Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) Order 2017

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the mayoral system will be interesting—possibly in the Chinese sense—but if it is likely to work anywhere, it will undoubtedly be Manchester. I want to raise a couple of issues with the Minister.

First, of course the Government would like to see combined police and fire authorities. There are places where that might be suitable. But I take it that where there is a different view locally—as there would be in the north-east, for example, where we have different boundaries for the different services—there will not be any compulsion on authorities to go in that direction.

I am sorry to say that, having been spending my time on the next statutory instrument, I have forgotten what my second point was. Perhaps I will approach the Minister afterwards.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I make my usual declaration of interests as in the register; specifically that I am a local councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The two orders before us I have no issue with, and my comments will be correspondingly brief. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and my noble friend Lord Smith of Leigh, who is a member of the authority, are the experts here.

As we have heard, the orders transfer fire and rescue functions and police and crime commissioner functions to the mayor for Greater Manchester. I am pleased that we are having an election for this position on the first Thursday in May. These functions will then be transferred to this new elected person to be accountable for the delivery of these very important services to people living in the Greater Manchester area. At the same time, the office of police and crime commissioner and the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority will both be abolished.

I record my thanks to Tony Lloyd, who has been the PCC for Greater Manchester since 2012. Before that he was a Member of the other place for 29 years, for both Stretford and Manchester Central. In that time, he also served as the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which is an interesting job to hold down, and he managed to hold it for six years until he left this place to become the PCC.

[Lord Beecham]

Escaped.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Escaped, yes. Anyway, it is important to put that on record. For both policing and fire and rescue services, specific functions can be exercised only by the mayor, although they will be able to appoint a deputy mayor for policing and crime.

The issue I have with these devolution deals in general—not this one specifically—is that I sometimes feel they are a little unclear and you get a sort of patchwork. I accept the point that areas can work with what they think they can cope with. Certainly, in this area, the Greater Manchester mayor will have considerable powers, in many respects similar to those of the Mayor of London. They will also have powers in respect of the health service.

I am sure the three noble Lords present today fully understand all the functions the mayor will take over, but I am not convinced that every Member of your Lordships’ House is fully aware, or members of the general public living in Greater Manchester and other places. We need to have a much wider discussion about where we are going with local government and all these functions. It is time for the Government to consider producing a Green Paper to enable proper debate about these functions in England. I have approved a number of these orders in recent weeks in this Room and the Chamber. They are all different and sometimes you cannot work out why. We need a discussion about where we are going with local government. All these positions are important, and it is important to have democratic control. Let us not forget that the individuals involved will be spending huge sums of council tax payers’ and taxpayers’ money. We must be clear who is there, why they are doing it and how we engage with them. But that is a discussion for another time.

As I said, I support the orders and I certainly wish the new Manchester mayor—whoever it is, although I hope, of course, that the Labour candidate gets elected—the very best in their new role.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I have overcome my senior moment. I wanted to ask whether any consideration had been given to ambulance trusts, which are fairly unaccountable bodies but are, of course, part of the emergency services. Has there been any discussion with either trusts or local authorities about a different relationship—keeping that phrase fairly neutral—as regards the future of that service?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I too must declare an interest as a former councillor and resident of Greater Manchester. I pay tribute to Tony Lloyd who has held the fort very well over the last couple of years in his role as interim mayor, and in all the roles he has held previously in government and local government. We have here three people who will be voting in the mayoral elections in May, so that is very good. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned turnout. I recall an experience I had in Greater Manchester of probably the worst turnout in history: the Benchill by-election back in November or December 2001, where turnout was 8%. That was a depressing low. Looking forward to the mayoral elections, I was quite sceptical about the Mayor of London, but that is not a position for which any political party is scraping round for candidates. It is very sought-after and has gained a profile over the years, and I fully expect that will happen in Greater Manchester and elsewhere. As it does, visibility will grow and accountability will become a lot more obvious.

The noble Lord, Lord Smith—I was going to call him my noble friend, but he is really—talked about blue light services being brought back down to GM. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about ambulance trusts. It is within the gift of whichever combined authority to request collaboration in that regard, or that those matters be part of the devolved model. There are no limits to what the model may look at. That brings in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy: that the different devolution deals are a bit of a patchwork. This is necessarily a patchwork because every area is different. For example, rural areas look very different from urban areas; they have different needs and different proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is smiling at me slightly but I said that on the then devolution Bill, and I firmly believe it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that the Liberal Democrats grilled me on accountability and scrutiny during the passage of that Bill. We have very rigorous structures in place, certainly in Greater Manchester and, I hope, elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the compulsion to combine police and fire authority areas, particularly where they are not contiguous. There is absolutely no compulsion to do that. If they are not contiguous, such a move would require structural change anyway.

I think I have answered all the questions, but if not I will certainly come back to noble Lords.