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

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for his clear explanation of the powers that the authority will have and what it can do. I also declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council. I am a member of that council because I believe in local government, and it is a key part of the levelling-up agenda to have stronger, more effective local government in the north of England.

I should like to put three points to the Minister. First, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and others have pointed out, there are inconsistencies and deficiencies in the way in which this devolution process has been handled. We need a White Paper, more consistency and to strengthen not weaken devolution. When are those proposals going to come?

Secondly, until now, the focus has been on strengthening the voice of the big metropolitan areas in the north of England but there are, of course, more rural and scattered hinterlands. The Government are considering local government reorganisation proposals for the hinterland in the north-west of my native Cumbria, in the hinterland of West Yorkshire and in North Yorkshire. I strongly support the creation of single strategic authorities in those areas. The district councils are iffy about this, but we can deal with their concerns through effective devolution within a strategic authority to towns and groups of parishes. That would be a better answer.

Thirdly, a stronger voice for Yorkshire is desperately needed as the Government contemplate the decision to put the eastern leg of HS2 on the back burner, which would be catastrophic for the north. It would create gross inequality between the north-west and Yorkshire and Humber and the north-east that would get worse and worse as the decades went on. It cannot be allowed to happen. I know that this is not the Minister’s direct responsibility but that of the Department for Transport, but the Local Government Minister must give attention to this desperately important issue.