Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) Order 2016

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

It may benefit the Committee if I make the point that the Minister is asking the Committee to consider the Tees Valley order at the same time as the Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral order. If the Committee agrees, I will put the question on the second order formally after we have completed the first debate.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order. As she rightly pointed out, this is one of the stages in the establishment of mayoral combined authorities.

First, will the Minister confirm that, once this order is agreed by Parliament, there will be a mayoral election on 4 May 2017? I ask because, as the Minister herself said, paragraph 7.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that:

“The Government will seek Parliament’s approval later in 2016 to further secondary legislation necessary to devolve the powers and budgets to the Combined Authority, as agreed in devolution deal”.

Can she confirm that there will be a mayoral election even if there is no agreement on the content of the devolution deal? It presupposes, first, that later this year the authorities making up the combined authority will finally agree with the Government and that there will be no changes by the establishment of a new Government, and, secondly, that Parliament itself will agree to the orders. I would like clarification on that.

The Minister will recall that, in our debates during the passage of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, a great deal was said about the scrutiny and audit arrangements. Those grew in importance between Committee and Report and between Report and Third Reading. It was generally agreed that the arrangements initially proposed in the Bill were inadequate and some improvements were made. I draw the Minister’s attention to the report of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, Cities and Local Growth, published on 1 July, just a few days ago. In the summary, on page 3, it states that:

“There has been insufficient consideration by central government of local scrutiny arrangements of accountability to the taxpayer and of the capacity and capability needs of local and central government as a result of devolution”.

I also subscribe to that view. Is it possible for the Government to set out the reply they will make to the Public Accounts Committee alongside the next stage of parliamentary approval of the detailed arrangements of powers and resources for both mayoral combined authorities? Recommendation 8 of the Public Accounts Committee says, very specifically, that:

“Government should set out by November 2016 its plans for how it will ensure that local scrutiny of devolved functions and funding will be both robust and well supported”.

I would like to think that, when we get to the next stage of considering the arrangements for these combined authorities, we will have a response to this very specific point which the committee raised.

The Minister will recall that, during the passage of the Bill, I and my colleagues made a number of comments about the scale of responsibilities for an elected mayor within a mayoral combined authority. It is a big geographical area and it is a wide set of responsibilities. We queried the capacity of an individual person to do so much across all the areas that the Minister has described; in this case, it is transport, strategic planning, adult skills, employment support, business support, a business rate retention pilot, joint working with Her Majesty’s Government on children’s services, health, housing and justice. That is a very wide range of tasks for one person to be formally responsible for, even though the combined authority as a whole will have some shared responsibilities. Is the Minister confident about the structure being set up, not least because of the concerns of the Public Accounts Committee? It has identified a range of issues that in most cases we considered during the passage of the Bill some months ago, and the problems and the questions have not gone away.

I welcome the Tees Valley Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) Order and I congratulate Tees Valley on getting on with the process of devolving power to its mayoral combined authority, and in particular for overtaking the North East Combined Authority, which seems to have suspended discussions with the Government pending the election of the new Prime Minister. That is now going to be sooner than perhaps the authority had anticipated. I noted in the Minister’s introduction, unless I misheard her, that a number of further orders for areas such as South Yorkshire and the West Midlands are said to be forthcoming, but I do not recall any mention of the North East Combined Authority in that list. Assuming that I heard her correctly, can she clarify what the position is given that the order has been placed before Parliament for consideration? Is it delayed, over what timescale is it delayed, and is there still any potential, given the legal requirements, to hold a mayoral election in May if it is delayed much longer?

I have raised a number of issues for the Minister to respond to. Devolution is a positive thing, but she will understand that throughout this process we have expressed a whole range of doubts about the structures which are being established and the democratic accountability that lies within the process.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

I would like to inform the noble Lord, and possibly the Minister, about the situation with regard to the North East Combined Authority. It was originally thought that we would be taking that either this week or next week, but now it will be taken in September. It is not quite ready, as it happens, so next week would be difficult. My understanding is that it will be taken in September during the two weeks that we are back.

[Lord Shipley]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. I hope that we will have a chance to consider the plans for the North East Combined Authority in the House of Lords.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly will. We discussed it at length.

[Lord Shipley]

It is a very important issue, because there is a danger that the majority party will, in reality, be responsible for the appointment of the independent chair. We are seeking reassurance that, if the Nolan procedures are to be followed, they require an open procedure, not simply a council or the leaders in a combined authority making a decision on which member of the minority parties is to be appointed as independent chair.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We did discuss this and agreed that that should be the case. It would make a mockery of the process if there was any appearance or evidence of bias of that kind. If it would be helpful, I will write to noble Lords from the Committee to outline the process and will place a copy in the Library.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked me how Liverpool is conducting its consultation. It is on the regional combined authority website and is being promoted locally. It started on 24 June this year and the closing date is 5 August, so the noble Lord has time to respond.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked for examples of resources being made available, in this case to Tees Valley. I understand that Tees Valley Combined Authority’s single pot provides an assurance framework for £226 million of flexible Section 31 grant funding with a confirmed five-year profile. He made the point—as he often does—about local authorities having to make ever more efficiency savings and asked how they would have enough capacity to deliver some of the things being devolved down. It is envisaged that local growth will in many ways—particularly if you look at things like the devolution of health and social care—be a big saving to the public purse and ultimately help in local authorities’ budgets. However, these are all things that are being devolved down that local authorities would not have had previously. So I am very confident that local authorities will see themselves in a better, not a worse, position. He also asked about business rates and he is right: we are currently consulting on the future of business rates and we have made it clear that there will continue to be some form of top-up and tariff. However, I think that a date for decision is yet to be determined, but I shall let him know when it is. I am assuming that it will be by the end of this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Watts, asked what the Government are doing to ensure that the mayoral system is not open to corruption, which I think is a very good question in the context of some of the things that we have seen previously in local authorities. Not only will there be rigorous scrutiny arrangements—which never existed in the 1980s—as provided by the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act, but there will be requirements for transparency; that is, meetings in public, which again did not exist back in the 1980s and were not introduced in local authorities until relatively recently. Moreover, conduct requirements, which we did not have back in the day—things like declarations of interest—will apply to combined authorities. I hope that gives the noble Lord some comfort.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the PCC and fire functions. It is for local areas to propose where they think it would be efficient and effective for the mayor to take on PCC and fire functions. In terms of the new Prime Minister and her previous keenness for fire functions, I really do not know. I have been asked a lot about what the new Prime Minister thinks and I really do not know. I am sure all will be revealed in the next few days.