Andy Burnham’s launch speech in Manchester raised hopes of a sustained plan to devolve power away from Whitehall. If the reality matches the rhetoric, that will be a massive achievement and will greatly improve our system of governance.
But any Liberal Democrat who has been battling for decades for genuine local, community-based decision making and against the infantilisation of local government is entitled to some scepticism. My own formative experience is somewhat different: serving in the Coalition Cabinet which first launched the idea of devolving powers to elected mayors for city-regions broadly on the London model (prompted by a report for the Coalition by Michael Heseltine) ; and having earlier served as a – then, Labour – City Councillor in Glasgow) in the early 1970’s, before Scottish devolution, and when councils had serious powers (inter alia, we could appoint head teachers, build council houses and set the rents).
The fundamental idea that decisions by public. authorities should be made as close as possible to local communities – subsidiarity- is not in dispute. As a leading force in local government- and, at times, the leading force, Liberal Democrats have sought to apply that principle and have often tried to devolve further to lower, ward, levels. But they have been swimming against the tide of gradual centralisation as successive governments have stripped away local powers in the interests of a national ideology or of financial control. As a result, we are highly centralised (and especially so in England after substantial devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
Devolution of power is not the same thing as decentralisation or relocation. Various governments have despatched government departments to the provinces to be administered locally. Under the Boris Johnson administration, Darlington became a northern outpost of government. Andy Burnham envisages some Cabinet Office activities being based in Manchester. In the day, I recall advocating the relocation of the Treasury to Liverpool as a means of shifting thinking regionally. But none of these approaches empower people in towns and cities outside London.
There is an important distinction between devolution of power to spend central government tax revenue on local priorities and fiscal autonomy with responsibility for local revenue raising. British devolution is largely the former albeit with very limited (income) tax raising powers for the Scottish and Welsh governments. There is nothing like the revenue raising responsibility of Danish local government or German Lander, let alone US states and, so far, city mayors have none. Arguably, city mayors have become popular- or at least unobjectionable – precisely because they can spend without having to tax, though spending discretion is better than none.
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