Yorkshire Devolution

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Mr Pritchard. I rise to speak on behalf of the SNP in the debate, and I have to say that I feel like I have gatecrashed someone else’s party to some extent. However, Standing Orders dictate that I say something, so I very much wish to. We do not have a dog in this fight—of course, if it came to a vote, we would probably be prohibited from exercising our judgment under the current Standing Orders anyway. None the less, we do watch the debates in Yorkshire and elsewhere in England with great interest.

To some extent, there is a similarity between the campaign we had to achieve a devolved national Parliament in Scotland—and our campaign to go further and have devolution so complete that we have independent control of that Parliament—and the campaign for English devolution, inasmuch as they are about changing the constitutional basis of the governance of these islands. In terms of the political ambition that drives this debate, there is much that we share and very much support.

People often talk about devolution and the English regions in the same breath, but they are not the same thing. I want to make one important point of difference. The campaign for the establishment and extension of the Scottish Parliament is not about the decentralisation of public administration within a common political framework. It is about allowing the creation and evolution of a different political framework, which will allow a different set of choices to be made, whether that be within the United Kingdom or without the United Kingdom. That is slightly different from the campaign for English regional government.

However, we very much support the idea of devolution and decentralisation within England. We only have to look at a motorway map of the United Kingdom or the inter-city rail network map to see that, for far too long, strategic thinking and planning in the United Kingdom has been dominated by a desire to make the periphery connect to the centre, rather than the creation of sustainable regions of the country that can interconnect and achieve a much greater benefit. The debate is part of breaking that down, and we very much welcome it.

There ought to be some sort of national English plan. For far too long, central Government has ducked this question and, just because it is too difficult or there is not support in some areas, they have been unable to come up with a strategic plan into which these things could locate. I hope the Minister will say that that is somewhere on the horizon, because in the absence of that plan, the city deal, city region and city Mayor proposal is about pushing something ahead in an area where little resistance is expected. What seems to have happened in this instance is that resistance has come about both within the proposed city region area and in neighbouring areas.

Without wishing to take sides or make any particular prescription, it seems to me that surely the only thing Government can now do, given the level of dissent registered to their plan, is to press the pause button, bring people together and have a proper consultation about how decentralisation can go forward in Yorkshire on a basis on which all participants can agree. If it is pushed through without that consent and agreement, it will be ill-fated and will not work.