Draft West of England Combined Authority Order 2017

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 General Committees

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I echo and add my support to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said. The Minister speaks of growth, housing, powers and funding—I believe the figure was £900 million—for transport and local road improvements. Those are all great things, but why do we need a metro mayor tagged on to the end of it?

People do not want this. There has not been a clamouring for it in the same way that there was for a Bristol Mayor. The connection between the Mayor and the city is quite straightforward in Bristol—it is a whole city and it has its own Mayor—whereas there is no real identity of the West of England, other than for those of us who are involved in politics. People on the ground in North Somerset, Bristol or South Gloucestershire do not think of themselves as being part of the West of England local enterprise partnership. People on the ground have MPs, city councillors and an elected Mayor of Bristol. Our councils already work together and talk to each other—they are very responsible people. What is more, we can unelect them if we do not think they are doing a good job of spending the £900 million that is to be allocated in the West of England devolution deal.

Adding a metro mayor to the deal adds another layer that people do not want. They do not want to return to CUBA—the county that used to be Avon. It is an acronym with a fun side to it, but we do not want it. We got rid of it. We actually turned the Avon County Council house into a hotel. We do not want to go back there, but we have been held to ransom. Councillor colleagues who voted to accept this deal told me that they did so reluctantly and resignedly. They had to accept yet another election that local people do not want, do not understand and probably will not turn out for. There simply will not be the accountability that the Minister probably hopes that having an elected metro mayor will generate. We already have accountability through our elected councillors and our elected Mayor.

I am glad that we are getting the money. I am not going to stand in the way of us getting it, so I am not going to vote against the order, but I want to put on the record the fact that the concerns of the people of Bristol do not appear to have been answered. Will the Minister explain to us why we have to have a metro mayor to make this work? We have got competent councillors who can do it.

[Andrew Percy]

I think what we have heard this afternoon is mild enthusiasm from the Opposition for this devolution deal. I will try to respond to all the points raised. We have discussed many orders on the issue of elected Mayors. I will rehearse the arguments once again in a moment, but first I want to deal with some of the comments of the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton.

On the housing fund under the deal, it is for each individual deal to negotiate what it wishes with the Government, although of course we are open to further discussions in the future. Each arrangement is bespoke; they are all very different. Almost every order that I bring before Committee is different from the previous one precisely because we have negotiated very bespoke deals.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned public engagement, which we have discussed before. As I have said before, no matter how much effort we put in here, devolution simply is not going to be the talk of the Dog and Duck this Friday evening. Once the deals are in place, it will be for the people who have been elected and for the bodies, when they are in existence, to go out there and prove to the public that they are delivering what the public expect of them. My Department has committed a budget to publicise the elections, the Mayor of Bristol has been out doing drop-ins and there has been a whole range of other consultations on the deal. Once the bodies are in place and the Mayors are in existence, they will be able to prove to their local communities what they are delivering.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

While devolution may not be the talk of the Dog and Duck, potholes in roads certainly are. When people see a pothole in their road, they tend to blame the council. When we have this metro mayor layer of accountability, or non-accountability, people will still blame the council even though it might be the responsibility of some other part of local government that they do not understand.

[Andrew Percy]

The councils will still be responsible for filling potholes under the devolution deal, so we can be clear about that.

We have discussed the issue of elected Mayors many times before when considering various of these orders, but the problem that we always get to is that nobody is able to propose a better alternative. The hon. Member for Bristol West said, “Oh well, we can leave it to the combined authority leaders,” but their accountability and legitimacy comes from being elected on a turnout of about 30% of the electorate in each of their constituent councils, so I am not sure that would necessarily deliver more legitimacy.

The problem is that not one of the local authority leaders who sits on the combined authority is elected across the geography over which these powers will be exercised. The public have to be able to hold somebody to account across the entire geography for what is being exercised in their name. The truth is that, although there may be good relationships now among the various local authority leaders, it is not unknown for neighbouring councils sometimes to come into conflict. Now, I am sure that will never happen in the West of England—I am sure the councillors and leaders there have a different approach—but I have seen it happen in other parts of the country, including my own area. That is why having somebody who sits above them and is elected directly by the people would give the public direct accountability.

I want to make it clear to the hon. Members for Bristol East and for Bristol West that this is not at all about bringing back Avon. As someone who represents an area that used to be in Humberside, I understand those sensitivities. When we talk about a devolution deal for the Humber, the first question that comes back is, “Is this the return of Humberside?” I understand that concern, and I want to make it absolutely clear that this is not about Avon. The local authorities and the ceremonial counties will all remain unchanged by this deal.

Nor is it the case that we have forced Mayors on to every devolution deal. We have negotiated a deal with Cornwall, for example, that does not have a Mayor. As part of the negotiations, the local council leaders ask for things and central Government require things. We have said, “If you wish to have the maximum powers and this gain-share funding”—the extra £30 million a year, £900 million over the period—“we expect a direct line of accountability to the public for that money.” As I have said, not a single member of the combined authority is directly elected by the whole geography over which that cash and those powers will be exercised. That is why we made having Mayors a requirement of the process to obtain the maximum devolution deal in terms of powers and funding.

I think I have dealt with most of the points that have been made, other than that made by the hon. Member for Bristol East about resourcing. The order states that the resourcing of the Mayor’s office is something that the three local authorities will agree between them. She also mentioned the role of the current Mayor. I want to make it absolutely clear that the Mayor of Bristol’s powers are in no way affected by the order. The Mayor will continue to exercise those powers in the same way, subject of course to the elements of the devolution deal regarding the spatial strategy sitting above the local plan and all the rest of it. The Mayor’s responsibilities will not be altered.

Question put and agreed to.