Graham Allen
Main Page: Graham Allen (Labour - Nottingham North)Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]
Graham Allen Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Greg Clark
I can certainly give that commitment. Hon. Members will have seen that the programme motion has the Committee stage being taken on the Floor of the House, as is appropriate.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on bringing forward this Bill and on the hard work he has done over many years in bringing devolution to our cities. Will he accept from me that bringing devolution down from Whitehall to town hall is not enough in itself? Will he look a little further at what we call “double devolution”, or taking devolution down to the communities and neighbourhoods, as we are trying to do in Nottingham at this very moment?
Greg Clark
I will indeed, and I would like to reciprocate the hon. Gentleman’s compliment. Both in his role as Select Committee Chair in the last Parliament and through his personal work in Nottingham, driving the regeneration of what he terms the outer estates in his city, the hon. Gentleman brings and personifies a degree of local knowledge of the problems and of the people, many of whom he has introduced me to on my visits to his city, which it would be impossible to replicate in Whitehall. That provides a good example of why we need to devolve in exactly the way that the hon. Gentleman said.
Graham Stringer
Traditionally, it has been the responsibility of the Government to determine the structure of local government and then for people to elect it. I am not saying that people should necessarily be excluded; I am just saying that people who do not like elected mayors have to come up with an alternative. I do not think that a combined authority is an alternative, which makes consulting people rather difficult. Given that we have waited so long for devolution, I do not want any barriers put in its way. It is better to have an imperfect system than to wait even longer for the perfect answer.
Mr Graham Allen
My hon. Friend is making a typically robust speech from his massive experience as a local government leader. Does he agree that we have to be careful that the mayoral issue does not divert us from the big picture of devolving powers and finance and making things work in the locality? If we are not careful, the mayoral question will become the Labour version of English votes for English laws, which has led the Conservatives to focus on just one aspect, to the detriment of the big picture.
Graham Stringer
I agree that that issue could become a road block to achieving what most people in this Chamber, and certainly in the other place—I have read the debates—want to achieve.
A number of people have raised concerns about health, and I think there are some misunderstandings about that. Health issues in Greater Manchester concern an agreement for the combined authority to exercise powers that have already been given to local government in a more effective way. I hope that in future more power will be given to local authorities to deal with health because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) says, our health service is not evenly spread out, and there will always be differences. The key issue here—as in the entire devolution debate—concerns whether key decisions on health are taken by elected people, or by non-elected people in Whitehall and elsewhere. I support such decisions being taken by elected people.
The power of devolution is that there are always tough decisions to be made, whether in times of cuts or times of growth, and being an elected politician is a tough business. Let us consider the most difficult decision that a politician, whether the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister or a local councillor, has to take: the closure of a hospital. Is it better for that decision to be taken by the Secretary of State in central Government with advice from civil servants in Whitehall, or would that decision—however difficult—be better taken locally? I come to the conclusion that such decisions are always better taken by local people.
Mr Thomas
There is a justification for having a referendum in London to consider the extension of powers: we had one when we set up the Mayor and the Assembly. If there is to be further substantial devolution then there is certainly a case to be made for a referendum to cement mayoral and Assembly authority over those additional powers.
Another area for London ought to be full fiscal devolution. I welcome the announcement on business rates, but I am afraid that does not go far enough. All property taxes should be devolved. The all-party consensus of the mayoral London Finance Commission report published in 2013 was for a pound-for-pound reduction in revenue support grant as the quid pro quo that London offers back. It remains opaque at best on why the Treasury will not agree not just to business rates but to additional property taxes to London.
Mr Graham Allen
I am enjoying very much my hon. Friend’s review of where we are on local government finance in London. Does he not accept that we have broken the precedent with the Treasury by having income tax assignment for Scotland? The law was passed three or four years ago, before the devolution referendum. It now, very properly, has a system of income tax devolution. Is not the long-term answer to have a proper baseline budget, rather than little slices, so that London, Nottingham and every other part of the country can look after its own affairs?
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend is, as ever, ahead of me. I share his view that in time—particularly if there are substantial additional public services responsibilities devolved to London, not least the extra powers, alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), relating to healthcare—there would be a case for more control à la Scotland, certainly the ability in the current settlement to vary levels of income tax. Why should London or Nottingham not be able to impose new additional levies—for example, a tourist levy that many other big world cities, such as New York, can impose? It is striking that in London business has strongly supported the devolution to local control of all property taxes, not just business rates. They see it as essential to speed up infrastructure development. I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to use their influence with the Chancellor to encourage him to go even further down the line of fiscal devolution.
There is also a question about the living wage. Why does that need to be controlled by the Treasury? Why should the decision not be set, after consultation with business, by local people? There could perhaps be a local minimum set by national Government, with the actual rate determined by at regional level by local decision makers. I again draw the attention of the House to London, where a living wage and a living income would be very different from that in other parts of the UK.
If there is to be a further devolution of powers to London—I hope there will be—we need to consider stronger scrutiny powers for the London Assembly. The Assembly ought to be able to scrutinise the heads of major public utilities—such as water, electricity, gas, National Rail and broadband providers—on their London work programmes and on how Londoners will be affected by their decisions, in the same way that the Assembly is able to scrutinise other crucial services, such as policing and transport. I commend the case for further devolution to London and hope to probe this issue with the Government in due course.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
This is a great day. It is the beginning of what will be a very long journey. I think that we will probably have two more Bills on devolution before the end of this Parliament, but at the general election in 2020 we will look back and all the anxieties about the detail in the Bill—some of which we disagree with, of course—will have become irrelevant as most local authorities in England will have devolved to some extent or another. That will be the future. I must put on record again that I think that the Secretary of State has been foremost in introducing the Bill. He has a fantastic record of working with local government and with Labour local government, in particular, through his work with the core cities and on the cities agenda. The Bill is part of a line of progression.
Of course, we cannot have perfection in the first Bill, but those who have some sort of aldermanic sclerosis and believe that we will not move anywhere unless we get absolutely everything right are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is important that we move on devolution now in a way that previous Governments, regrettably, did not. This is the most fantastic opportunity, in my opinion, for all of us who care about the principle of devolution, enabling people to make decisions as closely as is humanly possible to where they are and where they live.
It is the beginning of the end of possibly several hundred years of the imperial view that Whitehall knows best and that only the man in Whitehall can tell people whether they should have double yellow lines on their high streets or be allowed to have a betting shop on their street corner. What nonsense! It is treating one’s own country as if its people are slaves, rather than liberating them to make a genuine economic contribution, in times of austerity and at other times, as well as a social and political contribution locally. Even with the distinguished colleagues around me, I do think our politics is over-blessed with too big a gene pool. Why should not the leader of our capital stand to be leader of one of our great parties? Why should not the leader of Greater Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle or anywhere else push our politics forward with a lot of local experience? This is something of which many Governments in the recent past have been bereft.
This is the beginning of a journey. I personally would rather we did not have a mayor—Nottingham voted not to have a mayor. However, if we continue this journey and have another Bill and another one after that, I am sure that we will devolve to such an extent that we will liberate people in the localities to choose their own system of governance and method of election. That will be a definition of devolution achieved.
Andrew Gwynne
Part of that choice on localism is the level at which it is most appropriate to make decisions. Forty-odd years ago, my constituency was a patchwork of urban district councils and small municipal boroughs, and people still very much identify with those neighbourhoods. Is it not right that we also seek to empower those communities again?
Mr Allen
The movement from Whitehall to town hall is very welcome, but then we must go the extra mile. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), an SNP Member, is no longer here, because we do not want to go the way of pushing power from Westminster to Holyrood, only for the latter, instead of dispersing some of that power, to suck it up and create a national view on everything, rather than liberating the talents in Scottish local government. There are many lessons to learn from Scotland—we should be humble about that experience and learn everything possible—but that is probably one exception to the rule about listening to how the SNP has done things in Scotland.
There will then be a broader picture. Once we have embedded devolution and organically we have made a start, when it is proving its worth and we can demonstrate that we will add value to every single pound, we can move to the next stage, which is the one outlined by the Opposition Front-Bench team. It is to see it as part of the broader jigsaw of a constitutional convention that will consider local government’s role, as part of the debate about devolution in England, an elected second Chamber and a written settlement, among other things.
It is important that what Whitehall giveth, Whitehall does not taketh away. As the Secretary of State is aware, that will mean at some point entrenching the progress we make so that it can never be reversed. That will mean super-majorities in the House, hiding stuff behind the Parliament Act 1911 and so on. There are lots of ways to make it difficult for the wrong sort of Secretary of State to suck these powers back up.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a typically excellent speech. Is not the basic challenge of the Bill that it strengthens the Secretary of State’s hand with local government but not with Whitehall? He needs a few more ambition clauses that force his colleagues to devolve more rather than less and not to rely on backroom negotiations in the Treasury. For example, should we not be devolving many more powers to help local authorities, such as my hon. Friend’s, deal with the entrenched challenges of poverty and deprivation?
Mr Allen
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we are doing now is pushing that enormous heavy ball up the mountain—and it is just starting to move. Let us keep that momentum going, and when local government has proved its worth and we have developed the capability and potential of local councillors and officials—I am loth to make any criticism of them, given how we sometimes run the country—they will demand those extra powers. That is certainly the case on issues relating to health and employment. That will come. People will say, “We can do this; we can raise a bond on the open market; we can run something by our local population; we can raise additional taxation—if local people agree with it”, which is very important, as was mentioned earlier.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) made a specific point about how to help areas of high deprivation. He and I share an unfortunate medal in that we are in the bottom 10 local authorities when it comes to deprivation. This will be immensely liberating. My right hon. Friend and I know, but our councillors know much better than anybody—even the Secretary of State from Whitehall—how to spend a pound effectively in the local context. It is all about bringing sensitivity and capability back to our governance, and instead of fighting with one hand tied behind our backs, it is about enabling people to make decisions locally. Local people above all will want to maximise the potential of every austere pound that comes their way.
For the bigger picture, I think a constitutional convention running alongside this process is essential. I hope that the Government will generously agree to participate in anything that all other parties come together to discuss on that basis. They will not be able to legislate on it, but it is important for them to participate in the debate and have that discussion. In the end, the Secretary of State’s Fabian view of moving forward—slowly, steadily and gently making progress—has been proved right. We need to ensure that such an approach is supported in the longer term. The Bill has flaws, but it provides a fantastic start, so I commend it to the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (James Wharton)
The Bill will empower our constituents. This is about transferring power away from Whitehall back to the communities that can use it most effectively to grow their economies, to make decisions that affect the people who live there and to improve those people’s health. This is an important piece of legislation that will give us the powers we need to enable us to drive forward the devolution agenda.
I have been interested to listen to the range of contributions to the debate today. Approximately 76 Members have spoken, but given the limited amount of time remaining, I shall not be able to comment on every speech. I do not mind admitting that I was concerned at first. I read the reasoned amendment tabled by those on the Opposition Front Bench, the first line of which makes it clear that, if it were to be passed, the Bill would not be given its Second Reading and would therefore fail. I therefore wondered what Labour’s stance would be, and I listened intently to the words of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) in order to try to understand the approach to devolution that the Opposition Front Bench wanted to take. What I heard was a top-down, bottom-up, bespoke, uniform, devolution-delaying, big conversation proposal, but one that did not address the real need of this country. I then saw reflected in the comments from across the House from colleagues on both sides of the political divide that we need to find a method to deliver devolution, because there is cross-party support for it. We may disagree about some of the detail, but we will have the opportunity to discuss that. Indeed, hon. Members can be reassured that the intention is to have the Committee for this Bill on the Floor of the House so that all Members will get the opportunity to contribute as we discuss what amendments should or should not be made.
The important principle is that, if we want to deliver devolution, we need to pass this Bill. If we want to pass this Bill, the reasoned amendment put forward by the Opposition must not succeed this evening.
James Wharton
Yes, I do. We will have a very full and reasonable debate. Having listened to the contributions from hon. Members throughout the day today, I can see that there are many areas of agreement. I am sure that we can find consensus to drive forward an agenda that appeals to people not just in this place but from a much broader base. As I travelled the country talking to local authority representatives, including many who are not from my own political party, I found that devolution is wanted by the business community and by the communities that we represent, as it can drive forward real improvement.
I also started to note a list of those colleagues who were supportive in principle of the Bill and its aims. I stopped because the length of that list became so long that I would not be able to read it out. I thought it would be appropriate to reference some of those Members who indicated their support. My hon. Friends the Members for Carlisle (John Stevenson) and for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), and the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) all indicated not only that they support what we are trying to achieve but that they want us to go further and do more and that devolution could be an ongoing process that they want to see delivered successfully.
My hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) and for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) gave qualified support, raising issues that I know we will have the opportunity to discuss as this Bill is taken forward and that I hope we can address in order to build as broad a consensus as possible for an agenda that appeals across a broad range of people in our country because of the change that it can deliver.
Some specific issues were raised during the debate, including that of mayors. I recognise some of the debate that has taken place, and I want to take this opportunity to address some of those concerns in the time that I have. My hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale West, for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), the hon. Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) all raised the issue of mayors. I want to be clear what we are talking about. The metro mayors that we want to deliver are not mayors like those who have gone before. This is a different thing. This is not the civil mayor whom we have had for many years in this country, nor is it the local authority mayor on whom many areas did indeed vote leading to their adoption in some areas and not others. This is not a mayor who will take up powers from local authorities unless those local authorities choose to give them. This is a mayor who will hold, and be accountable to the public for, powers coming down from Whitehall—powers that we are devolving from public bodies. It is a very important point of difference. I recognise that there are some hon. Members who have not appreciated that we are talking about a different type of mayor. The metro mayor model is different from what we have seen before.
My hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) raised the issue of planning, which I want to address. I also want to mention the nature of planning powers in order to show why some of the concerns that have been quite rightly flagged up in the debate can easily be addressed by the content of the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is not to force powers to move up from local authorities. It is to enable us to devolve powers down from central Government—devolve powers that are held by public bodies down to accountable areas to deliver services and improvements for the people. Local authorities will not have powers taken away, but they can choose to pool them by agreement. That is the intention of the legislation and the intention of the Government, and that is what we will do. To hon. Members who have raised concerns about planning, let me say that there is nothing that would force change to the planning powers that their local authorities already have unless those local authorities decided among themselves to pool those powers because they recognised the benefits that that could bring. A range of issues has been highlighted by individual Members.