there also has to be an acceptance that this is not the most efficient way of delivering public services; there are other ways.

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the ambition he has shown in his statement, particularly on how we can get local authorities to support the building of the 1.5 million homes that this country needs.

Before the White Paper’s publication, the Department saw expressions of interest from various areas. However, some of those initial submissions may no longer reflect the scale of ambition or the devolution options that we now know are available. Can the Minister reassure me that authorities with greater ambition, which are ready to act swiftly in line with the powers and vision outlined in the White Paper, will be given the opportunity to revise their proposals and to fast-track a mayoral model on geographies better suited to delivering results for their residents?

[Jim McMahon]

There were three types of programme on the transition to the new Government. The first were the legacy devolution agreements that were agreed under the previous Government but had not yet passed through Parliament, which we wanted to reconcile. The second were the areas that we wanted to target—by and large, areas in the north of England to complete the map of the north and to populate that area. The third was a write-around from the Deputy Prime Minister to get a real sense of where different areas might be on their approach to partnerships, to the type of scale and to the type of geography. We saw the expression of interest process very much as a temperature check, so the proposals that came forward are certainly not binding either on local areas or on the Government. We expect further proposals to come forward, including from the same areas.