Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Wharton]

The right hon. Gentleman can speculate on whether the Secretary of State might agree or not. I can tell him that I certainly do not, but I recognise there is a time and a place for such matters as this to be debated. I will set out some of my thoughts on the appropriateness of the Bill or otherwise for that debate today in the comments I will now come to, although I feel that this is not necessarily that time and place, as I will explain.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister understand that there is a lot of desire to see an extension of participation in our processes? My Select Committee produced a very fulsome report in the previous Parliament, which outlined proposals such as electronic voting and votes for 16 to 18-year olds. The Minister’s position is very clear: he does not want to do this at the moment. However, will he consider the possibility, as we devolve power to local government, that, in certain discrete pilot areas that request it, there could be experiments with the 16 to 18-year-old franchise?

[James Wharton]

I admire the creativity of hon. Members who wish to find ways to pursue this matter. I do not feel that it is appropriate to do so in this the Bill, for reasons I will go on to explain, but I recognise what the hon. Gentleman says. It is undeniable that there is a debate to be had on the issue. There are views on both sides of the argument. It is, I think, the view of nearly all right hon. and hon. Members that we would like greater participation and involvement in our democratic processes. Whether lowering the franchise is the right way of going about it is rather less clearly agreed across the House. Indeed, it is an area about which I have significant reservations. I have, however, considered carefully the arguments set out with regard to the Bill.

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[Alison Thewliss]

People are not generally calling for that in Scotland. There has not been that tradition there.

[Mr Graham Allen]

That’ll be a no, then!

[Alison Thewliss]

If people wanted to hold such referendums, that would be absolutely fine. Lots of councils in Scotland have petitions processes whereby people can submit arguments to the council for consideration, and if they wanted an elected mayor, that could be achieved through that process. The Scottish Parliament also has a petitions process that would allow areas that wanted an elected mayor to take a petition to the Scottish Government. So there are processes in place that would allow for that to happen, if there were a demand for it. However, there is no tradition of elected mayors in Scotland. In Glasgow and other local authorities, we have a political head in the leader of the council and a strong civic head in the Lord Provost or the local provost.

The hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) asked me the question about elected mayors in Scotland, but his own Conservative Government have acknowledged that we have no such tradition, because there was no suggestion of a mayor being imposed as part of the Glasgow and Clyde Valley city deal, as is happening in other parts of the UK. His own party does not seem to think that there is any rationale for elected mayors in Scotland. The Bill provides a good opportunity to try out a number of different measures that could improve local government and make it more democratic and accountable, and I support the principles behind these amendments.

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[Mr Graham Allen]

I am surprised, but delighted, to follow the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). She is a very important performer in the democratic constellation, having been a Minister and given evidence to my Select Committee, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which could have been the perfect vehicle for bringing forward such proposals had the Government not abolished it—that probably tells us all we need to know.

I must say that the speed of reaction by Government to proposals from the Commons has not noticeably been a problem in my 20-odd years in the House. Some might feel that there has been a constant blur of democratic innovation in the House, but that has so far escaped me. Perhaps that happens when I am not in the Chamber. I might just be very unlucky.

I say to Members: when in doubt always read the title of the Bill. This one is Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill. It says “devolution” and not decentralisation. We are not saying, “Here is Whitehall handing out a bit of power, but it is on a string and we can pull it back when we like.” Nor are we saying, “Power should lie at the centre, but let us try a little experiment on a very strong piece of elastic should the simpletons who are out in the sticks be unable to administer their own affairs.”

Devolution is entirely a different concept. It is about giving power away to a more appropriate level. Therefore, devolving power is, by definition, going to create difference and best practice. Lots of people will experiment, or innovate, on how they do things to suit themselves better in areas in which it is appropriate for people in localities to do those things. A patchwork, or a differentiation, or lots of different levels of change, is at the heart of devolution in a way that decentralisation never can be. Let us read the title of the Bill and let us try to make the Bill do what it says on the tin, which is to devolve power down to the localities rather than to have the localities as a means of administration of what the centre wants. That is a very, very clear distinction, which all of us who want to talk about devolution should understand.

In essence, new clause 3 applies that principle to a number of fields, but most obviously to the electoral systems in this country. There is no longer one electoral system that applies everywhere in the United Kingdom. There is a massive diversity and plurality of electoral systems and we have decided that this is about horses for courses—I am talking about a typical British constitutional evolution. The last major one was around the way in which we elect people to the European Parliament. Then there has been change in our devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, and people are finding their way in different areas. They should be allowed to continue to change if that is what they wish to do in those areas, regions or nations. It should be a process of constant exploration. So why on earth can we not do that in the localities? With the consent of people in the localities, why cannot we try, if they so wish, to go for votes for 16 to 17-year-olds?

Given the immense power vested in the Secretary of State under the Bill—he could not be a better person to trust to use these powers, I am sure—he could use his discretion to try a pilot and see what happens and what the turnout is likely to be. Let us do a proper evidence-based analysis in a number of areas to see whether young people are interested in participating in that way. Trying to do that seems to be one of the benefits of devolution. Other places might be happy with first past the post and such a change might never occur there, but pressure might be brought to bear.

Some people say that it is wrong that there are one-party states in local government. I do not happen to be one of those people, but if we get enough momentum in a locality to say that the system should change and people say, “You know what? It might refresh us. We might do better if we had more challenge,” or whatever the logic of the argument and political debate taking place, they should try something else. Let them try an alternative vote. Let them try, if they wish, the single transferable vote. Let them be the arbiters and judges and jury about the electoral system that they want in their area.

Similarly on governance, if people wish to have a form of governance that includes a leader concept, a committee structure or a mayor, they should be allowed to try it. The imposition element—if people want to run their own affairs, they must do it in the way that the Government say and have a mayor—is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Government’s proposal, and I do not list many. The Government say, “If you don’t want the mayor, you’re not going to get the powers.” That is unfortunate. It is counterintuitive to those of us, even the Secretary of State, who believe in devolution, and it has not done the cause any good.

If we genuinely, perhaps after one or two more Bills before 2020, get to a position where we trust local people to have the wit and creativity to devise their means of governance, they should decide whether or not they want mayoralty. The reason why only one city went for the mayoralty in the last round and the rest rejected it was partly that it was felt to be an imposition. It came close on the back of a number of elections where people had expressed a political view about who should run their locality. It was done in a clunky, clumsy way, and we can see the fingerprints from that exercise on the one that has been transposed into the Bill. That is unfortunate. Let us allow people to find a mayoralty if they feel that it is appropriate for their area. Let us allow them to test that or to experiment with it if they wish, rather than saying yet again, “You’re getting devolution, but only in the way that we in Whitehall say is appropriate.”

If, like me, hon. Members have had the opportunity to study a document about devolution, they will see that the Government are not doing any of us who care about devolution any favour at all in the way that these things are written. It is like a gathering of local officials and centralised, Whitehall officials with a very large lashing of LSD, and it is difficult for ordinary people, let alone politicians, some of whom are intellectually challenged, to understand what is meant by much of the documentation. That may be based on my errors, but I suspect, given the size of the smile on the Minister’s face, that he, too, realises that to an extent officials at local and national level have depoliticised the very thing that he and the Secretary of State have done so well in bringing the Bill to the House.

[John Stevenson]

I hope Members on the Government Benches are not intellectually challenged. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we look back at Governments of his party and of mine, we see that the present Government have done an awful lot to further the cause of devolution, and should be given credit for that effort?

[Mr Allen]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is an assiduous reader of my speeches, even more so than I am, and he will see that on Second Reading and a number of occasions subsequently I paid tribute to the Secretary of State for his determination to bring devolution to its present state. It is an extremely good foundation for my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on the Front Bench to build on in 2020.

I am surprised that we have got to this point in the debate today without anyone mentioning that devolution deals have been announced. I am surprised that the Minister has not mentioned that. I do hope word does not get back to the Chancellor about his omitting to mention the deals in Liverpool and the west midlands, in addition to the deals in Sheffield, the north-east and the Tees valley. I hope deals are rapidly on the way in my area—Nottingham/Nottinghamshire and Derby/Derbyshire. I believe there are 38 potential deals, covering up to 80% of the population.

It may seem odd for someone on the Opposition Benches—I hope I am regarded as all-party on this issue—to point out that there are large areas, Conservative areas, rural areas, county areas, that have been left out of the party. If this is to be a genuinely democratic change of the order of developing national Parliaments and assemblies—a change that will lead to a federal United Kingdom, as my hon. Friends on the Front Bench said in The Huffington Post this morning—we cannot leave our friends in the rural areas, whether they are Conservative or not, out of the equation.

[James Wharton]

It is important to find areas of agreement. Although on the issue of devolution the hon. Gentleman tempts me to go further than I am currently predisposed to go, and he would no doubt go much further than I might want to, it is important to put on record that he is right about rural areas. We have the deal with Cornwall and we are working with many other areas to reach deals which will include many rural areas in county deals. This is a process of making bespoke deals for individual areas. That means that they will be different and it will take time, but we are determined to deliver them.

[Mr Allen]

I genuinely wish the Minister well in that. I am sure he has followed the debates in the Conservative councillors network over the past 36 hours as closely as I have. It is important that everyone shares in the benefits of devolution and is enabled to make the sort of decisions that they feel are appropriate, rather than those that Whitehall considers appropriate.

The Minister tells me that I am pushing the process a little too fast and a little too hard. We have had such debates since the 1830s, and people have argued that we should not rush things. Fancy giving working men the vote! Fancy giving women the vote! For heaven’s sake, if that ever happens to our democracy, what next? Now, my goodness, there is the brand new issue, which nobody has ever thought of before, of giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. We should revel in the fact that there are people in our country still desperate to use the franchise. It should be extended to them and that should be done sensibly.

I refer the Minister to the report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I see a number of distinguished former members of the Committee, even sitting close behind the Minister. The report came up with an array of possibilities for extending participation and extending our franchise, such as online voting and 16 and 17-year-old voters. There were many other proposals, but Mr Crausby would rule me out of order, were I to venture into them. Sometimes in a political career there are moments of opportunity and they are very rare. The Minister is a young man starting out on his political career. He may not be the Minister on the next devolution Bill, which is sure to happen before 2020. I hope he is, because he will have gained massive experience from taking the Bill through on this occasion, but he should seize the opportunity to push it a little further than the officials might like. That is a political lesson that we could all share.

[James Wharton]

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Gentleman’s wise and considered words on devolution issues, even if we do not always reach the same conclusions. I am particularly interested in what might be a glimmer of agreement between us on the issue of voting age. We may not agree on what the voting age should be, but he said that any change should be carried out in a sensible way. Does he think, therefore, that a proper process should be used rather than an amendment to a Bill such as this—in other words, that there would have to be full and detailed consideration, with proper consultation taking into account many of the issues that hon. Members have raised, so that any such fundamental change, were it to be made, would be long-lasting?

[Mr Allen]

I am always searching for consensus. In an ideal world, we should do this thoroughly and properly, but we are not in an ideal world, unfortunately. Parliament is the creature of Executive power, and so occasionally, when an opportunity arises, parliamentarians of any political party should always seize the moment.

This may not be the moment, but perhaps the Minister should be thinking—as we all should, particularly Labour Members—of the opportunities coming up. Next time there will be further increments of devolution. We will write devolution packages that ordinary human beings and Members of Parliament can understand. We will want to share them. We will want to enjoy, across the whole democratic family, the fruits of devolution, which, as Lord O’Neill, the Minister in the other place, said on the radio this morning, give us not only democratic change but the most fantastic economic opportunities, which Manchester has so successfully led the way on, to build economic growth for our local communities in a way that only they can take forward.

I will not press my new clause to a vote, but I hope that, above all, the Minister and my Front-Bench colleagues will start to think about what should be in the next devolution Bill.

[Graham Stringer]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who makes the sensible but profound point that if services and economic development are devolved, we will not have consistency across the country. When, over the past 50, 60 or 70 years, people have argued for complete consistency in service delivery or in other parts of local democracy, it has been a cover argument for centralism, because a devolved system cannot be consistent across the ground without centralism. Consistency is never achieved because of the nature of different areas where services are delivered in different ways. Having said that, if my hon. Friend had intended to press new clause 3 to the vote, I probably would not have voted for it. I rarely disagree with him, but I will try to explain why.

I want to make two points on what has come up in the debate and two points on clause 20 and new clause 3. I cannot let it go that my hon. Friend and those on both Front Benches have said that only one city voted for an elected mayor in 2012. In fact, one of the two cities that I represent—the city of Salford—voted for an elected mayor, but the referendum on an elected mayor in Salford was not one of the 11 that were forced on people. There is a lesson there. The reason devolution to Greater Manchester is popular—an opinion poll came out this week showing 75% support—is that it is a negotiated agreement, not something that has been forced on the area. One of the reasons people in Salford voted for an elected mayor was that they had asked for the referendum by petition; it was not forced on them. It is not surprising that the other 10 cities that had referendums forced on them voted no. No constituency argued the case for elected mayors and, unlike under this Bill, they would not have been offered different resources and powers if they had agreed to an elected mayor.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who represents the SNP, said there is no desire for devolution in Scotland.

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[Graham Stringer]

I am sorry. Yes, that is the one exception to my argument. In terms of local government in Scotland, however, it is fair to say that the Labour Government at the time were distrustful of the Labour party running some Scottish cities and thought that it would be healthier if its very large majorities in such cities were broken up. As it happens, I think that was a mistake.

[Mr Graham Allen]

Of course, the point about party political advantage is very strong in respect of the SNP, which no longer talks about proportional representation for representatives in this place because half the Scottish population is represented by three Members of Parliament and the other half is represented by 56. It has suddenly gone quiet on that point.

My hon. Friend said that the electoral systems will be decided by local councils under my new clause. I hope he will forgive me for pointing out that electoral systems may change only with the full consent of local people, rather than through a deal by the political parties.

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[Mr Reed]

That is a matter for the Government, but my view is that this should all be done through co-operation and negotiation, not through imposition. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman would not advocate any such imposition; I suspect that he would not.

The London Assembly has made the case that cities such as London need further devolved powers to integrate rail services with their surrounding commuter regions. That will apply to other regions across the country as well. It is not quite clear, however, what will be in scope in that regard. Perhaps this relates to the right hon. Gentleman’s question. It would be helpful to have clarification on that point, as we do not have long to go before the Bill reaches its Report stage. It would be helpful to have clarity before we reach the final vote on the Bill.

There is also the question of how new transport initiatives will be funded. Since 2010, local authorities have had their funding for bus services cut by 70%. The Department for Transport has recently signed up to a further 32% cut, which is likely to affect sustainable transport programmes for cycling and buses, once we see the full detail. All of this undermines the upgrades necessary to deliver effective transport integration, which is critical to making the system work efficiently and effectively for local people. Those decisions should not be taken centrally without involving the areas affected by them, and I hope that the Government will come forward with proposals to ensure that resourcing is also part of the negotiations with localities, along with the additional powers that they may or may not be able to acquire.

Significant control over STBs is to be retained, in some cases quite unnecessarily. The new clause mentions the Secretary of State 39 times, but it mentions mayors just twice. Will mayors have a significant role within these organisations or not? We would welcome further clarification from the Government on what the precise role of the mayors will be. The Government are forcing mayors on to localities whether they want them or not, as a condition of devolution deals in the metropolitan areas, but they also seem to be denying the mayors certain powers. Either they are a central point of local accountability or they are not. We would like to see their powers over transport matters extended.

Under the provisions, authorities will still have to have their proposals approved by the Secretary of State, from whom they will also still get their funding. The Secretary of State will also be able to make provisions about how an STB is to carry out various functions. That does not seem radically different from where the ultimate authority lies now. We have seen what happens when this Government try to deliver transport projects with too much centralised control. We have seen the pausing, and the un-pausing, of the electrification of the TransPennine route, and we have seen airport expansion kicked into the long grass for decades. The Great Western main line electrification announced by Labour has also been delayed by the Tories, with its costs spiralling from under £550 million in 2011 to £2.8 billion today.

Despite the Minister’s fine words and the undoubted good intentions of the Secretary of State, it appears that the Government are still too timid to really let go. I hope that the listening mode they have declared they are in today means they will think about how they can go further with these proposals by the time we reach Report.

[Mr Graham Allen]

Mrs Main, I understand that it is in order to talk about the other clauses remaining to the House to discuss, including new clause 29, at this point, but I am happy to stand corrected.

[The Temporary Chair (Mrs Anne Main)]

I am reliably informed that new clause 29 is in the next group.

[Mr Allen]

In which case I sit corrected.

[The Temporary Chair]

Does the Minister wish to come back in at this point?

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When the Minister responds, I hope favourably, to the enabling of a Greater London devolution ask, will he confirm the position on the case law, which appears to make it inappropriate to use the existing 1972 Act provisions? In particular, those provisions would not be sufficient to enable a ministerial delegation to joint committees formed under section 101(5) of the Act. Moreover, London boroughs do not appear to be permitted authorities for the purposes of delegation under section 16(1) of the Localism Act 2011, and they cannot take on the functions of other public bodies. I can only blame the then Minister for having missed this very important point, but we all sometimes learn from the experience of legislation in practice. The new clause seeks to rectify these lacunae, and I hope that its objective is shared across the Committee.

[Mr Graham Allen]

I want to talk about the very broad amendments that I have tabled. New clause 29 and new schedule 2 get to the heart of the debate—that is, we can have all the powers we like, but if we do not have the financial capability to use them effectively, they are an empty charade. We are accompanied in this Chamber by people of great expertise, with at least three former leaders of councils and other colleagues who have great experience on local authorities. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)—my hon. Friend, if I may call him that—has great experience that he put to the service of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament. He enhanced our reports particularly where they touched on local government. There is great expertise in the Chamber, and I defy anyone to counter the truism that without finance powers are useless.

That is why I return again to the question of what happens next on devolution. This Bill is absolutely essential. The Minister has heard me say on many occasions that it is a good Bill that makes good progress, but he has also heard me ask on many occasions, “What comes next? Once the foundations are in, what do we do to build a more secure construction on them?”

If the Minister does not intend to accept my new clauses, I ask him to look to the future and to consider how we can expand the financial capability of local government. We can do that in a number of areas. Indeed, my Select Committee in the last Parliament inspired me to draft the Local Government (Independence) Bill, which is available from all good Vote Offices or even from me, should anyone who is viewing the debate care to read it. It laid out a number of areas where we could use existing precedent to free local government in England and enable proper devolution.

One of the key precedents was and is Scotland. The efforts of Donald Dewar, the Scottish citizens convention, the coalition’s Scotland Act 2012 and the cross-party consensus among those of us who do not wish to split up the Union and who support the current Scotland Bill, which delivers on the promise that was made before the Scottish referendum, have all contributed to enhancing the capability of the Scottish Parliament to raise and retain its own income.

What is good enough for Scotland is good enough for England. England would need a different mechanism to deliver the heart of the deal, which is income tax assignment, but it is not beyond the wit of mankind to create that capability. Drawing on the lessons of the Scottish experience, we could soon get to a position where income tax assignment, channelled through the Department for Communities and Local Government, filtered down into a clear, honest and accountable amount of income tax without having to make any changes to the rates, the method of collection or equalisation. That would provide local people with transparency and clarity with regard to where and when their income tax is spent, via central Government, by local councils and local authorities. That would be a significant step forward, just as the Scotland Act 2012 was for the Scottish people.

On equalisation, many people get anxious about income tax assignment and say, “That means you’re retaining the income tax raised in your locality,” but that is not what it means. As happens now, income tax would go to the centre and it would be reallocated through the existing formula or a slightly changed formula, depending on the consensus at the time. Equalisation would stay exactly the same as it is now, unless all players—including, above all, local government, perhaps represented by the Local Government Association—consented to any change.

The Local Government (Independence) Bill was the product of a lot of thinking involving academics, Queen’s counsel, the Public Bill Office and this House, to try to make sure that everything was defined as accurately as possible so that it could be legislated on. It outlines ways in which local government could raise additional income, but with the very strong caveat that it could not use any additional sources of income unless it involved local people in the decision and they agreed to them. The issue has been discussed before on the Floor of the House, and we raised the obvious example of charging a hotel tax—or bed tax, as it is sometimes called—if local people consent to it. The heart of devolution is represented not by the Government saying, “Everybody should do this”, but by the freedom of local areas to try, if they wish, to get the consent of people in their locality.

Members have touched repeatedly on the idea that that approach will be so much stronger if it is done voluntarily. Rather than looking for ways to get out of a straitjacket, people will be seeking means to join the club of local authorities that can raise money in particular ways. They would learn from each other, from the experience of colleagues down the road or from further afield and perhaps, as I have suggested in new clauses, from a best practice centre of some description—owned by local authorities, contributed to by central Government —to take devolution to the next step. Let us look at some of the good things that have happened, although not everywhere, and offer them to other authorities so that they can, if they wish, move forward.