Kris Hopkins
Main Page: Kris Hopkins (Conservative - Keighley)Devolution in England
Kris Hopkins Excerpts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)
I welcome the debate and the report, and I share the central tenet of the speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I agree that the role of local government and local leaders must be at the heart of any debate about English devolution.
Many reports have followed the Select Committee’s report. The Government published a Command Paper on the implications of English devolution in December, and we have now published our response to the Committee’s report. One reason for the delay in its publication is the publication of a number of other reports which we thought it appropriate to consider. However, I should have liked our response to be published earlier, and I apologise to members of the Committee for the fact that that was not possible.
I welcome the Committee’s support for the basing of decentralisation and further devolution on existing structures and groups of authorities rather than on a top-down reform of structures. Local areas are best placed to make decisions about joint working and stronger partnership. We will take further steps, which will include encouraging the establishment of combined authorities when they are appropriate.
We have undertaken the biggest ever transfer of powers away from Whitehall through devolution deals, to grow the economy in a balanced way and enable Britain’s cities and communities to be engines for growth. As several Members have pointed out, this is the first Government for a long time to halt the constant move towards centralisation and provide a path back to the empowerment of local people. We have removed centrally imposed regional policy, replacing it with local enterprise partnerships which define their own boundaries and priorities and bring together local business leaders with locally elected leaders. We have given local areas a very substantial share of increases in their local tax base, with areas keeping up to 50% of the increases they deliver in business rates and all council tax plus the new homes bonus, and we have made it clear that we want to go further. The Prime Minister has said a Conservative Government would enable authorities to retain some 66%, and the Secretary of State has said he would like to see 90% retained by 2020.
Mr Redwood
Where health expenditures and money is being offered to local government and local government representatives, what powers will they have to switch money either out of the health budget into the social care budget or out of the social care budget into the health budget?
Kris Hopkins
As I understand it, the accountability for the spend of that money will remain with the NHS and it will be a negotiated position with the local authority. As has been said, the key thing is that the money associated with social services will be driven and directed by local government, but the idea that local authorities, the NHS and the clinical commissioning group come together and shape the services required for their local people is a major step forward. The better care fund has been a path to some of this, but this step itself is fundamental.
I would like to point out some of the things that we have achieved. We have abolished the inspection regime and targets for councils. That regime was extremely costly and imposed huge burdens on local authorities. We have reduced ring-fencing for councils and have created new community rights, giving local people a greater say in shaping their community. We have enabled more decisions about social housing to be taken locally, making the system fairer and more effective, and we have reformed the planning system to cut red tape and interference from central Government, shifting the focus for local authorities to report to their local communities. Through neighbourhood planning, we have helped local people to play a strong role in shaping the areas in which they live and work and in supporting local development proposals.
We have also taken more ambitious steps through growth deals and recent devolution deals further to incentivise local leadership and growth. Some 28 city deals have been negotiated with the largest and fastest-growing cities and their wider functional economic areas outside of London. We should also recognise that 39 local enterprise partnerships will have £12 billion of local growth funding devolved to them over the next five years, with £6 billion having been agreed under the first wave. They are having a direct impact. They are locally led and locally driven, with local people making choices about where the money should be spent—on better roads and public transport, greater support for local businesses to train young people and enhance skills, faster broadband and more homes.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister about the benefit the growth funds are bringing to LEPs, but does he share my desire that there should be more democratic accountability for the spending of all this money?
Kris Hopkins
LEPs are a partnership between the local authorities and the business leaders who sit inside those groups, and it is up to them to negotiate that position and drive out the delivery of those services. I am confident that these emerging relationships—some of them are very strong at the moment; some still have a way to go—are giving a massive return on the limited amount of money we have to spend as a consequence of the economic situation we found ourselves in.
Mr Allen
I congratulate the Minister and his Government on the list of the measures to decentralise power that he has read out, but does he accept that any Front Bench may come forward with such a record of achievement in this area which could be imperilled by some future Government, and that the answer is to build in the rights and responsibilities of local government, and to entrench them beyond easy repeal on the whim of some future Government?
Kris Hopkins
The hon. Gentleman makes a good observation about the opportunity for a Government who are not as positive and decentralising as this one to follow another path, but I think that if local authorities are bold and understand what they want and ask for it, we will deliver that for them. I think that once they have been empowered they will be very reluctant to give up those powers.
The Government have built on the success of these approaches relating to enterprise zones and city deals to negotiate devolution settlements with cities. In November the Chancellor announced that Manchester will be taking advantage of greater devolution of powers and shortly will have its own directly elected, city-wide mayor.
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I question his use of the term “shortly” to mean two to four years, but I also say to him that if this agenda is genuinely about empowering people across entire city regions, it is important to get the language right. He just talked about cities and about Manchester, but my constituents in Wigan would not recognise that that relates to them. It is important that we get the language right and make sure people understand that this sort of deal could, if we do it right, bring significant benefits to city regions, not just to cities.
Kris Hopkins
I think I got off lightly, because I appreciate that language is important when we are talking about identity. Certainly, the Greater Manchester area has been extremely engaged in this issue for a long time, and I welcome the path it has taken. I just want to correct the point about two to four years. Elections are anticipated in 2017, and we want to see that. Primary legislation needs to be put forward to deliver that. The models for then holding the mayor to account will be debated in this House. There will be an opportunity for every Member who is re-elected to participate in the process, and I am very confident that we will have a democratically held to account mayor driving forward a very extensive range of services, including transport, housing, planning, skills, policing, welfare support and, of course, health.
Other cities have been engaged in this, including Sheffield city region, and there are continuing talks about Leeds. We believe there is scope for decentralising more funds, but the key is making sure that local authorities have an opportunity to grow their own local economy, and we have assisted in that through business rates retention and the new homes bonus.
Graham Stringer
Select Committee recommendation 49 starts:
“Growth in one area of England does not mean reduced growth elsewhere.”
Frankly, I did not understand the Government’s response to that recommendation. Can the Minister confirm that he agrees with the Select Committee recommendation, and that growth in one area will not mean less borrowing powers or less resources for another part of the country?
Kris Hopkins
That is certainly not my intention. My intention is to see every part of the country grow. The Chancellor has gone out there and supported the northern powerhouse, and we have gone to every corner of this country to make sure that this works. At the end of the day, however, growth will be locally led and individual areas will need to be supported in this process, but many will seize the opportunity to grow their local economies.
We have heard some good contributions from Members and I want to comment on them.
Mr Betts
I read out a quote by the Prime Minister, which I presume the Minister agrees with, about proposals for increased fiscal devolution in Wales. So far, he has not talked about fiscal devolution at all. The Prime Minister said:
“That means those who spend taxpayers’ money must be more responsible for raising it. This is devolution with a purpose”.
Does the Minister agree with that in principle, and if so, if it applies to Wales, why does it not apply to Manchester, London or Sheffield?
Kris Hopkins
It applies to England at this moment. We have given local authorities the ability to raise money, to drive their local economies and to build more houses and be rewarded for doing so. The decisions associated with that expenditure are now being taken at local level.
The tone of the debate has been really good, despite one or two glitches in some contributions. On the whole, people realise the enormous power that local government has and the massive contribution that it makes to society and to delivering public services. The report produced by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East recognises that the movement towards more decentralisation and ensuring that people at local level are more accountable is the way forward. That is certainly the desire of this Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) talked about a northern powerhouse, and about his desire to see his county step up and seize the opportunity for more devolved powers. He was right to say that. In contrast, the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) seemed to believe that it was up to central Government to come up with a plan for a local area. It is not about that. It is about groups of local authorities having the confidence to follow what they see as the route to economic growth. It is about their making those choices and coming to us. Our door is open to the authorities that make those choices.
My hon. Friend was right to recognise that the move from the better care fund towards more integration in our social care is extremely important. There is an issue with demographics, given the enormous growth in our elderly populace, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we deliver quality services efficiently. He also talked about waste, and about community housing policy. Those are two key areas in which local authorities can make decisions.
The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) brings an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise to the House and I congratulate him on his 30 years of public service. He has faith in local government; in fact, he has more faith in local government than he does in central Government. I, too, have huge confidence that local government can deliver what is needed. He mentioned the use on the radio of the term “grubby hands”. I, too, thought that that was appalling. People working in local government give up a huge amount of their time to make a contribution, and they do so out of choice. I applaud the work of many local authority leaders and councillors, and I think that the BBC should apologise for that comment.
The hon. Gentleman was right to observe that the health deal was negotiated—and will be negotiated further—with local leaders. I have confidence that the democratic process will win, and that people will seize these opportunities. The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) has pointed to a lack of involvement by local people in that process, but the councillor who is the leader of Wigan is a local person, and those 10 people came together in a pragmatic way—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said—and made a choice about this. We will also put in place primary legislation to ensure that there is a directly elected representative. The journey in Manchester has not happened just in the past four weeks. It is not something that has appeared just before the general election. It has been going on for a decade-plus.
Lisa Nandy
Can the Minister tell me why the three-week consultation that he ran in January did not mention the NHS once?
Kris Hopkins
The deals associated with the health authority still have a long way to go. The principle of joining the services together is the right one, and I have confidence that those 10 local authority leaders will be accountable for that devolved spend.
I know that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) is a passionate Yorkshireman. He talked about “devo-tyke” and “devo-Manc”, and he was right in what he said. As a Yorkshire MP myself, I recognise—as do Opposition Members—that there is an opportunity here. Sheffield has seized it and Leeds is having a conversation about it. This is up to local leaders. I remember this conflict from the time when I was a local leader: it is not easy for the different tiers of government to come together as one body, regardless of politics, to make choices about how to grow their economies and ensure that those in their most deprived areas can change their lives and become prosperous. I applaud the work of the all-party parliamentary group on Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, which has come up with some really good ideas on how to achieve these aims.
I want to go back to Wigan, just for a moment. I do not want to rub it in—well, actually, I do want to rub it in a bit, to be quite honest!
Kris Hopkins
I am getting on with it. The hon. Member for Wigan said that the new plans were not the way forward, but let us just think about the journey that we have made. We have moved from having an unelected regional development authority, a top-down obsession with centralisation and a target-driven system to a situation in which we have individuals making choices about the path that they want to take to economic success. That is the right way to do it. This is not about creating more bureaucracy or creating more politicians for the sake of it; it is about local people making a choice about devolution and seizing those powers and opportunities. That is a principle that everyone in this House can support.
Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).
Ministry of Defence