John Spellar
Main Page: John Spellar (Labour - Warley)Draft West Midlands Combined Authority Order 2016
John Spellar Excerpts
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Although I am not a member of this Committee, as a west midlands Member of Parliament I welcome the opportunity to address this order, about which there are considerable reservations, as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton outlined. I suspect that those reservations are shared by many on the Government Benches; apart from those on the Front Benches, who are here ex officio, I notice that the Government seem to have had great difficulty in getting west midlands Members to come along to defend this proposition. We do have my colleague the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, whom I welcome, and my co-commentator—
Julian Knight
I inform the right hon. Gentleman that I am the Member for Solihull, which is a key part of the west midlands.
Mr Spellar
I was going to come to the hon. Gentleman after I had acknowledged the presence of my co-presenter on the midlands “Sunday Politics”, the hon. Member who comes from the east midlands. Where do the other Members come from? Gloucester is just down the M5, I suppose. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is clearly deeply interested in the fate of the west midlands.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I went to university in the midlands.
Mr Spellar
That sounds like what people always used to claim when they went to selection conferences: “My great grandfather worked in this town” or whatever. We also have the hon. Members for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich and for Rochester and Strood.
Tim Loughton
Before the right hon. Gentleman takes up more of the Committee’s time going through the CVs of every Government member of the Committee, may I inform him that I spent three glorious years at university in the west midlands? Is not the point that we are representatives of the United Kingdom, we have experiences, whether from devolution or not, in different parts of the United Kingdom, and those experiences are relevant to the Committee’s deliberations about whether devolution should apply to the west midlands? As such, we have every entitlement to be here.
Mr Spellar
The interests of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents may not coincide much with the interests of the constituents of those of us who represent the great conurbation of the west midlands. That is one of the problems: we have had people meddling in local government—this applies on both sides of Parliament, by the way—who in many cases have had no experience in local government. That is why they so cavalierly ride over the wishes of local councillors. In the referendums that were imposed on our great cities, we saw all but one of the cities that were asked turn down the proposition of elected mayors. I shall come back to this in a minute, but interestingly, two of those cities, Coventry and Birmingham, which rejected elected mayors by an overwhelming majority, are now being forced to have one. I understand that that will come later, but it is part and parcel of this scheme, which has many merits in itself. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton said, if these things are properly applied, there is great merit in the ideas of having a combined authority and of authorities working together, but not in the context of the enormous cuts that have taken place and that have been directed principally at the metropolitan authorities. I am talking not just about the disproportionate cuts to council spending but about cuts to the West Midlands police authority, which, along with one or two other of the metropolitan authorities, has borne the biggest percentage cuts of any of the authorities, as has the fire service in the west midlands. That may be why there are so few west midlands Members on the Government side prepared to defend this scheme.
Julian Knight
As a west midlands Member on the Government side, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he reflect on the facts that the Government came to a special arrangement with West Midlands police that will enable them to levy an extra precept to cover any potential shortfall, and that the current Labour police and crime commissioner is sitting on £100 million of reserves and not spending them?
Mr Spellar
I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman concede that the Government have exercised disproportionate cuts on the west midlands. I am surprised that he is not prepared to stand up against the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the interests of the public and the council tax payers of the west midlands.
We must beware some of the traps that lie here. In various of these authorities, the transfer of further health functions from the NHS is being examined. We have had experience of that. Councils have had a number of responsibilities transferred to them, but unfortunately the money—or the sums that were previously being spent—did not follow. Yes, the responsibilities were transferred, but so were increasing liabilities, meaning that other council services have had to be cut.
Although there is great merit in devolving responsibilities as long as there is funding, some problems do not go away. I recollect that when I was a Transport Minister, there were concerns that for peripheral areas of larger authorities or regions—in particular where there was a transport interface with another region, for example in the north-west and Wales—there was always a difficulty in getting funding, even though there could have been considerable benefit. That might have been more easily dealt with at a national level.
I am concerned that there are a number of unresolved questions. The order outlines the authorities that are involved. The core authorities are the councils of the old West Midlands County Council. However, discussions are taking place about whether Warwickshire will be involved, although it is unclear what stage they are at. Equally, discussions are taking place as to the involvement of Telford and the rest of Shropshire. That would be quite a different type of authority and people in the region—not just parliamentarians—want to know what the shape of the authority will be.
There is also concern that if the Chancellor, who—I stand ready to be corrected—has never served on a local authority, is going to force through not only the creation of an elected mayor, but an election next year in May, we could see a repeat of the stand-alone elections we had for police commissioners, where we saw incredibly low turnouts right across the country. That should be a concern on all sides. Therefore, we need clear answers on that issue.
I notice that funding for the authority will be based on the total resident population. Therefore, it will not be based on the council tax value or on a proportion of income, but will just be a per capita charge—in other words, back to the poll tax. There are some serious questions that make this a very unsatisfactory proposal, and it is being rushed through before these important issues have been resolved locally or between Government and the relevant local authorities.
James Wharton
The shadow Minister, whom I welcome to her place, is a wily foe at the worst of times and desperately effective at the best of times. She has deprived me of the opportunity to hear the dulcet tones of the hon. Member for Easington, whose contribution I had been very much looking forward to. She has tempted the Committee to stray into talking about another piece of legislation—namely, the process by which a mayor could be elected to be accountable for some of the powers that are hopefully being transferred down, should Parliament so wish it, in co-operation with the local authorities. As I am sure you are aware, Mr Davies, we are not here today to talk about that particular aspect of devolution agreements. This statutory instrument creates a combined authority that has been agreed with local authorities in a bottom-up way, rather than as a top-down deal. I remind the Committee that a deal is a two-way process. A deal must be agreed by both parties or sets of parties, and that is what we have before us today.
The temptation from the shadow Minister was such that the right hon. Member for Warley indulged a little in discussion of the mayor, while raising a number of points of concern to him. He commented on the membership of this Committee. I am pleased to see so many hon. Members who are so well informed about the specific geography of the area we are here to discuss, devolution more generally, and the ambitions of this Government and of local areas that want to engage in this programme and benefit from economic growth. He talked about hypothetical future transfers and what the funding arrangements for those might be. I do not wish to get into that debate in too much detail, it being hypothetical, but in our approach to devolution, it is the intention of this Government that powers will be transferred where they are asked for by local areas. That is done by agreement. Indeed, the proposed combined authority is very much in that vein.
The hon. Member for Coventry South, who is spending much of his day in discussion with me—we earlier discussed the exceptional growth in jobs in Coventry and how welcome that is—spoke about the mayor, and about the responsibility we and local areas have to deliver for local people and to build on the economic success that Coventry in particular has enjoyed over the past six years.
I have here a letter from October 2015 from the shadow authority, which represented the leaders of some of the local councils and authorities. It states:
“The headline conclusion of the review is that establishing a West Midlands Combined Authority would improve the exercise of statutory functions in relation to economic development, regeneration and transport in the West Midlands.”
It continues:
“A Combined Authority would help maximise growth in output and jobs. A region-wide focus on productivity, competiveness and raising skill levels would put the region in the best position to achieve its economic vision and economic goals.”
This is a deal—it is a two-way process. In these areas, we have worked with local authority leaders representing the communities they are elected to represent. We have come to an agreement about a geography and a set of powers.
Mr Spellar
Does the Minister accept that, faced with the option of going along with the deal and making the best of a bad job, and having suffered horrendous cuts—in the hundreds and thousands of millions across the conurbation—it is not surprising that, with the offer of a rebate, albeit a small part of that, those councils would accept that option? They were defending as best they could their interests against a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was using that rebate quite blatantly as a bribe to get his political project through.
James Wharton
I remind the Committee:
“A Combined Authority would help maximise growth in output and jobs. A region-wide focus on productivity, competiveness and raising skill levels would put the region in the best position to achieve its economic vision and economic goals.”
Glancing at the letter, I do not see reference to a hypothetical argument about local government funding, which is entirely separate from the process by which either devolution or combined authorities are agreed.