Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

William Wragg Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

Does the Minister accept that Greater Manchester is not just a single city? It is an area made up of a city—

[William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Two cities.

[Mr Nuttall]

Two cities, nowadays, and several very independently minded towns, which feel that they have been forced together into an artificial construct.

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[James Wharton]

If the hon. Lady will let me make a little progress, I will give way to her soon. I know that she has been keen to get in.

In the traditions of our democracy—the traditions of a representative democracy that go back to the days of Edmund Burke if not before—it would be curious if that choice could not be made by those elected at the ballot box by the people of the city to represent them. That is the approach that is provided for in the Bill. The Bill specifically provides that each council in the area must consent to any order establishing a combined authority mayor. There is a good precedent for such an approach. A council can decide to establish a directly elected mayor for its area now. It was Liverpool City Council, which, in 2012, decided that Liverpool should have a directly elected mayor. If one council can decide to have an elected mayor, why cannot a group of councils decide to have a mayor over their combined area?

To require a referendum to be the only way for a combined authority to have a mayor would seem not fully to recognise the role that those democratically elected can legitimately have. The choice at root, as Greater Manchester has shown—

[William Wragg]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is proceeding with great courtesy, erudition and charm in this debate. Just on that point of the referendum in Greater Manchester, there were constituent parts of Greater Manchester that had referendums in 2012 on whether to have directly mayors and they rejected them. In part, that is my motivation for the amendment.

[James Wharton]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. He gives me the opportunity to clarify again the difference between the local authority mayors, of whom we have talked before, who took powers up and away from people, and the metro mayors who take powers down towards people and away from central Government and public bodies. It is an important distinction and one that is at the heart of the difference that explains the approach the Government are taking to my hon. Friend’s concerns.

As Greater Manchester has shown, the choice at root is whether or not to have wide-ranging devolution. If the choice is for devolution, it goes without saying that there must be accountability arrangements commensurately strong for the scale of powers being devolved. Holding a referendum on the narrow question of whether there should be a mayor risks not fully recognising the choice that is to be made. In short, our democratic traditions do not demand the approach provided for in amendment 51. Indeed, the approach we have in the Bill of the choice for a combined authority mayor being made by councils is exactly the same approach that is open to councils for choosing a local authority mayor—accepting the difference that I have already explained in my comments to my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove about these powers coming down from central Government. Accordingly, I hope that this amendment will be withdrawn.

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[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.

[William Wragg]

I think that the hon. Lady has mistaken the explanatory statement, which refers to the 50% threshold, for the amendment itself. Perhaps she should pay a little closer attention to the wording of the amendment, rather than the explanation provided by the office.

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[William Wragg]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

I pay a warm tribute to the Minister and the Secretary of State for their approach to this Bill and the constructive dialogue that they have had with—dare I say it?—the caucus of Greater Manchester MPs, including two who are sitting next to me. The Minister warmed my heart by quoting Edmund Burke earlier. I do not know how Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” compare with my Second Reading speech, “William Wragg’s reflections on Devolution in Greater Manchester”, although in some respects my speech was probably equally as intemperate as the fiery language that Burke deployed against the French revolution. If I at all offended the Minister with my remarks on Second Reading, I wish to atone for that entirely.

The point about amendment 51 is no different to the point that I made last week about having confidence in the arguments and trusting the people to win them over. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) expanded on the qualities of the Minister and the Front-Bench team in persuading and engaging with the public, and if they were to test this issue with a referendum in Greater Manchester, they might be pleasantly surprised with the result.

My neighbour, the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), has recently left the Chamber, but I pay tribute to her work on child sexual exploitation. I was pleased to serve on one of the sub-committees of Stockport Council which took evidence from her. I say gently, however, that I would distance myself from any temptation to link the topic on which she has done a great deal of work with whether an elected mayor would impact on that, as I think it is a slightly spurious argument.

As a former teacher I should perhaps apologise to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who took issue with how the explanatory statement was drafted, and I hold my hands up as that was due to a lax approach on my part. There was never intended to be threshold on which 50% of the population would have to agree. Amendment 51 is supported by a growing list of colleagues, and it simply asks that fundamental changes to local government and the governance of my constituency are put to the test at a referendum, so that they can be endorsed and back the Government’s welcome programme of devolution.

[Karin Smyth]

I am pleased—along with my neighbour the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg)—to give the Committee a bit of respite from the subject of Manchester and to talk a bit about Bristol instead. Bristol has been a trailblazer for devolution and, in 2012, it was the only city to choose to have an elected mayor when the question was put in a referendum. I am a keen supporter of devolution and of transferring power closest to the people it affects, and I was proud to make my maiden speech on that subject. I am perhaps not as much of an evangelist as the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), but I am keen for devolution to happen.

Let me pick up on a unique issue which means that the people of Bristol do not share the same democratic rights as the rest of the country. The Bill started in the House of Lords, where Baroness Janke moved an amendment, now clause 21, which, if passed, would give Bristolians the right, after 10 years, to reverse, if they so wished, the decision we made in 2010 to have an elected mayor to govern our city. If the model is not fit in 10 years, we would like the opportunity to change it. By that time, citizens will have had ample opportunity to assess the value or otherwise of the current model, how it works in Bristol and, crucially, with the changing situation, how it would work across—I will not use the word CUBA, or indeed Avon—the wider Bristol area and with our neighbours in a combined authority.

This is not about personalities or whether we like or dislike the current mayor or would prefer a different person in office; it is about the system that works best for us in the city region. It is not about party politics either, because all the major political parties on the city council agree and supported a joint motion to that effect. I am very grateful to Baroness Janke, a Liberal Democrat peer, who did a lot of work in shaping and gaining support for the clause when it was in the House of Lords. It is about democracy. It is about whether we should have a voice and a new model. We should now be given that say. In an era when we are supposed to be seeing an increase in devolution and empowerment, it feels wrong that we as Bristolians should have to go through a long and tortuous legislation-making process to know whether we have the right to determine the way our city is governed. This clause would allow us to do that much more easily.

I hope the Government are able to support that provision, and give me and the people of Bristol a greater say in how this works for us in the future.