Lord Woolmer of Leeds
Main Page: Lord Woolmer of Leeds (Labour - Life peer)Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Lord Woolmer of Leeds Excerpts
Lord Woolmer of Leeds (Lab)
Can the Minister enlighten me on one point and agree with me on a second? First, when it is said that the deputy mayor must be a member of the combined authority, does that mean a councillor on one of the local authorities that comprise the combined authority rather than someone on the board, as it were, of the combined authority? Secondly, would she agree with me that, in practice, once one moves away from London, the number of local authorities that comprise the combined authorities is relatively small? We are not talking about 30 or more—in South Yorkshire it is four and in West Yorkshire five or six. It is inconceivable that an elected mayor could make an appointment without careful consultation and discussion with the leaders of that small number of constituent local authorities. In practical terms, the mayor would have to consult carefully, as he or she would consult carefully on any policy issues, because without that the mayor could not govern effectively. There is a degree, I think, of suspicion about the mayor. If a mayor is appointed, that person is not going to be dealing, in most parts of the country, with 30 or 40 local authorities. The proposal being put forward is unnecessarily cumbersome and flies in the face of the reality of how the mayor would have to work.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord for that very useful intervention. First, he asked whether choosing a deputy mayor from the combined authority would mean choosing a councillor. Yes, it would, and that councillor would in fact be a council leader. Could the mayor make an unpopular appointment? He could, but it would be a very foolish mayor who made an unpopular appointment or chose someone who did not resonate and engage with the other members of the combined authority.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Am I right in understanding that it must be not simply an elected councillor but a leader of one of the constituent authorities? In practical terms, that means that a mayor would look extremely foolish if he or she selected somebody as a deputy who was not accepted by the leaders of a small number of local authorities.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is correct, in fact—it would usually be a local authority leader, but would not necessarily always be. It has to be a member of the combined authority, but it would in usual circumstances be a leader.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
That comes back to the clarification that we asked for—and we are getting a little lost in it. Is an elected councillor in one of the constituent authorities who is not a leader a member of the combined authority in the sense that it is being used? In other words, could a mayor choose somebody as a deputy who was a back-bencher in any of the local authorities, to put it simply, and not a decision-maker on the board of the combined authority? Would that be possible?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
That is a good question—particularly if there were no leaders in political sympathy with the mayor and therefore he or she had to scrabble around to find a deputy and had to go to a minority party, which might be very minority indeed.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
In one sense, one very much welcomes the proposal of powers that we used to have rather more freely, in recourse to raising bonds through the municipal public works board. I myself used to buy bonds from Derby and all the rest of it, and people put them to appropriate use for their savings. I am certainly not opposed to the principle at all, but I am not clear on something—and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, can help me on this point. The mayor will have a levy over and beyond, presumably, the council tax precept run by the combined authority. What powers the mayor will have vis-à-vis the combined authority may differ with each bespoke arrangement. What does the noble Baroness expect to be funded by a bond as opposed to a levy? The levy clearly falls on all, and all have access to those services, whereas a bond would be a voluntary subscription for an additional service which, none the less, would be enjoyed by all but possibly at a fee to fund the additional interest rate over and beyond the levy. I am slightly confused about how those two things would run in parallel. Clearly, in the past what would happen is that Derby would decide to seek £10 million through a loan on capital expenditure and fund it through the interest payments through the levy on it. In other words, part of the revenue expenditure would go to fund that bond. How does the noble Baroness envisage that working in this new financial structure?
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
On a similar point, what has been lacking in recent years with regard to capital funding and borrowing is the difficulty for local authorities to have the freedom to borrow and, because of that, a disconnect between identifying what it is they want to invest in, enthusing people for that and saying that they will back it with the capability of borrowing. That is the kind of thing that local authorities are examining. The question is whether this proposal would be more likely to generate enthusiasm and how it would fit in to the financing and the cost of the borrowing.
The amendment relates to specific projects, and it is highly likely, to judge from the enthusiastic speeches, that most of those projects will not cover their costs. There will be deficits; the only way in which the bonds will be sellable is if they are underwritten by the local authorities, which means the taxpayers. If one sets aside the initial enthusiasm, this can be a reality only if the taxpayer underwrites the bond. I hope that that is fair to say; it may not be the case, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, may say so. If the bond was tied to a specific project whose finances meant that the bond stood or fell on those financial outcomes, it is highly likely that a number of those would fail. If they did not fail, that means it would have been perfectly easy to fund them, because they are profit making, and they did not need to go for this scheme. It would help me in understanding not the appeal but the practicality of this proposal, if I could understand the practicality of persuading the Treasury—among other things—that this would not ultimately rest on underwriting by the mayor. It would be the mayor, not the combined authority, who would be saying, “I’m going to guarantee that these bonds will be repaid however the projects perform”. It would be helpful to me to understand that, should the House in due course be moved to consider this issue.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 36C. It is particularly important in relation to NHS responsibilities, which we will come to a little later. There is a considerable number of laggards in the NHS who are really nervous about getting into this territory. It is important that they start to engage their brains with this, because there is a growing number of failing health economies. Too many of them are sitting waiting to see what happens in Greater Manchester rather than engaging with this issue. I hope that the Minister will address this point—the sooner the better—and not be afraid to make it clear to the outside world, particularly the NHS, that these functions could be transferred down to the combined authorities.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds
My Lords, these amendments go to the heart of one of the problems that we have talked about many times in this Bill—the principle of not quite open house but, “Tell us what you want and we’ll discuss it. We’re not going to reveal our hand, but we might be interested in discussing it and we will listen and talk”. I share the view of my colleagues on the opposition Front Bench that it makes a lot of sense to go further than that for many local authorities that are considering whether or not to become combined authorities—not the relatively small number of combined authorities that currently exist but those that are looking at what it might all mean.
I still think that it is a terrible waste of people’s time not to have a reasonable idea of the kinds of thing that the Government might be positively interested in. I have said this before but any local authority groups coming together will have to second-guess what the Government might be interested in devolving, which is a terrible waste of time. They have to have a dialogue and find things out while someone else has probably been through the same process already. The Government must have a view about the areas that they are prepared to see devolved. Devolution is a two-way process. It is what local government and people in local communities would like to have, but it must also be about what central government feels it makes sense in the current climate to give a lead to—so I welcome these amendments.
To pick out one area, skills, and all that is associated with it, fewer than 2 million people go to university—full-time or part-time—but almost 3 million people are in further education. A lot of people in your Lordships’ House have been to university but far fewer will have been through FE colleges. I see the noble Lord indicating that he did. It is easy to overlook the fact that far more people look to other routes into skills and education than universities. I am from a strong university background so my view of universities is not negative at all, but that is the reality. The skills of that group of people are very important to the economies of our combined authority areas. The people with low and medium-level skills are almost certainly the people who will work and live in those communities. A lot of people in universities go off elsewhere—we would like to keep more of them in West Yorkshire. These people are the key to skills and our economic development and growth. Having a strategic view on that is extremely important.
That leads me to two final points. First, my noble friend touched on health and social care, and I would like to see that on the list. Any list can be added to, and it is clearly the case in Manchester, so it ought to be on a list that is indicative of the kind of things that we would expect to be up for discussion.
Finally, it is important to bear in mind that the role of the authority’s mayor is largely and overwhelmingly strategic, and where there are interventions, they are to help secure the strategic objectives. There is some temptation for local authorities to think, as the discussions go on, that local authority powers will be taken away from them: that while there might be some devolution from central government, powers will be taken away from local councils. Putting that kind of message out and making clear the difference between strategic powers and detailed implementation powers is extremely important. I warmly welcome the thrust of these amendments.