Nations and Regions and Our Constitutional Future

The Local Government Chronicle has reported (25 Sept 2024) that the government will set out the remit for the Council of the Nations and Regions in the devolution bill sometime next year. The minister for local government Mr McMahon states that his aim is to establish combined authorities with mayors for the whole of England. He also invites existing mayors to ‘co-produce’ the white paper and sort out the problem that many areas of England don’t fall under the mayoral model with devolution powers.

The Council of Nations and (English) Regions is a constitutional innovation suggested by the Gordon Brown chaired Commission on the UK’s Future (2022). The Council is just one of the Commission’s far reaching constitutional changes, which include an elected Upper House replacing the House of Lords, and greater local tax-raising powers. If the Secretary of State for Local Government is placing his proposals within the framework of the Commission, he needs to set up a constitutional mechanism for consultation and approval. What he seems to be doing is the opposite, directing the changes from the centre. This assumes Parliament and the executive are sovereign, a selected range of local government people come to him to negotiate deals, which in their turn are approved and most likely fiscally reduced by HM Treasury. This is the devolution model of the previous government, and it is most likely that the civil service has no other alternative plan to restore local government democracy.

One of the main arguments of the Commission on the UK’s Future is that the abysmally low levels of trust in government recorded by British Social Attitudes and opinion polls stems from citizens’ anger against Westminster, where all decisions affecting their livelihood were made at the centre. The Sheffield academic Andrew Hindmoor in Haywire, A Political History of the British State since 2000 summed up the performance of central government as akin to a car crash. The Commission noted the near universal demand for control at the local level, and the last two years has only increased the clamour for effective, local, and democratic government. This was taken up by the Labour Party in its manifesto that control should rest where people live. But the worry now is that Sir Keir Starmer is attempting to govern with a state that itself requires reform, especially as the concentration of power in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office is proving so dysfunctional. The case for a more effective central state doing less and local authorities doing more is the obvious way forward.

Mr McMahon assumes that combined authorities and elected mayors are the only show in town. This is signally not the case, because the existing traditional structure of local government is still based on citizens voting for local councillors, who as a council direct the administration of services and make political decisions affecting the local area. So, England already has a form of local government with decisions agreed and made where people live. Moving the centre of gravity to combined authorities like the North East which clumps together six major urban areas is to take local government away from the local level. Steve Leach and Colin Copus (The Strange Death of the Local in Local Government) point out that newly designated all-purpose unitary authorities like North Yorkshire comprise populations greater than some US states. Wyoming has a population smaller than North Yorkshire but its local democracy is instituted through 23 counties and 99 municipalities – an autonomous bulwark against whatever happens in Washington D.C.

There is dissatisfaction with local government which has suffered immensely from decisions made by governments in Westminster. In the 1980s the Conservative government took away a considerable part of councils’ local tax raising powers, and this culminated in the poll tax (community charge) which, while withdrawn under intense populist pressure, led to a permanent reduction in local tax revenue. The government also reduced the democratic powers and capacities of local councils. The result? More central control from Westminster. In the 2010s and to date, austerity policies ordained at Westminster resulted in major cuts, cumulatively 40 to 50%, in local government budgets. Services once expected as a social right and as the return on taxes have been cut and, in many instances, simply stopped. This is the crisis in local democracy and it was made in Westminster.

Mr McMahon said that no political action will be taken by government until at least the next year because of the present financial constraints. This is understandable – any re-organization of local authorities with reduced funding would be a disaster. A majority of the new intake of Labour MPs have a local authority background. They should caucus to restore local government funding. McMahon also said fiscal devolution is ‘beyond his pay grade’, so admitting that once again a core component of devolution will be overseen by the Treasury. The logic of centralization is to enforce rationalization of local government in two ways. 1) to make it more ‘efficient’ which it does by creating ever larger units of local government dedicated solely to service delivery and removed even further from the local citizen, 2) to make it adhere to a universal model – the soulless unitary authority. Proceeding with rationalizations will inflict more harms on local government and citizens.

Britain is one of the most centralised governments among the world’s advanced democracies. This lament is frequently uttered by politicians, academics, and even once by a Treasury official (Sharon White). Therefore, a comparative look at other advanced democracies is required and more far-reaching constitutional changes considered in place of Westminster’s endless monopoly of government. Among the many ways of escaping hyper centralism, I make the following proposals:

1. Devolution to the non-English countries (Scotland, Wales, and N. Ireland) has stalled and needs further work. The proposed Council of the Regions and Nations recognizes that a permanent mechanism should be created allowing co-rulership of the UK’s heterogeneous entities. Sovereignty should be shared across parliaments, replacing the terminology of reserved and devolved powers. This would achieve a central-federal hybrid model. Territorial representatives would be elected to a new Upper House exercising actual legislative powers relevant to the operation of the central-federal mechanism. This would not wholly satisfy the non-English nations, because the English regions would have numerical ascendancy but probably not unanimously pro-South East. There would be genuine re-distribution of powers on a politico-geographical basis, creating a horizontal dimension to government alongside the existing vertical top-down axis.
2. English regions, presently demarcated by statisticians into 9 entities, would become the strategic middle level of government. They would be vested with significant tax raising powers, with a corresponding reduction in central taxation; other strategic powers would include planning up to the level of infrastructure, transport, housing and land use, health, education and training, and economic development. English regions would gain the degree of autonomy already enjoyed by Scotland and Wales. These strategic powers could be considerably expanded through transregional agreements – the new horizontal level of government. These formidable levels of administrative power would have to come under democratic consent in some form. Constitutionality not expediency is required, so that regional and national parliaments/assemblies hold their executives to account and ensure legality, ethics, and rationality in administration. This could be modelled on the current Senedd which follows the principles of parliamentarism. The Greater London Authority is the other obvious model, but its elected Assembly has weak powers of scrutiny, budget control, and approval of appointments, which give the mayor too much discretionary power.
3. The economic benefits provide much of the justification of the Commission on the UK’s Future. However, we should be sceptical of the thesis that devolution is necessarily better for economic growth and innovation. The thesis dates from the 1960s and is based on the theory of city-regions and metropolitan ‘agglomerations’ fostering more intense economic activity. The only case that fits this model is Greater Manchester with its economic history of small industrial towns surrounding a centre. (See Michael Lloyd https://fedtrust.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Fiscal_Federalism_UK.pdf) As a counterexample, the Leeds-Bradford-Halifax conurbation does not have an inherent dynamo, even when designated as a metropolitan combined authority. Leeds itself benefitted when central government gave up on manufacturing in favour of financial services; overall, it was not a regional win. But linking up the Yorkshire conurbation with regional equivalents to the north and west would make a difference; for example, putting in place a viable road and railway system with agreed standards of service and delivery for citizens. Under this scenario, the regions could broker a deal in the new Upper House, and not have infrastructure investment cancelled on the whim of a prime minister proving his macho credentials. Shared investment projects would introduce long term, non-reversible funding.
4. Local government still exists, if not startlingly alive and well. It exists in two forms, unitary and two-tier authorities. Mr McMahon wants to gobble these up into metropolitan and county combined authorities with elected mayors. But what evidence is there that this model is suitable for all urban conurbations and that a coherence is demonstrated between functionality and urban spatial patterns? This is a rationalization imposed from Westminster, a process started by the Coalition Government in 2012 and followed by Secretary of State Michael Gove. Local authorities were coerced into becoming combined authorities out of exigency with more funding promised. Some like Cornwall rejected the offer of an elected mayor, and it has ‘absolutely’ no wish to combine with any other county authority despite the present Labour government’s invitation.
5. Constitutional deliberation is required to find a way through the current mash-up of local government. New democratic impulses must be given voice and capacity alongside the existing forms of local government. The last time, in 1969, a comprehensive reorganization occurred – the Redcliffe-Maud Royal Commission on Local Government in England – it was empowered by royal warrant to conduct extensive consultation and collection of evidence. It took three years to complete. It was admirable for the serious attention given to local government, but its recommendations were disastrous for local democracy and citizen engagement. The Commission was one-dimensional, concerned only with efficiency and planning, and fixated with destroying local government where it was closest to residents. The number of local councils went down from 1210 to 412, and in this process artificial geographical entities were created and old familiar names were replaced with new synthetic names (Tameside for anyone?). The new citizen democracy requires the restoration of lower tier councils. At the other end of the spectrum regional government needs to be established if Westminster and Whitehall’s coercive centralism is to become co-rulership. Where provenly successful, metropolitan combined authorities could be scaled up, remembering that they are headed up by regional mayors, often with a political clout extending beyond their urban area. Without that scaling up they will always remain on the Whitehall leash and discretionary Treasury funding can bring any autonomy to heel.
6. Little and large. There is no one model that fits the exhilarating diversity of contemporary Britain, which with a population rapidly expanding beyond 68 million needs to restore multi-tiered government – and be like every other advanced democracy (excepting Hungary). Rural areas have justifiable reasons to feel they are being bundled up into combined authorities, and the balancing of the rural and metropolitan needs to be modelled. Cornwall has already shown it wants far more self-governing powers, separate from a south west region. One size fits all is to make the same mistake as Redcliffe-Maud. All this requires a constitutional convention of some form, itself layered in its representation with staging posts in reaching resolutions. There is little point abolishing the House of Lords, currently obstructive but impotent, until the governing functions (plural) of an Upper Chamber and its system of electoral representation are decided. Imposed referendums will not suffice because they simplify a situation where citizens are working through complexity. Citizens assemblies and other bottom-up consultations are required and their recommendations should not be ignored. Jim McMahon and whoever is to replace Sue Gray need to be ambitious in setting out plans for our constitutional future. And prime minister Starmer will be pressured to think bigger than the bi-annual meetings to which he has already shrunk the Council of the Nations and Regions. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwl8807w7o)