Category: Devolution

WILL THE WHOLE NORTH GET DEVOLUTION ?

PATCHY ROLL OUT.

This week saw some significant developments in the roll out of devolution in Greater Manchester at least. It was always going to take a lot to fill the shoes of Sir Howard Bernstein, the retired Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, so it is no surprise that we now have two Chief Executives, Joanne Roney running the city and Eamonn Boylan the Combined Authority(CA).

I was in the new CA headquarters on Oxford Street last week and reflected that exactly 43 years ago I walked into County Hall on Portland Street, the Greater Manchester Council’s new HQ. In 1974, It was felt it was a good idea to have a strategic authority for the whole county. After a costly abolition in 1986, we are now back to square one in some ways, although having an elected mayor may make it different.

While the devolution band wagon is visible in the Greater Manchester and Liverpool city regions, elsewhere in the North the roll out is patchy and incoherent with a great deal of uncertainty about how far meaningful devolution will extend beyond the Liverpool and Manchester City Regions. Lord Porter, the Tory chair of the Local Government Association thinks devolution is dead because the government has encountered petty squabbling in areas of two tier local government or opposition to the concept of elected mayors in more rural areas.

That is an extreme view. Whilst it is true that Brexit is a major distraction in all departments and that the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid remains in an inactive sulk having been moved from his role as Business Secretary, there was enough energy and ideas at the recent NP conference in Manchester to convince me that the project is not dormant. But if business outside the Manchester and Liverpool City Regions want similar packages they need to knock politicians heads together across the rest of the North.

A RAGGED PICTURE.

Leeds is the greatest underperformer so far. This great city should have been electing a mayor this May with a full devolution deal. Disputes with some surrounding authorities have prevented this and the latest idea for a mayor for a Yorkshire wide body across three combined authorities looks set for a ministerial veto as it would need new parliamentary legislation. Sheffield isn’t having a mayoral poll this year either. This is partly because of a row with Derbyshire over whether Chesterfield could be included in a new South Yorkshire authority even though it has no border with it.

Now we come to the town of Warrington which recently flirted with the idea of joining the Liverpool City Region. That would have scuppered the idea of bringing the town together with the two Cheshire councils in a powerful authority at the southern end of the North West. The Merseyside dalliance is now over and Warrington council leader Terry O,Neill is hoping for a devolution deal this summer. However, a new constellation has entered the Cheshire scene…literally. A grouping of Cheshire’s two councils and the Local Enterprise Partnership have come together with six Staffordshire authorities under the Constellation Partnership. They’re starry eyed about the economic potential of the HS2 hub around Crewe. However, the idea of an elected mayor may be a sticking point once again.

Lancashire has suffered for years from having sixteen councils, thirteen districts, two unitaries and the county council. The leader of Lancashire Council, Jennifer Mein, is the equivalent of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the sense that she has used calm and wise leadership to try and bring all the parties together. Wyre Council has stood out against a deal for a long time and Fylde has now joined them. A devolution deal will have to await the result of the closely contested county election next month.

Elections are also due this summer in Cumbria where the idea of an elected mayor for this largely rural county has been a stumbling block. Relations between the districts and county are not good with talk of a combined authority being formed without Cumbria County Council’s involvement.

Follow me @JimHancockUK

HOUSING ROW EXPOSES DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN GREATER MANCHESTER

CITY REGION NEEDS DIRECTLY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES.

Andy Burnham is right. The Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) has been top down rather than bottom up. This dry sounding document is set to make serious inroads into the greenbelt in the county for housing development.

One needs to take into account the rampant opportunism that most politicians display ahead of elections; that said the dismay of three of the candidates standing for elected mayor of the Manchester City Region over the housing plan is notable.

There were widespread demonstrations as the consultation period closed with claims that people were unaware of what was being proposed.

There has been an opportunity to put viewpoints on line and there have been drop in sessions across Greater Manchester for people to state their case. However, many feel that the exercise was cosmetic and a product of the Combined Authority, a body mainly consisting of the ten leaders of the councils in the area.

Will the elected mayor change this perception? Will the new post herald an era where there is full democratic debate on issues like housing, the congestion charge and health? The jury is out but talk of making the elected mayor “the eleventh member of the family” suggests that Manchester City Council in particular will want to prevent the elected mayor being truly independent. The model is flawed. District council leaders sit on the Combined Authority with no direct mandate from the people. The Local Enterprise Partnerships are business organisations and strategic bodies like Transport For The North do not open their meetings to the public.

Real devolution requires politicians directly elected for the purpose of making big decisions on housing, transport, skills and health. We have Police Commissioner elections in an area of policy where there is little controversy. Why can’t debate over issues like greenbelt and hospitals be argued back and forth in election campaigns for a regional or sub regional assembly?

There need not be more politicians, the number of district councillors could be cut (Manchester has 96) and replaced with directly elected assembly people.

CENTRE LEFT CIVIL WAR CONTINUES.

I went to the Fabian conference in London last week to see if there was any sign of the Greens, Lib Dems and the anti Corbyn forces getting their act together. I was once more disappointed as they continue to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Amidst self indulgent in fighting, there were small signs that thinking is being done about local deals to allow the strongest of the opposition parties in a particular area to fight the Tories. But mostly people remained in their trenches with the Greens being attacked by Labour for standing a candidate in Copeland where the issue of nuclear power is a key one in the by election.

One red faced Labour purist, Luke Akehurst of Labour First claimed the Lib Dems should pay the price for many elections for going into coalition with the Tories in 2010 rather than support a rainbow coalition under Gordon Brown. Supporting him was Johanna Baxter of Scottish Labour saying she would never work with the SNP. It didn’t seem to occur to them that the rainbow coalition would have needed SNP support to make it remotely stable.

At the same conference, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made a better speech. He’s hired John Prescott’s son apparently as a writer. Consequently, it had more North of England references than north London for a change. His theme that the system is rigged against ordinary people has potential.

Follow me at www.jimhancock.co.uk

KNOCKING ON THE DEVOLUTION DOOR

RED ROSE RISING.

Lancashire and Cheshire want to be major players in the Northern Powerhouse. There is frustration that the project all seems to be about Manchester. I’ve been to Preston and Chester to find out what these areas have to offer the great project to bring power from Whitehall to the North.

Edwin Booth is the dapper boss of that excellent chain of supermarkets, Booths. He chairs the Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and is just the man for the job. His quiet charm is what is needed in a county notorious for local authority in fighting. If it isn’t Lancashire County Council v the districts, then its Blackburn and Blackpool v Preston. Then we have Chorley’s bid for unitary status and Wyre refusing to join the bid for a Combined Authority.

Mr Booth told me at a Downtown event last week that he is confident Wyre will come on side for the devolution bid although, as in Cheshire, the stumbling block could still be the government’s insistence on an elected mayor despite the more rural nature of these areas.

The LEPs are supposed to be driven by business with local councils playing a supportive role. The trouble was at the beginning the government were so vague about their structure and purpose when they were set up that councils were often forced to play a major role. Edwin Booth told the Downtown meeting that he soon hoped to detach the LEP from County Hall in Preston. There is speculation that he might take the council’s officers involved in partnership matters with him.

Booth is keen on good relations with Manchester and wants to improve connectivity to the M62 but he is also concerned about transpennine connections further north. He wants a new bridge across the Ribble near Preston but above all he wants to raise the county’s prosperity which is 75% of the national average. Enterprise Zones are up and running in places like Salmesbury and Blackpool, Fleetwood is next.

Booth sees the Lancashire LEP as an agent of transformation using city deal and growth funds but would like powers over skills training in secondary schools. The government’s offer at the moment only covers post 18s, when many argue it is too late.

CHESTER’S LEGIONS ON THE MARCH.

The Chester Forum at the impressive MBNA headquarters heard the Northern Powerhouse (NP) described as a sham by property developer Guy Butler who heads the city’s Growth Partnership. He was concerned that the NP was a distraction to cover for the fundamental change going on in local authority funding. The idea is that central grants will cease and councils will be able to keep all their business rates. It is a scheme that will massively benefit London whilst northern councils with much lower property values will suffer. Butler also wondered whether Chester should be part of the NP or should see itself as a hub for an area including North East Wales with its significant employment centre around Airbus in Broughton.

Phillip Cox, the CEO of the Cheshire and Warrington LEP was in no doubt that the area was part of the NP. The fastest growing LEP in the North, Cox pointed out that more people travelled into the area than out. The idea that the sub region was a dormitory for Manchester was a myth. As in Lancashire talks on a devolution deal continue, but once again the issue of an elected mayor may prove a stumbling block.

Sam Dixon, the new Labour leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council made an impressive début speaking out about the disruption that would be caused to local government by a Brexit vote. Rules on shared Town Hall services were in EU directives that would all have to be rewritten, and furthermore the LEP had received £142m in regional development grants.

So on the flanks of the Northern Powerhouse, the debate remains lively about its future.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE: SLOGAN OR SUBSTANCE?

An almighty shot has been fired across the bows of Lord O’Neill of Gatley ahead of a major business conference on The Northern Powerhouse (TNP) next week.

Jim O’Neill as he’s better known up here is now a Treasury Minister on the back of writing a highly influential report identifying cities rather than regions as engines of growth.

He’s coming to Manchester next week to give a boost to the two year old project that’s beginning to attract critics. One is Jen Williams, the talented political correspondent of the Manchester Evening News. In a recent article she claimed NTP was just a slogan, if one cared to look at the record rather than the rhetoric of Lord O’Neill and his boss the Chancellor, George Osborne. She cited the flagrantly biased recent award of extra cash to southern councils while northern authorities like Lancashire made massive cuts with talk of the Red Rose council withering altogether. She went on to say that these cuts damaged attempts to solve deep seated social and poverty problems engrained in the North for so long. The NTP’s emphasis on building things was not enough. Finally there was the unbelievable closure of the government’s skills department in Sheffield with the loss of 250 jobs..

The attack clearly went home because Lord O’Neill didn’t wait to get to Manchester to hit back claiming employment was growing faster in the north than elsewhere, power was being devolved through elected mayors, Transport For the North would deliver connectivity improvements and good things could be expected from the Infrastructure Commission shortly.

But the criticism isn’t just from journalists. Jim McMahon was the leader of Oldham Council and tipped to run for elected mayor of Greater Manchester until he unwisely took the Westminster route by becoming MP for Oldham West. He has been closely involved in the devolution negotiations and recently told MPs of his deep unease over TNP. He feels it does not empower communities, a criticism felt by many who say all the deals have been stitched up by councillors and ministers with no public consultation. McMahon called for a national framework for devolution rather than the highly complex and differentiated pattern of powers that have been handed out across the North. The government call it responding to local factors. I call it a dog’s breakfast.

Next week’s UK Northern Powerhouse International conference aims to tell ministers what northern business leaders think has to be done to really rebalance the UK economy. There is a feeling that TNP is not yet scaled up to do this. I would argue this has been the flaw in the strategy of both the Coalition and Conservative governments. They broke up the large development agencies which were in the process of creating the Northern Way to really counter the powerful London economy and we have been struggling ever since with a patchwork of Local Enterprise Partnerships, Combined Authorities and Growth Funds.

There is also the haunting question “will it last?” When George Osborne ceases to be Chancellor will the London centric civil servants start to unravel the project with a weaker politician in charge? Regional policy has been notoriously at the whim of ministers. I asked Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese about this at a recent Downtown event. He replied that that was why Manchester was grabbing as much power as it could while the policy is intact. Wise man.