Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who has been a long-time advocate of more devolution to local government. I share his congratulations to the Secretary of State, who has not only advocated devolution for a long time, but is now in a position to deliver it.

In common with other speakers, I spent many years in local government—26 years as a councillor, to be precise. During that time, I and my colleagues were railing against central Government, whoever were in power, for centralising more and more. Now we have gone into reverse, which is extremely welcome.

I have been a long-time advocate of the evolving position of elected mayors. Unlike those on both sides of the House in recent years who have been rather stop-go in their support, I have long been an advocate. In 2001, I tried to gain sufficient signatures on a petition for an elected mayor in my own authority. I share the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), who earlier advocated that it should be made easier for the electorate to initiate petitions, rather than leave it to politicians, and that we should reduce the threshold to 1%, which would encourage local people to overtake the views of their local authority if it were being somewhat resistant. We all know that local politicians can sometimes be resistant to change, and we have heard varying views about the role of elected mayors this afternoon.

For too long, local government has languished in the shadows. Elected mayors will provide an identifiable figurehead and increase the feeling of local identity. We can all identify with our country, our county and our town or village. Those are the constructs around which combined authorities should evolve.

Those of us who live in an area that was subject to major reorganisation in the 1970s—and my area was pushed into the hated county of Humberside—are well aware of the need to attract a feeling of identity among local people. Local authorities are not just administrative units governed by lines on a map, and that is even more true of the regions that we have all been pushed into. Although we have been told for many years that those regions do not exist, much of government operates through them. An earlier speaker referred to Yorkshire and Humberside and then started talking about “the county”, but Yorkshire and Humberside are actually two counties, and those of us who live in the Lincolnshire part tend to resent the fact that the focus is always too much on the Yorkshire part.

I am pleased to say that two local authorities in my area have presented a proposal which I fully support, and I hope the Secretary of State will accept it. It was presented jointly by the leaders of Labour-controlled North East Lincolnshire and Conservative-controlled North Lincolnshire, Ray Oxby and Liz Redfern, and I pay tribute to them both for helping us to arrive at the point where we are now.

There are great economic development opportunities for northern Lincolnshire. I see that the Minister for the northern powerhouse, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), is present; I know that he will want to refer to the strengths of the area, including the growing offshore renewables sector, which is providing a much-wanted and much-needed boost for the local economy.

I want to digress slightly before ending my speech. I share the reservations of Members who mentioned Sunday trading. Some of us attended yesterday’s reception hosted by the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents the small businesses that we all want to support. We recognise their concern about the proposed extension of Sunday trading, and I support them in that regard. It will take a lot of persuasion to make me support the extension.

As we have already heard, local people are best suited to determining the priorities that can lead to greater regeneration and prosperity in their area. It is not just our great cities—which have so often been the focus of city regions and the like—that need support and encouragement; the energies and prospects of provincial towns such as those in my area can be unleashed by more devolution. I hope that the combined authorities that are emerging will evolve into unitary authorities, which have much more democratic accountability than the combined authorities that we are about to create, and I fully support the Minister’s proposals.