Less than England needs — first thoughts on the Brown report
After all the hype, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed. The Commission on the Future of the UK does make it crystal clear that slow growth, widening social and economic inequalities and a collapse of public confidence in central government stem directly from England’s centralisation. Keir Starmer should be credited for not ducking constitutional reform as many worried that he would. The problem is that while the case for radical devolution is unanswerable, the limited — if generally sensible — proposals go nowhere near what is needed. By the end of a Labour first term the gap between the powers and resources exercised by England’s localities and those of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be wider than it is today. The forthcoming consultation needs to see the ideas strengthened.
The Commission notes that ‘there is no reason why… the great cities of England, as their capacity and capability develop, cannot exercise executive power comparable to the Welsh Assembly (sic) government or the Scottish government’ but it does not commit to such a radical vision nor provide any strategy to get there. Twenty years ago, Labour gave Scotland these powers as a matter of principle without waiting for capacity or capability. Wales was able to gain new constitutional powers over time. English local government won’t get any constitutional right to draw down powers and resource. Instead, local areas will have to pass through an arcane legislative process — requiring the agreement of both the UK government and two UK wide elected bodies — to gain powers that could be theirs by right. Even English regions that are larger than Scotland will get nothing like Scotland’s new economic powers.
Austerity has taken its toll and it’s good to see civil service decentralisation being used to build local capacity, rather than just relocating agencies, but much more could have been said about how local government can be enabled to exercise new powers.
What powers are proposed are useful but limited: more compulsory purchase, the ability to require energy efficiency in new buildings, devolution of adult skills, job centres and the careers service and letting localities shape FE colleges work. Giving local areas control over bus services will be widely welcomed and letting areas work in partnership with rail providers matches the current government’s levelling up promise. Powers will be extended over housing regulation and it will be easier to set up local authority nurseries. Setting long-term local government budgets (a return to the three-year planning cycle Brown introduced as Chancellor) and five-year infrastructure funding — will help council planning. Replacing department bidding pots with block grants would save thousands of hours of wasted officer time.
At the heart of the economic model is place-based innovation backed by the UK Infrastructure Bank and the British Business Bank with new regional mandates (but not regional control). Local mayors and local government leaders and local plans would play a key role in this strategy. It is easier to propose 300 economic clusters than deliver them but the potential to foster local innovation is real. Community Wealth Building as pioneered in Preston, Leeds is endorsed though not integrated into the wider economic strategy. Striking, though, is the lack of references to Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan or Rachel Reeve’s Everyday Economy. It feels like the full potential economic role of local authorities has been badly underplayed.
Otherwise, there is nothing very radical: no proposals, for example, to devolve control of the apprenticeship levy, much of which is paid locally and ends up in the Treasury; a nod towards proposals to capture the gain from development land values, but nothing firm enough to bank; no plans to devolve control of government investment in housing. Nor is there any discussion of a UK wide fair funding formula to guarantee England’s deprived localities the resources they have lost under austerity. As policy usually gets watered down it’s a shame to start so unambitious.
Local authorities will be encourage to form local partnerships to pool powers and gain ‘greater powers’ in ‘partnership with central government’ without necessarily having an elected mayor but subject to a government approved plan for jobs and growth and clear scrutiny and accountability. But other than absorbing LEPS there is little clarity on what powers might be available — there is nothing akin to the three tiered options of the government’s Levelling-Up White Paper
There is remarkably little in the report about devolution of public service delivery. In the last government Brown pioneered pooled public service budgets known as Total Place. That radical thinking has disappeared. Schools are not mentioned, and childcare, social care and the NHS and housing get no strategic discussion even though these place-based services can be as important to developing the social capital needed for ‘levelling-up’ as the tools of economic development.
The main agenda is to extend more powers to large regional partnerships. It is these regions, rather than local authorities, mayors or combined authorities, that may gain responsibilities covering strategic transport, industrial strategy, skills policy, spatial planning, trade, investment, and energy and environmental projects. Exactly what these powers will be or, crucially, how much of central government current spending they will represent is missing. Some economic powers are undoubtedly best exercised over larger regional or sub-regional geographies, but the report describes a top-down process. Rather than devolve these powers to existing democratic structures and encourage or incentivise local areas to collaborate and pool them, it seems power will be held back until central government approves regional proposals (even though the centre has proved incapable of using its powers well)
The clash between wanting neat regions and the political necessity of ‘messy devolution’ reflecting real places, geographies and identities is all too clear in the report’s desire for both ‘locally owned plan in every region’ and ‘the growth of local structures that develop organically but swiftly from local initiative’. Discussion, says the Commission, ‘should start now’ but that will be hard with such vague and conditional proposals on the powers that can be gained. The failure to give localities real powers by right (and thus some powers with which to negotiate) ensures the centre will dominate the relationship as it does with mayoral ‘deals’ under the current government.
Nor does the report deal with the deep unpopularity of regional government that made it so easy for the Coalition Government to sweep away Labour’s RDAs. While the imposition of ‘top-down’ regions is ruled out, England will clearly end up with a system of regional bodies approved by the centre and the old thinking pops out from time to time: Regional Ministers for the ‘statistical standard regions’, Regional Commons Committees for the same areas, and regional representation on the elected Senate.
In a genuine break with the past, the Commission highlights the confusion that exists between the governance of the UK and that of England which ‘does a disservice both to the devolved nations and to England itself.’ It calls on Whitehall to pay more attention to its England only functions, and for the creation of a Cabinet Committee for England. It floats the possibility of a Commons English Grand Committee to look at English policy and law (but not to decide it), and an English Committee in the elected Senate. There is no proposal to give England a clear leadership distinct from that of the UK. (One possibility for short-term change would have been the creation of a powerful English Secretary of State to coordinate English national policy, oversee English devolution and represent England within the UK).
Welcome though these reforms may be, it falls well short of a system of coherent and democratic national government for England. English legislation will be subject to the UK Commons and Senate whilst the equivalent laws are devolved to other nations. England would get a consultative committee of mayors and local leaders, but England as England would be excluded from the UK wide Council of Nations and Regions and the governmental Council of the UK. The report’s ambition to ‘entrench the constitutional status of self-government across the nations of the UK’ clearly does not extend to England.
Labour wants to win, and it will be tempting, not least for Labour local government, to sign up and hope for the best. The lesson of history is that the radical potential Labour’s radical 1997 manifesto [1], was never fully delivered.Unless Brown’s plan is strengthened before the election the weakness of the current proposals and the enormous power that will remain in Whitehall suggests it will all be less than England needs.
Prof John Denham
(There is much else in the report about the UK, devolved nations and reform of the House of Lords and important proposals for the ways in which the UK, nations and regions work together — I hope to return to these important issues later)
[1] John’s analysis of New Labour and the Governance of England is in ‘Governing England’, British Academy, OUP, 2018.
