Devolution in England

John Pugh Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

May I begin by apologising to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Chair of the Committee for missing the start of this debate? I shall read the Chair’s wise remarks in Hansard with intense concentration tomorrow. We have kept to the general rule of estimates day, which is a bit like “Fight Club”: the one thing we do not do on estimates day is mention the estimates, such as the £750 million on the Order Paper, which, like everybody else, I shall ignore.

The devolution we find easiest is devolving trouble—cuts, problems, hard choices. Wherever there is a good story, such as money for school dinners suddenly, we in this place rush to take the credit in one form or another. Behind it all there seems to be no genuinely guiding principle or absolute constitutional demarcation. In effect, we yo-yo between having ring-fenced, dedicated funds and giving direction where we want credit and there is money, and going back in harder times to rolling everything into some incomprehensible formula, when we want to dodge blame for cuts that are in the offing. In other words, we have no principle that we are following. We let councils make big, painful decisions on social care and housing, and then we fiddle around with their bins when we want to. I therefore warm to the idea of a genuine constitutional settlement—or at least a concordat for each Parliament—that lets each level of government know what it is supposed to be doing.

The assumption, shared across the Chamber in this debate, is that local government should try to do more and central Government should try to do less. That means in effect that local government has to have enhanced power and hopefully—and importantly—capacity. Clearly that is not generally the case, because some units are simply far too small, and even big units such as mets and unitaries have to band together to do new and bigger tasks. A solution might be a wholesale local government reorganisation. That is a brave choice that few Governments consider for long, so instead we have devolution on demand. However, we do not quite get it by demanding it; it has to be what the previous Government used to refer to as “earned autonomy”.

In effect, what happens is that central Government lays down some sensible conditions, such as evidence of co-operation, economic independence, officer ability and so on, and occasionally some silly conditions, such as elected mayors. But however central Government lay down those conditions and whatever they are, there are three hitches with the end result. First, it creates a patchwork quilt across the country, which some Members clearly do not think is a problem. Secondly, it leaves some areas completely and utterly orphaned—what, I ask often, will happen to places such as West Lancs, which are not in any city region whatever? Thirdly, it means that the whole issue of fair funding becomes a bigger nightmare and even more imponderable. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, England still loses out at the end of process by comparison with the regions of Scotland and Wales.

There is one unexpected consequence, however, and I want to draw people’s attention to it today. It appears to me that existing local authorities are not best shaped to deliver the new agendas. Their boundaries often have little relationship with economic, transport or strategic priorities. My own borough of Sefton provides quite a good example in that it has hugely different priorities at either end. It has a seaside town at one end and Liverpool’s major dock at the other. The future of one end is bound up with the River Mersey and Liverpool, while the other end looks to the River Ribble and Lancashire.

How can one authority with limited representation on the city region fight for the interests of both? In a sense, it is diluted. Sefton has made a virtue of its oddness, which is down to two town halls, although at one stage it had five. It has often boasted that diversity is its strength. I have constantly pointed out that that did not work particularly well for Yugoslavia. Sefton has had two boundary reviews that have clearly indicated the severe problem here.

I conclude that if there is to be devolution on demand, there must be scope for local government reorganisation on demand, but there has been little scope for that recently. Were a clear case to be made, I think it could be positively helpful. We must have a permissive approach; otherwise, devolution—in the wrong shape and with the wrong organisations—will end up just as unpopular as centralisation.