Draft West of England Combined Authority Order 2017

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 General Committees

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton, speaking from the Labour Front Bench, about how the process has been handled and the lack of buy-in from the general public. I do not think that it is an overstatement to say that this has been rather forced on councils in the West of England. When we chose to have a directly elected Mayor in Bristol, we did so in a referendum—I think we were the only city to do so, out of the 10 that had referendums; the others all said no. That has paid off to the extent that, although it was an uphill struggle to educate people about the Mayor’s powers, Marvin Rees as Mayor of Bristol now has direct accountability to the local people. They look to Marvin for leadership—they think he is responsible for everything that goes wrong, from a bin not being emptied to a hole in the road. That is what a mayoral system ought to be about: knowing who to point the finger at.

I worry that there will be an incredibly low turnout at the election on 4 May, because we will not have that buy-in. One thing that we always hear people say in Bristol—my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West will echo this, I am sure—is that we do not want a return to the days of Avon, when there were four local authorities. We know that North Somerset is not coming in on it, but people do not think of those days fondly.

I say that this policy was forced on us because, yes, we are getting something out of it, but it was the only game in town. We are being offered £30 million a year for 30 years, which I think it is somewhat misleading to describe as a £900 million budget, because it is stretched over a very long period. At the moment, the Mayor of Bristol is having to find £100 million of cuts over the next five years, so £30 million a year spread over a much wider area smacks of giving with one hand and taking with the other. I have my doubts about that, and I place on record my concerns.

For this devolution settlement to work, it has to mean real powers for the local area. It has to mean that the role of the current Mayor of Bristol is not diminished—it is about working with the metro mayor. It has to be properly resourced, because there is no point in having these powers without the finances to use them. We are about to put through a budget in Bristol that will have to cut services almost to breaking point. This is not where I would be if we had been given more choice in the matter.