Within the next few weeks the Labour government will publish its promised white paper on Devolution. Reports so far suggest it will extend combined authorities with directly-elected mayors across the rest of England, abolish the remaining district councils and move to unitary councils covering parts of combined authorities – in practice a new two-tier system in which the relationship between combined-authority mayors and unitary councils will remain to be settled. There’s unlikely to be any significant change in financial control from the centre or tax reform. A move towards three-year settlements for central funding of local and combined authorities is more likely.
I’m not an expert on local government; nor do I know whether our party yet has an agreed position on how to respond. I accept that the mayoral model in London works well – with a London Assembly to hold the mayor to account, and London borough councils to provide local services and representation. The mayoral model is suitable for conurbations – though it needs (as in London) to be balanced by a representative assembly, with multiple local councils constituting it. But I’m doubtful whether a similar model suits the rest of England.
In Yorkshire the consensus among MPs and council leaders was strongly for a regional body and local councils, if necessary also with elected mayors for the conurbations of West and South Yorkshire. Instead the last government imposed upon us combined authorities both in North and East Yorkshire, with only two elected councils in each. The imposition of a unitary authority across North Yorkshire has replaced district councils that covered distinct communities – Harrogate, Craven, Scarborough and Whitby, Richmondshire, and Selby – with a geographically vast area with a much smaller number of councillors. York, however, was left outside, so an elected mayor and combined authority has therefore been imposed on two very different local authorities. The combined authority and mayor for East Yorkshire will similarly sit over only two existing local authorities.
The argument for unitary authorities, rather than district councils and counties, is made on cost and efficiency, in circumstances in which all local authorities are struggling to survive rising demands amid severe cuts in their budgets and transfers from central funds. But there is a countervailing cost in local democracy and representation which Liberal Democrats – I would argue – should fight against. Most people see political issues through local experience and daily life. Now that so many decisions have been removed to Whitehall, with service delivery transferred to private providers or autonomous agencies regulated by central government, it’s not surprising that so many voters see politics as a distant game played in Westminster over which they have no influence at all.
Local democracy needs wards small enough for voters to know their councillors, and to have the opportunity to talk to them if they wish. Unitary authorities with wards that (in West Yorkshire) contain several distinct communities and 12-15,000 voters make this almost impossible. Where there are town councils there’s a higher degree of contact and discussion; but so far as I’m aware town councils are more present, and more active, in affluent areas than in poorer communities. In inner-city Bradford and Leeds it’s hardly surprising that the mood of disillusion and disgust with politics is widespread.
Labour in government are concerned with delivery – which is for them the key to re-establishing public trust. They see elected mayors as their chosen agents of delivery, under clear central direction and with conditional central funding. Unitary authorities will play a subordinate role, still with a desperate shortage of resources and limited powers. The number of local councillors across England will shrink further, working at a greater distance from the people they try to represent. Town Councils may spread further across local communities, but with very little powers to respond to voters’ concerns. England will remain the most over-centralised democracy in Europe or North America.
All democratic politics starts, for the ordinary voter, at the local level. Political parties need local roots – and local councillors acting as links between communities and nationally-delivered services. British politics has now become dominated by central party organizations and their donors, with shrinking local memberships, and with MPs replacing local councillors in responding to individual grievances and difficulties in accessing public services. I doubt that mayors and combined authorities can restore public trust in our democracy, even if they succeed in improving the local delivery of public services. I would rather restore local democracy, local government and local funding. Have I got my priorities wrong?
* William Wallace is Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues in the Lords.
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12 Comments
Thank you William – no, you haven’t got your priorities wrong. The Labour Government appears to be suggesting that democracy is too expensive, so we should have less of it.
These changes can only result in greater distance between councillors and voters, to the detriment of local representation.
Nick has it spot on. If you want to see how unitary Authorities fail and fail to listen take a look at what is happening in Northaptonshire. I can’t see Labour plans doing anything but make local democracy a distant memory.
Good article – thank you!
“Local democracy needs wards small enough for voters to know their councillors”. Yes and that could be improved by dividing up multi-member wards such that they represent their different constituent communities.
But democracy is being constantly diluted.
William,
To be frank I am astonished how you can say “I accept that the mayoral model in London works well” and would appreciate it if you can offer any objective reasons why you think this to be the case.
I do not think it has worked at all well. Indeed I would state it has been an appalling mess in so many ways, but specifically for one main reason – Those who become mayor are either 100% party hacks, massive self publicists or even worse a combination of both
1) Ken Livingstone – Almost continuously at war with both the Labour government despite being a Labour politician
2) Boris Johnson – An even bigger self image than Ken, with an eye for the absurd e.g. the £53m wasted on his abortive attempts to get a “garden bridge,”
3) Sadiq Khan – Thinks setting up ever more complex controls over traffic in London requiring the installation of a massive surveillance infrastucture is good. Is this really Green, Liberal, or Socialist authoritarian?
On the wider Labour proposals for elected mayors, their powers are massive and uncontrollable giving huge opportunities for so many dodgy practices. Just look at Tees Valley in Private Eye for reports on what might be going wrong there.
One thing our existing systems have is that, in extremis and inter elections, the elected members of the controlling party can remove their leader (Johnson, Truss etc.). With metro mayors there are no members who can do this.
Quite simply elected mayors are a recipe for widespread total corruption of the system.
In summary, every ad hoc reorganisation of local government since 1974 has been done with the sole aim of reinforcing the power of the party of national government.
I think these proposals provide a good opportunity to argue for greater powers for town and parish councils.
In many rural areas these are the tier of local government people really identify with.
Out here in Suffolk, we have an impoverished County and four Districts and a Borough who are financially floating rather than drowning. But we also have an active third tier, the hyper-local one. We work quite well with both County and District but it does occasionally involve a shove or two, and a degree of engagement that not all Town and Parish Councils can muster.
My fear about Unitaries of the size proposed is that, as they inevitably withdraw from everything but mandatory services, pressure will come for the Town Councils in particular to step in, as we’ve already seen in Somerset, for example. That requires new skills and responsibilities, not necessarily something that councillors in our tier want, or have the ability to take on.
And a town has a hinterland, villages whose residents use, and benefit from, the services that towns will take on. Who pays for that? Surely a Town Council’s residents will have qualms about paying for all of a service whilst the surrounding villagers get a free ride.
In my wilder flights of fancy, I envisage the reemergence of Rural District Councils – not perhaps the radical reform that Ministers have in mind!
In principle, I’d certainly like to see more decentralisation, but I think any reform needs to start from the basis of, working out what responsibilities work best locally vs. regionally or nationally rather than just devolving for the sake of devolving. And where responsibilities are shared how to ensure authorities work together constructively (As a hypothetical example, on transport, it may make sense for a district council to have a say in some very local bus services while the county council deals with longer distance buses and trains. But how then do you ensure all those services link up?)
If we do have multiple tiers, I wonder if it would make sense for there to be some mechanism whereby town/parish councillors can push cases upward to districts/counties, so you get the very local representation across all services?
I’d also like to see a bit more uniformity in how things work across the country. Right now it feels like, there are so many different forms of local Government in different places that you never know who is likely to be responsible for what because the whole structure changes as soon as you cross a local authority boundary.
I agree with David Evans about the system of directly elected mayors – while people may hold up Paris as the example of of such a system, it smacks of presidentialism, and not a model we should have followed, when there are others more ‘parliamentary’ in nature.
Berlin’s Governing Mayor, for example, is chosen by the city’s House of Representatives, so is more like the Leader of the old Greater London Council, although being in a federal system, he is more like the premier of a state. The Senate is the executive branch, is appointed by the Governing Mayor – https://www.berlin.de/rbmskzl/en/the-governing-mayor/the-constitution-of-berlin/artikel.16546.en.php
The Mayor of Vienna is also similarly elected, and the City Council is also a Provincial Parliament.
The devil is in the detail for local government and democracy. More cooperation across wider areas on strategic issues like planning, housing, skills and transport has been needed for many years. Likewise the need to overcome excessive parochialism and unfair distribution of finance and abilities in different communities. But the excessive central control from Whitehall is going too far and the Mayoral system without assemblies to provide a counter balance to the whims and biasses of the Mayor is likewise not good for local economic development let alone democracy.
Probably the two biggest issues the Labour Government is avoiding is the devolution of resources & financial decision-making from Whitehall to Local Government and democracy in the form of local government proportional voting systems.
Directly elected Mayors particularly the Mayro Mayors restrict representation to either Labour or Conservative (or just occasionally a media personality with access to money). The party that gets elected is almost entirely a referendum of the Party in Government and very little about the ability or even policies of the candidates. This even more so now that the Tories forced the elections to be Party List of One system. Even the former Supplementary Vote was little better since it was a tactical vote battle to get into the top two.
The solution is for a more widespread and powerful set of town and parish councils accross the UK, alongside the Mayors and Unitaries. This would help to counter the democratic deficit and the trust of the electorate in our governance. The balance of powers between these and the unitary councils will vary depending on interest and competence. The important thing is that this third tier is comprehensive, paid for and democratically legitimate.