Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) Order 2017 Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions to the Mayor) Order 2017

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Kate Green

Monday 13th March 2017 General Committees

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, in a debate on a matter as important as this to me and the many people who live in Greater Manchester and will be affected by these changes.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, I very much welcome the thrust of what the Government are trying to do, particularly pushing power out of Whitehall and Westminster and ensuring that decisions affecting our lives are made much closer to where we are. I echo her words by paying tribute to all those who have been involved—not only Tony Lloyd, the interim Mayor, who has done an excellent job, but the many politicians and officials who have done something quite unique in bringing together a whole range of diverse interests and circumstances across Greater Manchester and getting everybody pointing in the right direction. It has not been easy, and they deserve real credit.

These statutory instruments, quite understandably, concentrate a great deal of power in the hands of one individual. However, I do not think the Government have thought hard enough about the level of scrutiny and accountability that needs to be built into the system. There is considerable confusion among the general public in Greater Manchester about what the reforms mean. I heard what the Minister said about the consultation, but if he means the consultation on the legislation that gave rise to these statutory instruments, he should know that that was advertised on one Government website and ran for just three weeks and garnered only 12 responses, 10 of which were from the same council leaders who set up these arrangements in the first place.

People must be part of the conversation, not least because Greater Manchester is a very diverse area. For example, the needs in my borough of Wigan are very different from those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston. If we look at the details of what is being devolved to the Mayor and the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities through the statutory instruments, a very large borough such as mine obviously has different fire and rescue needs from the city of Manchester, which is very small. That is why scrutiny and accountability really matter.

The election of the Mayor is long overdue and very welcome, but the only real place where the Mayor will be accountable under these arrangements is to those same 10 council leaders who helped to establish this situation in the first place and who retain a great deal of decision-making power across Greater Manchester. As the Minister will know, ours is an area where one party dominates politics. Obviously, as a Labour Member of Parliament, I am very pleased about that, and long may it continue. However, that poses a question, particularly when we consider that Greater Manchester is intended to be the first of many areas to follow this model: where will the challenge come from? Of the council leaders who currently represent the boroughs across Greater Manchester, only one of them is a woman and only one is from an ethnic minority background.

In relation to the fire authority, I understand from the documents that a committee will be appointed by the Mayor. Members of that committee will be councillors or officers of the 10 borough councils, but they will be proposed by council leaders—the same council leaders who provide the primary scrutiny function for the Mayor. Those posts appear to come with an allowance; I imagine they will be hotly contested among councillors and officers.

We have a very centralised model of council leadership across Greater Manchester; council leaders are responsible for making the vast majority of appointments to their cabinets and to outside bodies as well. In such a system, what incentive does the Minister think there is to challenge decisions that are made? The documents reference the need to mirror the balance of political parties. I would be grateful to the Minister if he elaborated on the Government’s thinking, particularly on making sure that some cross-party scrutiny is built into the system. That is even more important because a report by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations recently found that, in areas where devolution is under way, the voluntary sector has had little or no involvement at all. As a representative of civil society, I think that is unacceptable; it mirrors what I have seen happening in my area of Greater Manchester so far.

I will say something about the police and crime commissioner functions, because I think that all the points I have made are more important in that area than any other. The Mayor will be scrutinised by a police and crime panel, but our police and crime panel in Greater Manchester is made up of those same council leaders I have just referred to. They also make up the Mayor’s cabinet and provide the only channel of accountability and scrutiny for the public outside of election times.

I understand that the diversity problems I have raised may be addressed by the Mayor via the appointment of up to five additional members to that panel—I would be grateful to the Minister if he confirmed that—but even so, it is likely that the scrutiny membership on that panel will be heavily weighted in favour of council leaders. What resources will those additional lay members have to ensure that they can do that job properly and effectively? I say that because Greater Manchester is an incredibly diverse area, which is not currently reflected in our political arrangements.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is raising concerns that a number of us, although we welcome devolution, have raised throughout the process of designing the devolution settlement for Greater Manchester. Does she think it unlikely that, in making appointments to those five lay places, the Mayor will appoint people who are likely to be assertive and critical of his or her decisions?

[Lisa Nandy]

The problem with the vision set out in the documents is that it very much relies on the good will of the person who holds that post. In such an important area, I do not think that is an adequate safeguard.

The same seems to apply to the hearing of police and crime complaints. If those are criminal complaints, I understand that the responsibility will continue to lie with the Independent Police Complaints Commission. However, if they are non-criminal, they will be heard by the local authorities, which will of course take them straight back to the 10 people who sit on all those boards and provide that level of accountability. The Minister is shaking his head; I would be grateful to him if he cleared this up. One of the problems we have had in Greater Manchester is in trying to penetrate the arrangements that have evolved over the past couple of years. Obviously, with an election looming large, it will be helpful for the Committee and the wider public to understand where that outside scrutiny and challenge will come from.

Finally, the documents set out that the Government have not seen fit to do an impact assessment, which is a mistake. They say that there are no plans to build in any kind of review period for the arrangements because there will be elections for the position of Mayor three years after the first election and then four years after that. This could build up real problems threatening the very success of this enterprise. Real devolution has to be based on consent and built from the ground up. The people must be heard.

Grammar and Faith Schools

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Kate Green

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend posed an interesting question to the Minister in the Education Committee’s evidence session this morning. She asked why, if he was keen to ensure that all schools improved, rather than recreating a system of grammar schools and secondary moderns, he did not just enable children to go to good schools by expanding the number of places in good comprehensive schools. The Minister did not seem to give an answer, but I hope that he will have an answer by the time he responds to the debate.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend knows, in my local authority of Trafford we have selective education. We also have high-performing schools, but they do not perform well for every child, and particularly not for the most disadvantaged. Nor does every parent, or indeed the majority of parents, get a choice of school. Most parents, if they put their child forward for the entrance examination for the grammar school, find that their child is not successful and is not admitted. The choice of which school their child goes to is made by the schools, not by the parents.

[Lisa Nandy]

I suspect that the Minister would reply that the Government want to expand the number of places in grammar schools, so that more children will get in. There is no question but that grammar schools outperform non-selective schools in terms of exam results, but the Government make a great leap in claiming that grammar schools are somehow intrinsically better for the children in them than other similar schools in the area. I want the Minister to consider for a moment that there is evidence to the contrary.

We know that when grammar schools were the norm, working-class children were far more likely to drop out of those schools. The Robbins report revealed that only 2% of children whose parents were semi-skilled or low skilled then went on to university. The Minister’s claim that disadvantaged grammar school pupils are more likely to go on to a Russell Group university, which I have heard him repeat often, is based on research that does not control for prior attainment. He also often mentions the Sutton Trust research. The 2011 report concluded:

“Given their selective intake, grammar schools would appear to be underrepresented among the most successful schools for Oxbridge entry”.

All I am asking the Minister to do is consider the whole range of evidence on this subject and base education policy on it accordingly. This morning before the Education Committee we saw what happens when Ministers do not do that. He was forced to admit that in areas of selection, the impact on children in non-selective schools is mixed. Until now, he has been fond of citing one report by the Sutton Trust, which says that there is no negative effect on children who are not in grammar schools in areas where there is selection, but against that the Education Committee was able to cite Dr Becky Allen, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Education Policy Institute, and the education journalist Chris Cook, who found that the only thing that shifts in areas where selection is introduced is who does well, not how many do well, and that, put simply, the better-off do well at the expense of the rest.

Policy Exchange set out clearly the stark impact in terms of lost opportunities and earnings for those who do not attend grammar schools, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research says that for girls there was some raised wage potential, but not for boys.