Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that the Government will in fact do exactly the opposite. That last speech explains why I am so much in favour of what is being proposed. One of the problems with Britain is that we mistake neatness for civilisation. We constantly think that if we get everything in the same sort of box we can then defend it. I want to compliment the Government on producing something that is designed to meet the needs of particular places and which will, in fact, be different from one place to another. There is an idea that it will cause confusion—but confusion for whom, and between what? It will not concern people in one place that, if they stood outside these shores, there would be a difference between their position and some other people’s position. Inside, there need be no confusion whatever. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that this is a good answer for a particular place. The Government may have the answer wrong but one cannot argue that the reason they have got it wrong is that it is different from the answer somewhere else. I believe very strongly that it is sensible to do what we are doing.

On the issue of the deputy mayor, the idea that you elect a mayor and then have a situation that makes it difficult for him to have a deputy mayor with whom he or she works is rather odd. I would much prefer to have the system that is being proposed, and if it is argued that we have not done this before, thank God, because we have not been very successful with what we have done before—so let us not be too pusillanimous about doing something new.

We should look at any of the successful cities in the rest of Europe—it is about time that we learnt from the rest of Europe instead of constantly telling them that they should listen to us. The British seem to have a very interesting one-way system: we know it all and tell them, and if they happen to have something that is more successful we complain about it. I want to learn from the rest of Europe because I think there is a great deal to learn. One thing is the way they organise cities. The urban success of most of the countries of Europe compared with us is very notable. Part of that is because we have been foolish enough to remove the local powers of finance and the rest. I accept that; I fought against it and lost, but that is one of those things.

Another part of it is that we have lost the historic position of quite distinguished individuals becoming, in a real sense, representative of their cities. It is suggested that they did that without all these powers; the noble Lord opposite made that point. But we live in a different world. I think that they did it by having those powers, whatever the law said. It is remarkable: if you look at some of the powers that these individuals used, they were very much closer to what is being presented now.

I hope that we will give this a fair wind because we need to give real expression to the feeling of place that, I am happy to see, is growing in our great cities. There has been a gap and I want that gap filled. The way to do that is to let people feel that this is their place. Let us do it differently, so that it fits each of them. Let us not be afraid of real experiment. In particular, let us not muck it all up by insisting that the elected mayor has somebody that they do not want as deputy mayor because that happens to fit some particular view of how you should run a democracy.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that I am not misrepresenting the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I think that he said the British have an obsession with constitutional neatness, or words to that effect. That is rather odd coming from a Member of this House. The one thing that this House does not have is constitutional neatness; none the less it works pretty well most of the time. Certainly most of our dealings on constitutional matters show exactly the opposite, if that is an accurate reflection of what he said; we certainly are not obsessed with constitutional neatness. For example, we have accepted for a long time that the government of Scotland is different from other parts of the United Kingdom; this long predates the strong movement that exists at present for independence. But that is not the main point that I wanted to make.

I have great sympathy with these amendments, but only because they are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, if I can put it like that. They all derive from a kind of fear or anxiety of this potential authoritarian figure without qualification or checks and balances that we are creating in the form of a directly elected mayor. As I have said several times, I infinitely prefer parliamentary systems to directly elected, presidential systems. These amendments express a recognition of what I have always feared about such systems: you elect someone and they can pretty well act in an untrammelled way for the next four, five or six years, or however long it happens to be. These amendments are designed to say, “Let’s be a bit worried about this now. Let’s write in a number of qualifications that ensure that the mayor is not in a position to do that”.

To that extent, I support amendments along the lines being proposed. But—and it is a colossal but—we must recognise that the system we have at present, both in Parliament in the House of Commons and in local authorities up and down the length of the United Kingdom, is one in which the Executive are subject to genuine, democratic checks and balances in the form of a council, or a House of Commons, that checks the Prime Minister or the leader of the local authority to make sure that they do not get too big for their boots, if I can put it in those terms. That is the joy of that kind of system. If, for some reason or another or for some ideological principle, we decide that it works well in the United States and we ought to do it here—or whatever the motivating factors are behind the obsession that all three parties seem to have with directly elected mayors—we certainly need to make sure that a directly elected mayor is subject to some kind of ongoing scrutiny, and checks and balances on the powers that he or she decides to exercise. So I support the drift of the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, having listened to the debate so far on the various amendments, I am mightily glad that I am not the Minister. I hope that this does not sound patronising, but she has handled this Committee with good humour and has attempted to answer all the questions. However, my word, if she can square this particular circle of fitting the police and crime commissioners into directly elected mayors, that would be an achievement worthy of note and a chapter in Erskine May.

We have to have a history lesson for a moment. I do not know where the idea for police and crime commissioners came from— whether from the Liberal Democrat part or the Conservative part of the coalition.

[Lord Shipley]

Not guilty.

[Lord Grocott]

It is always interesting to unravel these bits and pieces. We might test a few more policies on that basis. So it was a Conservative policy to have police and crime commissioners, but I think I am right in saying that it was Liberal Democrat policy to have the first election in November. I do not think we can remember that particular contribution with great affection and admiration, or wish to repeat it. But the system was set up with grand language surrounding its inception, stating that in this crucial area of policing there should be a democratically elected leader accountable to the public, so that the public know whom to go to for this defined area of public life—all police and crime activity and policy in a particular part of the country. At least that was a clear objective. It fell at the first hurdle, as some of us predicted it would, because of the appalling turnout of 15% overall—in an area I know very well, Stoke, it was 9%. But at least there was clarity about the objective and the function that was being addressed.

This is where there is complete confusion. I am sure the Minister will try to square this circle, but I fear she will find it extremely difficult. We have police and crime commissioners, which for all their faults and criticisms were about a defined, agreed policy and pattern common across England. However, the virtue, almost, of the devolution pattern that we have discussed at such length is that it will be in different areas, with different functions and different managerial styles, and arranged differently between groups of leaders and the Secretary of State. If it is not completely random, its whole strength and legitimacy is that it is enabling and there will be no common pattern.

Now an attempt is being made to graft an agreed common pattern about a specific and very important service on to the myriad different structures that are planned for devolution, largely regarding directly elected mayors. It simply cannot work for all the reasons that have already been spelled out. How on earth will people know when they are electing a directly elected mayor what pattern will be established as to when the elections will take place? I will not repeat all the questions that have already been asked, but I can at least spell this fundamental problem out. We are trying to graft a common pattern on to a randomly different pattern across Great Britain.

It is almost beyond the power of parliamentary counsel to answer all the questions that are being raised in this debate. I wish the Minister well, if just for the sheer fun of watching someone try to square this circle. But surely the time has come to acknowledge that, worthy though some of the objectives may be in having police and crime commissioners directly elected, somehow or other this needs to be started from scratch. If we are to have devolution, police and crime must be part of that devolution package and there must be some consistency in the service across the country as to the type of devolution structure that will be applied in different areas.