Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

With the exception of being concerned that the amendment might lead to the idea of having an elected assembly for a combined authority, I think it is well intentioned and can be supported. I do not object to it on the same grounds as the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine—that local authorities and local councils cannot be trusted and have lost people’s confidence and that a mayor is needed to restore the electorate’s confidence in some way.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, this is my first intervention on the Bill. I apologise for that. Looking around the Chamber, I think that I am the only veteran of the Committee stage of the Greater London Authority Bill in the other place. We assembled a Committee of 29, 27 of whom were London Members—I will come back to that in a moment.

My late noble kinsman was not only a Minister of Housing and Local Government for four years—what would now be Secretary of State for the Environment—but a close friend of the late Lord Maude, to whom others have alluded in this debate. In so far as we are obliged to indicate our credentials in an instance such as this, I will simply confess that I served for 18 months on Camden Council at a time when 18 months on Camden Council seemed like 18 years. I therefore regard it as being a reasonable credential. Until I was 72 years of age, I had had a London address the whole of my life.

The Greater London Authority Bill Committee, which is analogous to what we are engaged in today, had 20 Labour Members on it, seven Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats. I bring them in because it was the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who introduced this amendment. Both of the two Liberal Democrats who served on that lengthy Committee also served in the recent coalition. They served with distinction on the original Bill. As I said, only two of the 29 were not London Members.

One of the consequences of that was that it was an extremely well-informed Committee, and a Bill which arrived with us with only about 270 clauses ended up having nearer 430. To go back to remarks that my noble friend Lord Heseltine made much earlier this afternoon, that occurred because Whitehall did not really know as much about London as the people who were elected Members in London. We London Members introduced a great deal of totally relevant material into the Bill, and I have no doubt at all that we greatly improved it in the process. It had more than 400 clauses by the time it came out of the House of Lords because, although in Committee in the House of Commons officials were saying to Ministers, “Minister, you must resist this amendment”, the amendments which were sensibly introduced in the House of Commons were then picked up in the House of Lords. As a result, we ended up with a Bill with more than 400 clauses. I have no doubt at all that the Bill was greatly improved in that process, but it did take time. I would not begrudge time on this particular subject, so important is it.

I am not sure whether I have helped in any way either side of the argument with my comments, but I agree with my noble friend Lord Heseltine that this is a spectacular opportunity and I hope we can collectively seize it.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has just made, but I will return to the issue of the comparison between the work done by the committee to which he referred and the eventual statute that emerged in a later group of amendments.

I can remember the 1960s. Indeed, I was elected a county councillor in 1964. I think I am right that the then Conservative candidate for Tavistock, my neighbouring constituency, was none other than a very young, sprightly Conservative called Michael Heseltine. What I admire so much about the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is that, like William Gladstone, he gets more radical as he gets older. He may not appreciate that particular compliment but it is a genuine one.

I return to the tone and content of his earlier contribution, which really set the main argument for this part of the Bill and for this amendment in the names of my noble friend Lord Shipley, myself and others. If I may say so, there is an inherent contradiction in what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said. On the one hand, he was determined to let local people free to make their choice as appropriate to their particular needs. That was very much the theme of his peroration, which is in character with what he has sought to do over recent years. Yet, at the same time, he said that we must somehow impose a one-size-fits-all elected mayor on that local decision-making process. He argued for local determination but at the same time said, “Oh, but we must impose the one-man-band mayors”.

I think that we should trust the people. That was another good Conservative slogan of yesteryear. I am, for example, really concerned about extending this process beyond the first tranche of combined authorities into other areas. It has been a major theme throughout the House that we should see this happen not just in the five existing combined authorities but throughout the country. We should let the people of Cornwall be free to decide what they wish to do. That is why my noble friend Lord Teverson and I put our names to this amendment in particular.

As it happens, in Cornwall there has already been a very successful and substantial reorganisation of local government to avoid a lot of the duplication that came from the 1960s and 1970s—to which the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, referred. We have a unitary authority. It is now beginning to work extremely well. It is making substantial savings by avoiding duplication between different levels. That is the right answer for Cornwall. I am not saying it is the right answer for everywhere else but I am absolutely convinced that to impose on that, before they can get any further devolution or decentralisation of power, a one-size-fits-all elected mayor would be plumb crazy. Much more importantly, it would go right against what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, sought to suggest to your Lordships that we should do: let local people decide how they can best be governed.

It happens that in Cornwall we have a distinct identity, integrity and leadership. There is a tradition of cross-party and cross-community leadership. It would not be appropriate to insist on having one particular person, presumably on a minority vote as that is how first past the post tends to produce representation, where there is already plural representation and leadership, and where that is very popular. The noble Lord’s and the Minister’s party, certainly in Cornwall, would be locally absolutely determined to stand alongside others of us who feel that the imposition of a mayor before we can achieve any greater level of decentralisation and devolution would be entirely wrong.

The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, rightly referred to the dangers of delay. If, for example, Cornwall was not allowed to move until it accepted the imposition of an elected mayor, that would have a devastating effect on the encouragement of investment and the growth of businesses in Cornwall—which is not a wealthy part of the country and desperately needs new initiatives.

Noble Lords on all sides of the House are very much with the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, when it came to his peroration. What we find difficult is how to match that up with the apparent contradiction that he insists that we have elected mayors throughout the country before we can move into this new, devolved arrangement.