Greater Manchester Combined Authority Order 2011

Lord Smith of Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, the order would establish a combined authority covering the area of the 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester. The establishment of the new combined authority will leave Greater Manchester better placed to tackle its economic challenges and improve public service delivery.

Part 6 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 enables the creation of economic prosperity boards and combined authorities. These are designed for groups of local authorities that wish to work closely together to deliver improvements in economic development, regeneration and, in relation to combined authorities, transport. They are corporate bodies with their own governance structures. They can be given local authority functions relating to economic development and regeneration and the transport functions available to integrated transport authorities. I should stress that whether to establish a combined authority is a voluntary decision for the local authorities concerned and that Ministers cannot impose combined authorities on areas.

The 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester have a long history of collaboration. For more than 20 years, the voluntary partnership known as the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) has successfully co-ordinated cross-boundary collaboration between the 10 local authorities on a wide range of issues.

The previous Government consulted in March last year on AGMA’s proposal to establish a combined authority. The consultation showed strong support for the combined authority from a range of private sector and public sector partners across Greater Manchester. The combined authority has strong support within the business community and has the support of all 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester. In November, we confirmed our intention to support the establishment of the combined authority and to proceed with the order establishing the new authority.

Membership of the combined authority would consist of the 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester. Under the order, each constituent local authority is required to appoint one of its elected members as a member of the authority. The combined authority would be funded through appropriate contributions from each of the 10 local authorities and through the transport levy.

The order would transfer the functions of the integrated transport authority to the combined authority, which would also assume some existing transport functions held by the Greater Manchester local authorities. The order would also devolve to the combined authority certain local authority functions relating to economic development and regeneration. This should ensure more effective alignment between decision-making on transport and that on other areas of policy such as land use, economic development and wider regeneration. In particular, the same authority would determine Greater Manchester’s sustainable community strategy and its local transport plan.

The Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority has a good history of delivering and improving transport in Greater Manchester. For example, it manages a concessionary fares scheme for senior, blind, disabled, and young permit holders and organises about 7.5 million school journeys each year. It has masterminded the expansion of the Manchester Metrolink, including important extensions to East Didsbury, Ashton, Rochdale, Oldham and Manchester Airport. However, with the establishment of the combined authority we would see a greater concentration of transport functions across Greater Manchester within one authority. This would help to deliver transport benefits beyond those which the existing integrated transport authority structure can provide.

The new arrangements will allow the combined authority to have much greater influence over the full range of transport infrastructure and services across Greater Manchester. In view of their decision to establish a combined authority, the Government are committed to working with Manchester on a forward-looking programme to examine how Greater Manchester can assume greater responsibilities and influence, comparable to those enjoyed by Transport for London. This agenda will be taken forward through a protocol on heavy rail that facilitates closer working between Greater Manchester and the Department for Transport, and a similar protocol on highways which will facilitate closer working between Greater Manchester and the Highways Agency.

The protocols will provide the basis for the combined authority to plan and develop its transport strategy in full awareness of programmes on national rail networks and the strategic road network in and around Greater Manchester. They will also enable the combined authority to be able to have a real influence on those national programmes, bringing to bear the authority’s knowledge of what is needed from transport to facilitate the authority’s strategy for promoting economic growth in Greater Manchester.

In October last year, the civic and business leaders of Greater Manchester were invited to proceed with the establishment of their proposed local enterprise partnership. They hope to have their new local enterprise partnership up and running next month. The Greater Manchester combined authority will work in close partnership with the local enterprise partnership to drive economic growth across Greater Manchester. Under Greater Manchester’s proposals, the local enterprise partnership will provide strategic direction and leadership in delivering on Greater Manchester’s economic priorities. The combined authority will act as the primary accountable body for Greater Manchester and as a repository of certain statutory functions, including those of the integrated transport authority.

We do not anticipate that establishing the combined authority will involve increased costs for the 10 local authorities within Greater Manchester, as a lot of the infrastructure to support the authority is already in place. Indeed, our expectation is that the combined authority will lead to considerable efficiency savings through sharing and avoiding the duplication of services. This is important at a time when public resources are so stretched.

In conclusion, I believe that the new combined authority will leave the local authorities of Greater Manchester better placed to support the delivery of economic improvements across Greater Manchester and to support the ambitions of its local enterprise partnership.

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, I should first declare a number of interests in this matter. I am leader of one of the 10 Greater Manchester authorities and chairman of the AGMA executive board. Last month, I was appointed chair of the shadow combined authority, because we anticipate the success of the order. We are well into planning for it.

I thank the Minister for the clear and thorough way in which he introduced the order and through him thank the Government for the way in which they reviewed the application for the combined authority for Greater Manchester and for agreeing to it.

There are some familiar faces here. We were in this very Room discussing the Committee stage of the wonderful Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill. That lasted a long time and, in one session, I rather surprised the Minister at the time by saying that, if you want this sort of thing to work, you have to give it some real teeth and real powers; otherwise, what is the point of going through all these processes? Fortunately, the Minister listened and, as a result, the combined authority is a more effective and more accountable form of government.

As the Minister described, with wonderful timing we entered the consultation phase in March last year, which of course straddled the general election. Therefore, there was an impasse before the election but, as I said, we were extremely pleased that the Government listened, and there was overwhelming support for the combined authority from partners in Greater Manchester. The authority shares with the Government the desire to improve the economy of Greater Manchester, and it does so in a number of innovative ways, particularly working with the private sector. We have no quarrels with that. We have a long history in Manchester of working with the private sector. We recently set up the Business Leadership Council, which is a fairly free-flying body. It can criticise AGMA if it does not think that it is responding to the needs of business across the conurbation.

As the Minister said, we have now been working together in AGMA since the abolition of the old met counties in 1986. That means that we have been working together for 25 years. I think that we have become more effective because we have realised that there is more to do. The tyranny of some local boundaries means that, when trying to achieve something locally, you need to think bigger, particularly on economic matters. With the support of the previous Government, there was an independent economic review for Manchester. A group of distinguished economists was able to come and say what was good about the Greater Manchester economy and, perhaps more importantly for all of us, what was not good and what we needed to do. One thing that the economists said we needed to do was to improve the governance, making it stronger, and integrate decisions on transport with other economic decisions. That is what the combined authority will allow us to do.

I want to comment on one thing that the Minister said which was not quite correct. In the wake of a very painful experience concerning the congestion charge, in which a referendum was broken, AGMA agreed to set up a Greater Manchester transport fund. It increased the levy from each local authority by 3 per cent above the demands of the service and put it into a transport fund, which was able to pay for the extensions to Metrolink, as the Minister evidenced. Therefore, although it went through the CA, the CA did not pay for it; the AGMA leaders agreed to do that. That is the kind of thing that we will do in the future. Despite the current pressures on local government, we are sustaining that going forward.

We also want to work with the Government on reforming public services, as the Minister said. In particular, we are a pilot for community budgets. We understand the need for work to be done regarding families with complex needs and the great costs that arise for local authorities and government. Often, we just manage a problem; we do not cure it. Therefore, we hope that we will be able to do better work on that.

The Minister is absolutely right: we have no intention of setting up a bureaucracy to run the combined authority. We see it as a way of saving in the long term by combining work. A lot of work is going from local authorities’ highways services into the new combined authority, and that will produce savings across the board, apart from the general work that we are doing in that regard.

Finally, again, I thank the Government for their foresight. We believe that we can work together with the Government and achieve a lot on this matter.