Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Wharton]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to divert my attention from the amendments. The steps this Government are taking on business rates are generally welcomed by local government—that is my experience of the discussions I have had. They are another step towards giving local government the certainty, control and freedom it wants, and delivering on our agenda. They are broadly in line with the devolutionary approach that we are taking and is envisaged by the Bill.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

The Minister mentioned that local areas can choose what area will bid for these devolved powers, based on their own local needs. What size of population or of economy would an area need to get this devolution? There has been some suggestion that the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire bid is not large enough.

[James Wharton]

It is up to local areas to make proposals, and we will look at the offers and deals. Thirty-eight proposals were submitted before the 4 September deadline by areas interested in being part of this process. We will seek to ensure that any proposal makes economic sense, and that the deal takes account of all interested parties and their views, but we are not going to prescribe in this Bill, nor set out centrally, the geography that devolution should follow, because to do so would go counter to the bottom-up process that we envisage driving forward long-lasting and successful devolution in this country. I recognise my hon. Friend’s important question, but flexibility is the intention and it is what the Bill contains. We want agreement and to work with areas to deliver on their objectives.

We are open to discussing devolution proposals from all places. We have been clear that our approach is for areas to come forward with proposals that address their specific issues and opportunities. The Bill is therefore enabling legislation that will provide the legislative framework to give effect to the different aspects of devolution deals. The Government have not specified a list of functions that may be devolved, and there is good reason for that approach. It means that we can consider any area, idea or proposal. Perhaps more significantly, if we started to specify lists of functions or kinds of areas, those whose ambitions fell outside these ideas might be reluctant to come forward. The reality is that, as decades past have shown, if the man in Whitehall is asked to specify what might be devolved, the list is going to be pretty cautious.

It would not be right to restrict our ambition by taking such an approach, so I hope Opposition Front Benchers will accept and understand the position the Government are taking. In short, specifying functions or kinds of areas is simply not consistent with a genuinely bottom-up approach. We will therefore not be supporting amendment 59, or new clauses 23 and 25, and I hope hon. Members will not press them to a vote. I also hope that, with my explanations and assurances, the Committee will be able to support clause 1 and reject clause 2, accepting the consequential amendment to clause 1.

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[James Wharton]

I hear what the hon. Lady says and that issue will be given a great deal of consideration. I will comment on the matter later in the course of the Committee, but the message has been heard loud and clear by Government. As I said in my opening remarks, we are keen to find consensus where we can on this agenda. I hope that at this stage, subject to the debate that might take place, that will sufficiently reassure the hon. Lady so that she can await those discussions in due course.

[Nigel Mills]

rose—

[James Wharton]

I cannot give way to my hon. Friend, because I must make some progress. I apologise to him, but there will be opportunity throughout today to discuss this matter.

I doubt that it would be right to accept this amendment, but we shall of course listen carefully to the debate, both on this amendment and on the amendments of my hon. Friends the Members for Hazel Grove and for Shipley. We recognise the strength of feeling and we want to find a way to ensure the broadest possible support for this legislation. I have put on record the Government’s views and the concerns that we have to the proposed approach, but we will of course listen to what is said later on today.

Amendment 46, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), seeks to prevent the ceremonial county of Somerset— the administrative county of Somerset and also the two unitary authorities of Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset—from adopting arrangements that include a mayor for the area of the combined authority. There are two difficulties with the amendment. I suspect that my hon. Friend will speak to the amendment later, and I will listen intently to the comments that he makes. The first is that it would single out Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset as some kind of special case.

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[Nigel Mills]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and I shall speak to amendment 39 in my name. The purpose of the amendment is not to divide the Committee, but to ask how these devolution deals will work in areas that have a partly unitary and partly two tier authority structure. It is not clear that that is an effective or desirable situation for various reasons.

The reason for proposing a consultation with local people is that I am not sure there will be much enthusiasm among local people to pay for three different tiers of local government. It is confusing. They have no idea now which council does what. In Heanor in my constituency, for example, people elect 21 town councillors, they elect councillors to a borough council that has 45 councillors, and county councillors to a county council that has 64 members. How many more people do they need to represent them on these issues?

It is worth having an open consultation. There has been too little information and consultation with the public on the Government’s proposals, and I fear that my constituents will wake up one morning and find that they are part of an elected mayor area, together with the constituents of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), who is chairing this debate, and of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), without any of those constituents realising that that was going to happen.

I am not sure many people feel there is a natural community that covers the whole of those two counties or that they wish to be part of such a local government unit. I suspect that paying for three tiers, plus town and parish councils, will not be popular, so before the proposals are implemented people ought to have a say about whether they would rather have only one of the two existing tiers. That would be a more easily understood and more cost effective local government structure.

The reason for proposing a consultation, rather than an absolute condition that devolution could not take place and elected mayors could not be introduced without moving to unitary authorities, is that I feared that the pearl-handled revolver that the previous Secretary of State still has in his desk drawer might be drawn out and fired at me in this debate if I suggested compulsory local government reorganisation. But if we are saying to local areas, “You can choose whether you want to be part of devolution and whether you want an elected mayor,” we should allow them to choose what unitaries they want. That is the next step. Three tiers of local government are not sustainable. That would focus the mind on what local government would look like and how we could best deliver these important services to our local people.

As a matter of fairness, I am not sure how a city of 300,000 people can have one leader at the table, and a county which has, say, 700,000 or 800,000 people can have nine people at the table, all with a veto and a combined authority on certain issues. If I were a member of a city council, I do not think I would see that as fair. We have a multi-level local government system which looks a bit odd. It does not help, for example, with the new homes bonus. I am not sure how business rate setting can be devolved to a two-tier area with questions over who gets to set what and who gets to keep what. There is a need to look at how local government works, and this would be the perfect time to do it. We can say to local people before they get their devolution and their elected mayor, “You tell us what you want. Do you want unitaries or do you want to keep the existing structure, with the advantages of a very local council, but with the extra cost that that brings?”

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In Greater Manchester work on the devolution proposals is very advanced. Amendment 51, tabled by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), would put that work on hold until a referendum was held to determine whether the public supported having an elected mayor. It would also require 50% of the population to vote yes before a mayor could be introduced, which is a high bar. The turnout in the 1998 referendum on establishing the Greater London Assembly and the Mayor of London was 34.6%. Although the turnout in the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution was higher, the percentage of the total electorate who voted yes was less than 50%, and the same goes for the 1997 referendum on Welsh devolution.

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[Mr Brady]

I am glad to have enabled my hon. Friend to speak for himself.

Amendment 42 seeks a very simple and not terribly onerous change. It would simply require the Government to report annually on how they have exercised their functions in order to demonstrate that they have not themselves exercised any of the devolved functions that rightly belong with the combined authority or the mayoral authority. There might be better ways of doing this, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will put forward his own proposals in due course. However, the underlying point is that although the Government have been very pleased to place obligations on local authorities through the process of forming agreements or deals, as the Secretary of State likes to term them, very little in the Bill as it stands provides any mechanism to hold the Government to account and ensure that they fulfil their side of the bargain. I think that would be welcomed by everybody who is an evangelist for devolution—as I am sure we all are.

The Minister alluded to amendments 43 and 44, which seek to provide an easier route for exit. I happily accept that, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said, it would be very difficult for any authority to leave a combined authority, especially a mayoral authority, at some point in the future. An enormous number of functions, agreements, financial obligations and so on will bind local authorities together, increasingly so as the years pass, and therefore no local authority would do this lightly. However, the ability to leave, should the devolution arrangements not work in practice for any one or more of the local authorities in an area, is, in some ways, the ultimate guarantee that no abuse should take place. It is particularly important that we should have such a safeguard if we reach the end of our deliberations without a referendum lock in place. If the public are not to be given the choice as to whether they want to have the elected mayor and this new structure of governance put in place over them, surely there must be a safeguard so that if, at a future date, the new arrangements were not working for the people of Trafford, Bury, Stockport or Bolton, they could seek to leave, without penalty, to find a new way of providing services and representation to the local community.

Amendment 51 calls for a referendum test to be passed. This also relates to Government amendment 4. I think the only reason the Government are so determined to overturn the amendment passed in another place which seeks to prevent conditionality—local authorities being told they are allowed to have devolution only if they accept the model of an elected mayor as a condition—is that negotiations in Greater Manchester have moved as far as they have under those conditions. It seems wrong that the Government are expecting local authorities to accept a particular model of governance as the price for this kind of devolution settlement, particularly if the Government do not have the self-confidence to consult the people and to believe in their own argument such that they could persuade the public that it is something they ought to welcome. This is the ultimate test of the Government’s arguments. The Minister is a very persuasive man, as we have seen in the Chamber today. I am certain that with his enthusiasm, charm and powers of persuasion, he could go out and sell this proposition to the people of Greater Manchester, and perhaps to those in Sheffield and other parts of the country. I wish that he would have the confidence in his own abilities that we all have.

[Nigel Mills]

I am sorry, obviously, to interrupt the much deserved flattery. Does my hon. Friend accept that, especially in areas outside Manchester, none of the council leaders proposing these deals has been elected on such a mandate? I do not recall that in the 2013 county council elections there was any suggestion of “Vote Labour and we’ll try and create an elected metro mayor for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire combined.” I agree with local decision making and I support these changes, but there is no local electoral mandate for them.

[Mr Brady]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. In my Greater Manchester constituency, the level of knowledge of what is being proposed on changes in governance is still remarkably low. Certainly, it was not a significant feature of the general election campaign or the last local election campaign. We need to try to create a better level of knowledge and engagement.