Tag Archives: 2021 autumn conference

As a member of the Policy Working Group chaired by John Shipley, delivering the motion F21 A Framework for England in a Federal UK, I volunteered to write this follow-up to Sunday’s Conference debate. This is my consolation prize for disconnecting my audio and embarrassingly failing to speak in the debate myself – somewhat riling, given my work on regionalism and federalism since 2015.

It seems, however, that I need not have worried about the result from a personal perspective. After a clear, explanatory opening speech by Prue Bray, many contributors spoke in favour of a strong tier of English regions constitutionally equivalent to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as states of a federal UK, providing for a union that would work better in terms of fairness, localism, empowerment, democratic accountability and, importantly, creating constitutional stability between the home nations.

This is not to say that the Working Group’s views were unanimous. We recognised the need to present several options, not just one proposal. We excluded English regions with separate legal jurisdictions, as different from each other as Scotland is from England, as lacking popularity and seen by some as dangerous. The choice was between a single English state or a set of regional states and then a further decision on the nature of an all-England legislature. By a two-thirds majority Conference chose regional federal states and an English legislature separate from the federal structure, formed by regional representatives rather than a directly elected national body.

Accompanying that, Conference endorsed a Union in which at least half of tax revenue would be spent by sub-national bodies, competing with Canada and Germany as two of the most fiscally decentralised countries. We also outlined – not exhaustively – the sort of powers that the federal states should have.

Our answer to the Tories’ “levelling up” is that we have an actual plan: a massive shift in power towards local and regional authorities and a fair distribution of resources across England and the UK as a whole, taking money away from Whitehall and giving more local control over finances.