The Mayor of England
It is significant that Andy Burnham chose to devote a large part of his first speech as Prime Minister-in-waiting to devolution. It is a response to a widespread complaint that the United Kingdom is one of the most centralised countries in Europe and that this is holding back economic and social progress. Yet is Burnham really talking about either devolution or the United Kingdom and is this anything more than scaled-up Manchesterism for England?
The word devolution has a long history in British politics but with very different meanings. Historically it meant reforming the Union by creating a system of self-government for the nations on roughly federal lines, something achieved at the end of the 20th century. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have executive and legislative powers over all matters not expressly reserved to Westminster. There is a convention that Westminster will not normally overwrite them which, despite some setbacks, has largely held.
In recent years, the word devolution has been used in England in a very different way. It refers to local, municipal government and to administrative powers in specified fields. The competence to provide for this is lodged in the Westminster Parliament. In the devolved territories that competence resides in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Burnham is no doubt correct that the devolved territories are also too centralised but this is, in fact, none of his business, unless he is proposing to take that competence back to Westminster. In recent years, indeed, Westminster politicians have been hinting at such and seeking to bypass the devolved governments on the pretext of defending local government.
English devolution in practice has taken the form of combined local authorities, indirectly elected from existing local governments, usually together with a directly elected mayor. There is no elected assembly to control the mayor and provide a democratic input, except in London. The powers of these combined authorities fall well short of those which the old Metropolitan Counties (which were directly elected) enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s. Ironically, one reason for the popularity of the mayors is that they have so little power and can engage in boosterism without the risk of offending anybody. Notably, they lack-tax raising powers and there was nothing about this in Burnham’s speech. Maybe the Treasury will have a Damascene conversion this time and let go of the purse strings – we will see. There are some hints that combined authorities may have some role in education yet until the 1980s local government in England actually controlled primary, secondary and further education.
There has been a lot of talk of extending the system of regional mayors to Scotland (where the historical title is Provost). The present system of 32 units of local government was designed in the 1990s largely for party-political advantage rather than for reasons of good government. Yet it is not clear that the system for a country of 60 million people is suitable for one of 5 million. The Glasgow conurbation is in need for better strategic planning mechanisms but does it need a boosterist Provost to rival the Provost of Aberdeen or even the First Minister? Does the emerging system of cooperation work better? The boundaries of the city itself are anomalous in excluding some prosperous suburbs but should they be brought in to a unitary authority? The Highlands are a very different matter – can we imagine a single Provost of the Highlands? The islands have different needs again. This all needs to be thought through and debated within Scotland.
What Scotland lacks is a system of genuine local government. At present it has the largest basic units of local government in Europe, whether we measure population or (in the rural areas) geography. In other European countries, it is this local level that is the basis of local democracy, not taking powers upwards to city regions.
The No 10 North (relocated parts of a Prime Minister’s Office) is at present entirely undeveloped. It is not at all clear what such a body would do when the real powers rest with the line ministries based in London. The notion that government departments should be established to engage in what Harold Wilson called ‘creative tension’ with other departments does not have a happy history, especially when one of those departments is the Treasury. Already there are voices from Cornwall asking why Manchester should be any closer than London. The idea that it should lead local government reform and action in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is constitutionally dubious and bureaucratically horrifying. That a central government office responsible to the Prime Minister should be responsible for leading local government is a bit reminiscent of all those ironically-named ‘Czars’ governments like to appoint in order to lead progressive reforms. Real decentralisation will only happen when we do not have such bodies.
Territorial government in the United Kingdom may be a muddle but that is because the state was built from muddling through. Reform is needed but cannot be achieved by folding all its complexity into a single logic. Burnham’s speech was obviously not intended to provide a complete blueprint but two points of principle need to be taken as foundational in the coming debate. One was the recognition that the United Kingdom is a union of nations whose constitutional rights need to be recognised. The other is that the foundation of local government lies in community, democracy and citizen engagement.
Michael Keating is Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen and Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh.