Scotland: Devolution

Lord Smith of Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Leigh (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a very wide-ranging debate on all aspects of devolution. I shall start by saying that I am not the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who is struggling to get together by Burns Night the promises made before the referendum—I am sure that he has a very difficult task—but, as my noble friend Lord Beecham said, I am chairman of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and so declare my interest. You can therefore see that my interest in devolution is devolution to cities in England, which is what I shall concentrate on today.

I was surprised by the contribution of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, who seemed to say that devolution in England was okay and that we had done everything. The aftermath of the referendum in Scotland, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, has made people question the overcentralisation that still exists across the UK and England in particular. We have seen numerous reports on devolution come out. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to Devo Max—Devo Manc, which, obviously, we are particularly pleased with, but the other reports have shown what impact some devolution would have. Every political party in this country now seems to be espousing the idea. Senior members of the Government, of both parties, have made their contribution to that. Even the Labour Party now has a policy on devolution that I am sure we can support, so it is an idea whose time has come. I was therefore surprised at what the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said.

Of the three aspects of policy that should be devolved to cities, the first is, clearly, economic powers, the second is place(-based) public services and the third is some form of fiscal devolution. I shall not repeat what people have said about the economic powers, but, clearly, skills, transport and housing are key issues that will make a real difference to our cities. That is particularly true of skills. When we have a Skills Funding Agency based in Whitehall, trying to determine what new skills are needed across Greater Manchester, well, it is no wonder that we have so many hairdressers being trained for jobs that do not exist. We need to get hold of that money and we need to be able to commission it locally, working with the private sector and colleges to make sure that we get a better deal.

I have spoken in this House on a number of occasions on public service reform, about which I am passionate. It was begun, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, under the Labour Government and what they called Total Place. There has been movement under the current Government in the various experiments that they have conducted—we were a pilot area in Greater Manchester for public service reform—but we have not tackled this fundamental problem of a silo-based approach, where each central government department works on its own and does not understand the nature of what is going on.

We often find that it is the same individuals and the same families who need support, because they have very complex needs. We need to understand that and stop trying to sort out the problems of those individuals in different areas with different people involved; we should look at the position as a whole. We have started in Greater Manchester on a “Work Programme plus”. People have different views about the success of the Work Programme, but quite a large number of people were never shifted by the Work Programme because they were too difficult. Using the resources of local authorities and others, we have begun to understand what problems individuals have in getting jobs. Is it homelessness? Is it some kind of mental problem? Do they have drug issues? We ask what the issue is and how we can support it, and then we can help them get back into work. We need to stop dealing with failures, as public services often do, and try to look at things across the piece.

As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, reminded the House, in Greater Manchester public spending is about £22 billion to £22.5 billion and it has been that figure for a time. We have had government austerity and the cuts. The cuts have affected Greater Manchester—public services such as local authorities and the police have taken huge hits in their spending—but, because of rises in welfare and health spending, the total has remained the same. We are not going to tackle it unless we get control of that money altogether. We need to do that much more. We are happy to take what we would regard as a risk and reward situation. We will tell the Government that we will make savings and share them with them—some of the savings can come back and some of it we will do.

The benefits of such a system have been shown. We know that there will be better economic growth and it will be better distributed across the country. This country is too reliant on London and the south-east and we need to spread wealth across the country. That will happen. Public services will be more efficient and cheaper and actually deliver better outcomes for the people they are meant to support.

We recognise that with devolution comes responsibility. We cannot simply take it on board now. We probably have the most sophisticated government in Greater Manchester because we have been doing it long enough but we know we need to change. I hope on Friday I will get an agreement on some very significant changes in Greater Manchester to take on these new responsibilities to make sure we are accountable to Parliament and to government. We need to do that.

Most of the changes I have suggested do not need to wait for the big constitutional convention. They do not need to wait for massive new legislation. They can be done now. All that is required is the political will to do it.