Draft Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) (Amendment) Order 2017

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 General Committees

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It is a delight to see you in the chair, Mr Paisley.

Far be it from me to curtail the desperate attempt at brevity, but there are some serious issues here, and it is right that Parliament scrutinises them. I appreciate that the Minister has been offered a packet of Liquorice Allsorts when it comes to the devolution progress under his predecessors. When I was in Cleethorpes on Saturday watching Grimsby Town, I passed through two constituencies in a district, which is apparently in Yorkshire and the Humber, but in fact is proudly and defiantly in Lincolnshire.

In defining these borders and the reason for bringing forward this draft order, does the Minister agree that he has inherited rather a mess and that there needs to be more certainty in local government structures? Too many people are hung up on boundaries created decades, centuries, almost millenniums ago, that do not necessarily fit the modern era. Mr Paisley, I am sure you will remember when the towns of Bawtry and Finningley were usurped and taken out of Nottinghamshire and put into Yorkshire, from Bassetlaw into Doncaster. Bomber command headquarters shifted its loyalties. That was done in 1973 and never properly explained.

[The Chair]

Order. This is fascinating, but before we get to the dropping of the bombs, the scope of today’s legislation is the change of date from one year to another and the intervals for subsequent elections. Let us keep to the scope, or we could be here for months.

[John Mann]

Mr Paisley, I am doing nothing more than simply outlining logically why the order has had to be brought before us, so that Members can democratically consider whether it is appropriate to pass it or not.

We have had a mishmash of borders. The counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire have two cricket teams and two identities, but are not necessarily economic units. They clash, with the D2N2 local enterprise partnership based primarily in Derby and Nottingham, and they compete—that is the term—with the authorities of South Yorkshire on what the structures should be.

Here is the nub of the issue. We have councillors being asked to give up their powers but we do not have clarity from the Government on what powers ultimately—and “ultimately” may mean before 2020—are going to be handed over. Will the Minister confirm whether health powers, for example, are intended under this Parliament to be given to the combined authority, should it become a city region? If so, does he agree with my proposal that should Bassetlaw and Chesterfield join next year, social care and public health should transfer from local government to the national health service, to be the first place in the country to allow the integration of health services in the way in which, on a cross-party basis, Parliament appears to demand?

Will minerals planning be transferred? In the next three years that will undoubtedly mean decisions on fracking and, indeed, on where the wealth that the Government are adamant comes from fracking will go. Those are not minor issues; they are fundamental to today’s decision, because all the proposals for fracked gas in Nottinghamshire are in Bassetlaw. Should there be a Sheffield city region incorporating Bassetlaw and minerals planning was to transfer to one planning authority, that would be coherent. Has the Minister had an opportunity to read what the city region is saying? Does he agree that its case would be strengthened if it was to incorporate properly the A1 into its transport infrastructure? Currently, it is mysteriously missing.

Finally, Will the Minister confirm that in other parts of the country there are legal disputes over the levels of consultation? Will he outline, with a bit of detail, how we got into this mess whereby Chesterfield appeared to think that it was following instructions from the Government but ended up being judicially reviewed, challenged and defeated in the courts, so progress has been unfortunately and unnecessarily delayed? Will there be other such problems elsewhere in the country? How will he ensure that others do not face that kind of dilemma in the next year?

[The Chair]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to relate all those matters to 2018.