Devolution: English Cities

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, first, may I say how pleased I am to be able to respond to this debate on a motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine? I commend the work he has done in this report and also over many years to empower our great cities, support communities and enable them to face up to the challenges in our world. That is not to say that I agree with every word in the report; but, like my noble friend Lord Rooker, I say that it is an excellent report and an important contribution. There are many recommendations in the report that I fully agree with and would want to take further.

When he introduced the debate, the noble Lord talked about two cities. You could feel that you are living in two different worlds, but actually be living close by the other. In my own borough of Southwark, we have the very prosperous south of the borough, which is a wealthy and nice place to live in, and we now have a much more regenerated north of the borough. There are lots of tourists there and things have improved dramatically in the last 20 or 30 years. In other parts, though, in Walworth, Camberwell and Peckham, the borough is still struggling and there are all sorts of problems in terms of drugs, knife crime and housing. You really could be living in a different world in the same borough, so that was a very important point that he made.

I should also at this point declare that I am vice-president of the Local Government Association—my usual declaration that I make on the numerous times that I speak in this House. Among other things, I am a Londoner, as you can probably tell; but for many years I lived in Coventry, Leicester and Nottingham, so I know the east Midlands very well. It is a great place to live and needs to have power to be developed and to move forward. As the noble Lord said in his introduction, such places have to be able to compete in a world that is changing at a pace unprecedented in our history. Things are moving so fast now; new technologies arrive in our country, become obsolete and then something else moves in, whereas before, things used to never change. We need to address this bigger picture to ensure that our great cities and institutions are fit for purpose.

I have raised several times in the House the issue of the combined authorities. We seem to be creating a confused patchwork for local government, and for me that is not good. We need a sense of what is going on in each area and who is governing it. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, and I am conscious of the number of different bodies that potentially can be involved in taxation and so on. Not too far away is Bedfordshire, which is a very different operation. We need to understand how places are governed. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, does not agree with me on that but it is my view, and the report gives some welcome structure to the combined authority model.

My noble friend Lord Beecham made a point about the sums of money made available by the Government to the combined authorities, and I agree that they are still quite small sums of money over 30 years or so. If any of the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, are to be taken up by the Government, much greater sums of money will have to be made available. If we contrast the money presently available with the money that has been lost to local government since 2010, we see that there is a huge gap.

I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. If we want something to happen in a local area, it is not going to be delivered from behind a desk in Whitehall. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, made a similar point when she called for further devolution. Local people have a much better understanding of the problems and challenges in their area. If they can get that job, they will do it well. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that we need people in charge, and one thing I have learned in my life is that if there are not people in charge to make decisions, you get drift; nothing happens, and there is a lack of focus and then failure. Having people in charge is very important.

Looking at the proposals in the report, I agree that reform of government and of Whitehall is a crucial first step. I like the idea of a department for the English regions, but it would involve significant restructuring and there must be reform as to how Parliament and elected MPs would relate to any new department with such a clear focus. Others might not, but I would welcome the return of the government regional offices; it is disappointing that they were abolished. I have no problem with the Boundary Commission looking at local authority boundaries and at what the authorities do.

The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made a good point about how some of our cities work. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made a fair point when he talked about city boundaries. I have served on a number of local authorities, including one with 59 Labour members, one Green and a Labour mayor—to be honest, that did not always make for the best government. It does not matter which party it is, we need people on councils to say when a budget is not very good and what should be done instead. If you do not have that, you need it, so we need to find a way for that to happen. I am not an advocate of PR, but in many towns and cities we now have one party dominant in the council chamber. That is not good. I do not know whether we can do anything about that, but we need to find a way of getting somebody else into the chamber—but I do not know how. There is an issue there.

Select Committees of both Houses have an important role to play, but as I said earlier, we need to think about how Members of the House of Commons engage with the governance of English regions. We might not like it, but the world did not come to an end with a Conservative Government in the UK, an SNP Government in Scotland and a Labour Government in Wales. Clearly, parties of different perspectives can work together and function. We need some broader thinking they are about where we are in England. My noble friend Lady Quin talked about what we do there as well.

There is also the point about bringing the heads of the combined authorities together with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. That would give a good focus, but if that happened, it should be expanded to some of our bigger cities, such as Nottingham, Derby or Leicester, where the mayor there, Sir Peter Soulsby, makes a big contribution. Getting them wired into the policy challenges and the policy solutions nationally would be a good thing to do.

I very much liked the idea of looking at what goes on in cities around the world. We can learn much from our partners abroad, and it is a very good thing to do. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, mentioned that. I was not so keen on his football analogy, though. As a Millwall supporter, we do not get any European football. Our trips are normally up to Birmingham to play Birmingham City, or perhaps to visit my noble friend Lord Beecham in Newcastle. Getting together and working with other cities is an important thing to do.

Greater Manchester, which in many ways is the most developed of all the combined authorities, is a very good example. As a noble Lord said in a previous debate, many of the authorities in Greater Manchester have changed control in recent years, but they still work together very well as a group. There is clearly maturity there. It is a really good model and other parts of our country can look at what goes on in Greater Manchester: even when political control changes, there are still the same problems and challenges, yet they work very well together. It is important that that happens.

I can see the logic of combined authority mayors taking over the roles of the police and crime commissioners. That would be a very good thing. Again, I am not convinced, and many other noble Lords were not, by the idea of transferring various services, such as affordable housing and schools, to the combined authority. I do not necessarily see the merit in that.

I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who spoke about housing. We have debated this many times. Housebuilding is in the hands of four or five developers. It does not always necessarily get us what we need. As my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe said, partnership between local authorities, housing associations and builders could get the housing we need built. We need to build more social housing in this country. For all sorts of reasons, that would help all of us deal with the problems we have to face.

I agree with the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle about the northern powerhouse and the need to provide additional funding and support for the north of England. I am also conscious that we often debate transport. Try to get from Bradford to Manchester: it is impossible. That is really important to talk about as well, as there are important issues there.

My noble friend Lord Beecham made a welcome call for more funding and power for mayoral authorities to raise taxes and charges, including a tourist tax. I very much support the call from my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath in that respect regarding the Commonwealth Games. I also agree with his point about the NHS. Again, this is something where Greater Manchester is certainly ahead of the game.

Finally, I was a very young councillor in the 1980s in Southwark. It is fair to say that we were not that happy with the setting up of the London Docklands Development Corporation. It was not universally popular locally, but looking back it is fair to say that what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, did there was absolutely right. Much good was done in the area. Significant regeneration happened and lots of money was brought into the area, with new housing, better transport, with the Docklands Light Railway, and a new financial sector in Canary Wharf. That might not have happened if he had not pushed those things forward. We are very grateful to him for that. In north Southwark, maybe William Shakespeare and Sam Wanamaker had a bit of a role in that too, but we were very lucky with what happened there and what he did. We are grateful for what he pursued there.

I am also really pleased, because the early 1980s were a difficult time for local government: there was a great fracture between central and local government. For all our difficulties, local and national government have a much better relationship nowadays, and we should all welcome that.

In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, for bringing this Motion to Grand Committee today. It has been an excellent debate. He started off by mentioning Brexit, so I will finish on it as well. I agree entirely with his remarks on Brexit. I had the privilege of being in Parliament Square when he addressed the People’s Vote rally. I believed every single word he said then, as I do today.