English Devolution

Lee Dillon Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

The assumption is that elections in counties will take place as planned, unless authorities actively approach us to say that they want reorganisation discussions and have proposals that they can work up. In those circumstances, we will take the view that elections to an authority that will not exist should be postponed so that an election for a shadow authority can follow. On Derbyshire, we need to be careful: the Government’s role is to invite and to receive, not to draw the maps, which is for local authorities to do. As my role is quasi-judicial and I will need to take a view on potentially competing proposals, I cannot comment on what individual counties may or may not look like.

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

Councils are clearly on their knees, and I welcome multi-year funding settlements and changes in the grant programme, but will the Minister confirm that the Government will support devolution so that not a penny of councils’ budgets is spent on it and they can focus on frontline services? In his statement, the Minister said that councils could

“take their time to decide on the course they wish to follow”,

but went on to say that the Government would

“legislate…to create strategic authorities”

where they felt that was necessary. How does the Minister square those two sentences?

[Jim McMahon]

This is about partnership, about tone and about how we can work together. Because there has been a fair amount of talk in the sector about reorganisation and devolution, even before the White Paper a number of authorities had approached the Government saying that they wanted to have a conversation about local government reorganisation and/or devolution. We have had to respond that we cannot have a hundred hares running all over the place without a transparent plan and timescale that can be understood so that people can make a judgment about whether this option is right for their area or not. What we will have is a proposal to double-run a devolution priority programme alongside a local government reorganisation, with a key point where those two pieces of work must come together for joint decision making. That will at least mean that every authority knows what stage it has reached, and can make a choice: is it at the right point in the process to opt in, or will it need more time?

The point about the backstop is very important. As I have said, there is no map that we are intending to impose anywhere. Let us suppose that within a region we have an agreement to compile every county bar one, and we reach the end of the current Parliament. In that event, I think it legitimate to say, “Well, there is nowhere else to go.” It is fairly self-explanatory that there will be a fundamental strategic authority in that area, and that is the type of process that we are considering. We are not considering redrawing the map of England and imposing this in one fell swoop. It is about partnership and working with local areas, and so far those conversations have been very fruitful.