West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who obviously has a great personal interest in this draft order given her strong role in Kirklees.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for setting out the terms of the order. I certainly welcome it. Until now, West Yorkshire has been the most obvious omission from the pattern of combined authorities and metro mayors in England. The Conservative manifesto committed the Government to a successful devolution of powers to city region mayors and to a White Paper on devolution in 2020. I understand the reasons for the delay but the Government confirmed last week that the English devolution and local recovery White Paper would be published “in due course”—three words with which we are all familiar and which have been used by successive Governments. Can I press my noble friend to indicate with perhaps more clarity the precise timetable of that happening?

The draft order, based on the devolution deal, has been agreed by the councils of the area and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and a public consultation has been carried out, as detailed in the Explanatory Memorandum. Although all consultations for combined authorities have not had a flood of responses, this one has had the largest, as noted by the leader of Leeds City Council, Judith Blake. Like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, I very much congratulate her on the announcement of her Peerage, and I look forward to her presence and contributions in your Lordships’ House. The consultation demonstrates considerable support for the content of the order, from 59% on finance to 75% on transport. I am pleased to see that it very much involved the universities of the area.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I note that planning and strategic infrastructure have not been conferred and that the Government are committed to conferring planning, at least in future. Could my noble friend outline the timeframe for that to happen and perhaps also explain why infrastructure has not been included?

Finally, I ask my noble friend about the elections that we all hope and expect to take place in May, as he mentioned—not just in West Yorkshire, of course. When will the guidelines be issued for the conduct of those elections? What discussions have there been with the devolved Administrations, particularly Wales, where there will be some elections on that day governed by the National Assembly for Wales—namely, the Senedd elections—and some by Westminster: namely, the police and crime commissioner elections? Clearly, those guidelines need to be dovetailed so that they say the same things. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.