Draft West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 General Committees

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone; I might not avail myself of all the time that you have generously allocated to us.

I am grateful for the Minister’s comments. I suspect this will not be the most ferociously divisive and controversial matter to come before us in current times. Labour Members support the creation of the combined authority and Mayor for West Yorkshire. In fact, we would like to see the Government go further and faster. The pandemic has taught us many things, and one of them is about the limitations of over-centralisation and the benefits of opening up power more widely across the country. In that context, the leader of the Labour party is establishing a constitutional commission, which I hope will be able to work across parties, and certainly with civil society and the public, to try to find more ways to open up power and decision making to people across all parts of the United Kingdom and into every community that makes up our country.

I am not going to challenge the Minister on the proposals but I have a few questions to ask, in the spirit of looking for the Government to go further and faster. Will the combined authority and the Mayor of West Yorkshire play a role in decisions about the allocation of funds through the levelling-up fund and the UK shared prosperity fund? Are the Government considering the devolution of further powers to the combined authority or, indeed, to Mayors and combined authorities in other parts of the country, as part of the deepening of devolution? There have been some delays in the publication of the devolution White Paper. Can the Minister tell us yet when we might expect to see that White Paper and be able to engage in the debate that will follow about the most appropriate way to move forward with a devolution agenda, particularly as we build back after the pandemic?