Scotland: Devolution

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my local government interests contained in the register, and I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Lennie on a remarkable maiden speech. He has the somewhat dubious distinction of having at one time been a constituent of mine, and I suppose it is possible that he might even have voted for me in the odd council election—or not.

There is a danger when debating devolution of being sucked into discussions about systems, processes and boundaries when what matters is outcomes in localities. I prefer to frame the debate as one about decentralisation in one of the most centralised countries in Europe. I concur with the dissent expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, from the Leader’s view to the contrary. The prime duty that we have if we are to acknowledge and deal with varying local needs and local opportunities in the economy, the environment and social provision is to ensure that local government is strengthened and enabled to work effectively with central government and its agencies.

I have long been interested in the problems of the north-east and what became known as regional policy. I served on the regional policy group of my noble friend Lord Prescott in the 1990s and regret that the Labour Government did not adopt its more ambitious proposals. But, perhaps more relevantly, I was also involved with the Local Government Association in developing the concept of Total Place—the idea that councils should lead partnerships in which the totality of public spending for an area could be brought together, with government departments and agencies, local councils and the directorates getting out of their silo-based approach to policy development and service delivery. In that way, they would be much more strategic and effective, with the added potential bonus of generating efficiencies by sharing services. To their credit, the Labour Government adopted the idea, with the Treasury being particularly supportive alongside the DCLG. Sadly, other departments were not similarly engaged and progress was slow, with very little evidence of any enthusiasm for the concept in the last four years.

There have been some welcome initiatives—for example, city deals, which have been mentioned this afternoon—but little in the way of bringing together such programmes as health, welfare, education, including further and higher education, housing, transport and others, which, in addition to economic development, need to be marshalled if the problems of communities are to be effectively addressed.

The creation of combined authorities, with Greater Manchester leading the way—I note that my noble friend Lord Smith of Leigh will be speaking in this debate and no doubt will refer to it—offers a potentially powerful mechanism to drive part of this agenda. Although it seems obvious, for example, that the Highways Agency should be accountable to authorities in the different areas in which it operates, and that it and other public services and agencies should be part of the Total Place partnerships, there are two critical requirements without which decentralisation will fail.

The present Government have deliberately offloaded responsibilities to local authorities, for example in the area of council tax support, without the necessary financial resources. I have described this process as passing the buck without passing the bucks. Moreover, they have deliberately skewed the system of local government finance to impose much larger reductions in grants, and therefore cuts, on predominantly urban authorities. This has led to huge and disproportionate cuts, not only for the north and Midlands but also for inner London boroughs such as Newham, Lambeth and Hackney, and coastal towns such as Great Yarmouth and Blackpool. This has had devastating consequences for essential services. Merely passing tax-raising and tax-collecting powers to local councils will avail little if the tax base is inadequate. The grant system must be based on need. In effect, we need an English version of the Barnett formula, as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Lang.

Higher priority needs to be given to infrastructure investment. Compare, for example, the £15 billion spent on Crossrail with the estimated £7 billion that just might be spent, at some point in the dim and very distant future, on the misnamed HS3 project to improve the rail system linking the north-west, Yorkshire and the north-east, with a population roughly the same size as that of London. In addition, there should be national minimum entitlements to key services, not the minimal entitlements to which we are rapidly descending.

We need to redress the profound inequalities which disfigure our society and hamper our efforts to grow the economy in a globalised, competitive world. We need to restore hope to a generation of young people and to communities where too many lives are stunted by poverty, ill health and the sense of being neglected. Power and resources must be restored to democratically elected local government, in partnership with central government. To facilitate these developments and ensure genuine cross-government involvement, we should also restore a regional presence for government itself. In the 1980s, the Conservative Government established regional offices, eventually involving most departments, which became an invaluable two-way conduit for concerns, information and dialogue between localities and the centre. The present Government abolished them, along with the regional development agencies, a piece of politically inspired vandalism which has greatly weakened the intelligence base of individual departments and the Government as a whole, as well as the capacity to harness resources across the board.

The changes I advocate seek to address the real problems we face, not the political gamesmanship of English votes for English laws. It is an agenda of decentralisation and partnership. Call it what you will; call it devolution if you must, but let us get on, with the urgency that the situation demands, with empowering local government and central government to work together—and, yes, with the private sector—in the interests of ensuring that they make the necessary impact on the lives of communities and citizens.