Devolution (East Anglia)

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government proposals for devolution in East Anglia.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Crausby. It is also a pleasure to see the Minister, who in his relatively short time in post has done an excellent job of driving the Government’s regional and devolution agenda, particularly as the Minister with responsibility for the northern powerhouse.

I come to this debate wearing two hats: one as the Member of Parliament for Peterborough for the past 11 years; and one as someone who is genuinely asking the Government to explain more coherently their rationale for this policy as it pertains to East Anglia. Obviously, we are a proud municipal entity in Peterborough. Our local authority was first incorporated in 1874, and 20 years ago we were liberated by throwing off the yoke of Cambridgeshire County Council to become, like other notable cities in England, a unitary authority as the city and county of Peterborough.

I am not ideologically against devolution in any sense, but it is incumbent on the Government to explain their position. It would be remiss of me not to draw the House’s attention to the excellent National Audit Office report published on 20 April, which was considered by the Public Accounts Committee on Monday in unison with another excellent report, produced on 23 March, on local enterprise partnerships.

Obviously, devolution is predicated on Government functions being moved to local areas and local entities. It is very much a bottom-up, not a top-down, process. That has certainly been the case in the majority of the 34 English local government areas that submitted bids following the Government’s invitation in 2014—the successful bids were announced in the 2015 autumn statement—but the policy of devolution must be seen within a wider context.

When the coalition Government were elected in 2010, we expressly set our face against regional government. We got rid of regional assemblies, having seen the mess made by the regional policy of the previous Labour Government, the rejection of regional government by the people of the north-east and, particularly, the rejection of the regional spatial strategies that had been trying to force inappropriate housing on many largely rural areas across the country. That was the basis of the Government’s position, and the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles), specifically said at the time that there would be no further local government reorganisation.

It seems strange that, in what is essentially a financial statement, the Government disregarded the good work being done in places such as Manchester and Birmingham to announce, out of the blue and with limited consultation and collaboration with key stakeholders, local enterprise partnerships, local authority leaders and majority groups, three further devolution schemes in Greater Lincolnshire, the west of England and, of course, East Anglia. Given that the overall tone of the NAO report is that the process is a potential risk, and complex, the Government need to explain why that happened.

The policy involves 16 million people across 10 deals, and it arises from the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016. I can understand why the policy is attractive to local authorities. It involves a cumulative sum of £7.4 billion over a 30-year period, or about £246.5 million per annum, but in the east of England it is only £30 million, which has to be set in the broader financial context. Currently, the three counties in the East Anglia scheme already spend £660 million in capital infrastructure funding and have already received £37 million of growth funding in the last financial year. The deal promises officially the lowest per capita funding of all the 10 devolution deals: £13 a head. That compares, for instance, with £22 a head for Sheffield, £20 a head for Liverpool and £23 a head for Tees valley—I am sure the Minister will have something to say about Tees valley.

If it were genuine devolution, I would be a bit more sanguine. I agree, of course, that it is not an ignoble aspiration for any Government to integrate and promote collaboration between key public services to improve them in sectors such as transport, business support, further education, housing and planning, although, incidentally, we are not devolving to any great extent the work of the Department for Work and Pensions, which has never been very agreeable to having any kind of subsidiarity or devolution. Also, the area of health is pick ‘n’ mix; some of the deals will have some health funding devolved and some will not.

A number of key issues cause me concern. One is about synergies. Is there really a synergy between the Suffolk coast, south Suffolk, St Neots, King’s Lynn and the city of Peterborough? I do not think there is. We should remember that the regional policy of the Labour Government was about reducing inequalities in the economies within regions and between regions, but the local enterprise partnerships that were established by the previous coalition Government were intended to take into account infrastructure and economic growth in travel-to-work areas, which, incidentally, are not coterminous with these new devolution deal areas.

I do not believe that there is any synergy. In fact, this is unprecedented. Unless we count Boadicea and Hereward the Wake, no one has ever decided it would be a good idea to have an overarching governance structure for the whole of these three counties in East Anglia. This is different from the other schemes. Of course, the Greater Manchester scheme and the Birmingham scheme effectively reconfigure the old Greater Manchester County Council and the West Midlands County Council, and they make sense. But regarding economic, demographic and social links, the East Anglia scheme does not stack up and it looks like a back-of-an-envelope calculation by someone in the Treasury.

That is an issue that concerns me. Another is duplication. Let me give just two examples. What is the point of LEPs now if some of their key functions in sectors such as skills and training are devolved to an executive elected mayor and a cabinet, with the numbers, powers, duties and responsibilities unspecified? We read that the combined authority will have an education committee. What will happen to Norfolk County Council’s education committee, or Suffolk County Council’s education committee and the cabinet functions that they discharge as local education authorities?

These are important issues and I do not believe that the Minister or the Government have addressed the potential for duplication across four tiers, and that is not including parish councils. The four tiers will be the LEP, the combined authority with the elected mayor, county councils and district councils. Quite reasonably, each of those bodies—particularly the district council and county council—is saying, “Which one of us is going to be abolished?”

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is presenting a superb case. Where would the police and crime commissioners, who have only been going for four years and who the Government now say are doing a very good job, go in all this? They are another elected tier and are doing well. Chances are that, if the elected mayor comes in, the PCC will disappear, as will the LEPs. Those two initiatives, which are actually working very well, would effectively be scrapped.

[Mr Jackson]

My hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and I pay tribute—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), with whom I agree entirely. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) on securing this debate.

Ministers have done an excellent job on devolution. I support devolution, which is an absolute natural partner to localism—I think that was the point made by the hon. Member for Cambridge—and localism is all about buy-in from local people. In Norfolk, we have an affinity to Norfolk. We love it and are passionate about it. The same is true of people in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. We have no affinity to a concept such as East Anglia. In a metropolitan area, people have a sense of belonging to a city. The idea works very well in London, Manchester and Birmingham, but the proposal for an elected mayor of East Anglia will not gain public support, and that is why it is my red line.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough mentioned, we opposed Lord Prescott’s regional assemblies. We were very anti the regional spatial strategies. According to the agreement signed by the 23 council leaders, the mayor will have some reserve powers over housing. Any change has to command public support. At a time when local government is cutting back on many third sector organisations—I can think of the citizens advice bureau in my constituency, transport for the disabled and mental health charities—it is not going to look kindly on us for putting in place a very expensive fifth tier of local government.

When council leaders say that the proposal will be cost-effective, that some of the personnel will be stripped out of existing councils and that it will not cost anything extra, what planet are they living on? This will be an opportunity for empire building. It will be a very costly tier of local government. The Government say that they will take out another tier. I am a veteran of at least three campaigns on unitary government. They are very divisive and difficult. It is far better to have collaboration and co-operation between councils. We can then move forward on that basis.

Ministers overlook the political sovereignty of MPs. We have sovereignty on our own patch to convene meetings to get things done or to stop things happening. Frankly, I do not want an elected mayor barging into my constituency and saying, “Henry, you’ve been a bad boy. You don’t want these houses or this incinerator in your constituency, but we would like you to have them. I am a regional mayor with a mandate from a turnout of all of 5%.”

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I am afraid I will not because I must press on.

I put it to the Minister that there is an alternative. There are 23 council leaders, two LEPs and three PCCs. They can get together and select or elect a head honcho to carry forward the devolution process and oversee the strategic transport fund that is going to be put in place. It will be seen as an administrative arrangement, not another tier of government. It will be a Tory solution to the demand that we have devolution. If the Government go down that route and let it work for perhaps two, three or four years, we can see whether there is a democratic deficit and people are crying out for an elected mayor and revisit the matter. But if they insist on pushing ahead with the elected mayor part of the proposals, I fear they will fail. There is an alternative, and I hope the Minister will embrace it.