None of us who remember the terrible time local government endured in the 1980s as budgets were sliced and powers reduced can be unhappy to see greater powers given to local government now. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher’s government looked across the Thames at the unemployment figures draped over the side of the Greater London Council building, and to her it might as well have been the flag of a foreign power raised over her homeland (reminding her after the Falklands episode that there were ‘enemies within’). Away went the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. In practice it was a time of massive centralisation.
The Lib Dems are right to be concerned about where county councils fit into the picture now with the rise of ‘metro mayors’ and whether there’s too much of an urban takeover, but the move towards more control at local level is a welcome one in principle. However, devolution isn’t just about giving power away. It’s also about sharing power.
I’m not sure that Andy Burnham really understands this, despite his recent meeting with the leaders of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it is with the ‘nations’ outside England that the danger lies. If you think that all you’ve got to do is give powers away (‘Can we control policing in Wales?’ ‘Yes, maybe we can agree to that’) then you will find that eventually whoever receives additional powers will want more until eventually it seems logical to ask for complete control. I’m not saying that this would be a danger in the case of the English regions. Giving Kim McGuiness a budget over transport policies in the North-East is not likely to lead to a demand for an independent Northumbria. But in the case of those parts of the UK where there are already strong forces calling for full independence, it is arguable that those who say ‘giving some powers away is bound to be a foot in the door leading to demands for more and eventually everything’ have a point.
It is for this reason that devolution must have an element of sharing power as well as giving it away. James Dennison’s recent exploration of governing structures in the UK in Lib Dem Voice talks of a change to the second chamber. He suggests ‘around 300 voting members of the Lords elected by first past the post in territorial constituencies, giving the second chamber a deliberately different mandate rooted in place.’ This would be an excellent development giving the House of Lords a distinctive role in bringing together representatives of the regions and nations. It’s maybe a little like the German ‘Bundesrat’ but it doesn’t have to be the same. James also talks about appointed experts adding to the numbers in the second chamber.
The important thing is that the nations and regions making up the UK not only have an increase in the power to manage their own affairs, but they have a say in how the UK as a whole is run. That is where a revised second chamber can play a key part. The recent approach has been a little too passive-aggressive, promising the regions and nations they’ll have plenty to decide for themselves if they’ll just go away and leave central government alone. There’s a suspicion that the King of the North remains too England-centred in his outlook, despite learning a few Scottish placenames in order to stress the importance of local government across the border. After all, as anyone with an atlas can see from a British perspective, he’s barely King of the Midlands.
There will be questions about how much power a reformed House of Lords should have and whether it should even be able to veto decisions of the Commons. But I believe that to keep the UK united, all parts of that nation-state need to grow used to joint decision-making. That’s what’s been missing so far.
For instance, if it came to an issue of whether to leave the European Union, this should be decided by every part of the United Kingdom, or at least by a qualified majority. If three parts opposed it, for instance Scotland, Northern Ireland and London, then that would be enough to ensure it couldn’t happen. The regions and nations making up the UK would then feel they really did have the power to influence national decisions rather than simply being sent away to do their own thing. Just imagine what it might feel like to be Scottish and told that: ‘You can manage the railways and your education curriculum. Oh, by the way, we’ve decided to leave the European Union.’ It would obviously be very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a United Kingdom on that basis. Oh, wait a minute….
* Mark Corner is a UK national, who teaches economic history and philosophy at the University of Leuven, is married to a Czech EU official and lives in Brussels. He has just published A Tale of Two Unions suggesting that Brexit may damage the British Union unless the UK becomes more positive about the way the European Union is structured.
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Roman Leicester wasn't built in a day 2
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Shambolic, careless Reform and their disappearing councillors
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In terms of public accountability it’s time education in England was returned to local authorities……. though I doubt very much whether the present government will overturn one of the worst decisions made by Blair.
David Raw is right in wanting education in England returned to to local authorities. Many people in Yorkshire can just about remember Sir Alec Clegg running education in the old West Riding wanting innovation and excellence and using the metaphor (borrowed from the New Testament) of gathering up the fragments that none may be lost. Meanwhile Alan Bennet in his diaries documents the power of the City of Leeds in making a positive contribution to changing society through children’s education policy. But that was a world when politicians understood that there was more to schools than choosing where to live or where to work.
@ Geoff Reid Thanks for the kind comment, Geoff.
Still grateful to the village school in Birkenshaw for my early years …… and to the great Sir Alec for my grant to go to UCL………… a pity Clegg & Co couldn’t keep to their word. I still admire Priestley senior and Jowett MP for what they did in Bradford before my time.
The push to metro and rural mayors was all about consolidation of power into fewer individuals. From the perspective of the right this was a mechanism to further marginalise councils who would have to bend the knee to glean essential funding. It also makes it much easier to concentrate election spending on a few candidates acceptable to the party hierarchy. The structure that the Tories planned to use has become a gift to the billionaires, of course, so at the moment there is a real risk of Reform stealing their crown. Most of our media are controlled by a handful of businesses sympathetic to the extreme right, so expect to see elections being bought, as they are in the US. Whatever such a puppet government is called, concentrating power makes these positions even more attractive to the corrupt and I am not seeing any party with policies to ensure transparency of every aspect of public expenditure.
What I haven’t seen our party comment on (not saying they haven’t, I’ve not seen) is the lack of accountability and transparency of elected regional mayors.
In Tees Valley there is nothing worth anything, Private Eye has an article, even a pull out supplement once, in every edition about what is going wrong, and millions is to put it politely (mis spent) yet nobody or no body is tackling this.
A council has an opposition with councillors who can challenge and there are other ways of picking up what is badly wrong, but Houchen is under no real scrutiny at all.
every statement about devolution should have scrutiny, accountability and transparency as part of it.
PS @Geoff Reid, I remember Sir Alec Clegg well, he literally changed my life.
Burnham’s gradualist approach is similar to past Labour Governments. In 1964 Jim Griffiths was the first Secretary of State for Wales. In the 1970s the Royal Mint was moved to Llantrisant and the DVLA to Swansea. In 1999 Blair’s Government created the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. Northern Ireland is different. The Nationalist movement does not seek independence from the UK as a separate country.
If history is a guide to the future, then Burnham will devolve Policing to Wales but will leave the Justice system for a future Government.
The urgent issues of change in Westminster such as PR will be left to the next Labour government which could be a decade or more away.
@ Gwyn Williams, Gwyn, you write, “The urgent issues of change in Westminster such as PR”………….
Sorry, Gwyn, but I would have thought that a 26.4% increase in the number of food bank parcels issued by the Trussell Trust in Wales since 2019 ought to be of a much more urgent cause for concern than PR for Westminster. (Source : The Trussell Trust, 2026).
@Gwyn, I agree with David Raw about relative urgency. However, even in the list of political reforms, I would put changes to voting way below the changes that need to be made to the way Parlaiment works, as like Trump, we can be sure a Reform executive (and as we saw during the Brexit negotiation years, a Tory executive) would use and abuse all the mechanisms available to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny and democratic process..
Lib Dem MSPs either voted against or abstained on this motion in the Scottish Parliament yesterday:
“Scotland is a nation that has a right to decide its own future.”
They joined Reform and the Tories in doing so. SNP, Labour and the SGP voted for the motion.
Is this a change in Lid Dem policy on independence, federalism and devolution because the implication seems to be that Scotland has to take what the UK sate decides to give and nothing more?