European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-28
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Liddle has said. Always when the House debates a Bill at length, certain themes appear, and the themes and patterns can often be of some significance. One of the most significant themes that has appeared in your Lordships’ consideration of this Bill is how weak the voice of England has been in our debates compared with the voice of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland There has been only one substantive debate about the interests of England after EU withdrawal and how it is handled, which was the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—significantly, a former leader of Newcastle City Council—on 19 March. It was a very significant debate in the form that it took. What came through very clearly in the debate was that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and other leaders of local authorities in England, including the noble Lord, Lord Porter, who sits on the Conservative Benches and is the leader of the Local Government Association, had far more confidence in the EU’s processes of consultation through the Committee of the Regions than they did in any institutional arrangements for consultation between Her Majesty’s Government and local authorities in England I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in his place—I think that he may be responding to this debate. In his characteristic way, he made a very constructive response to the debate, saying that the Government were considering consultation arrangements post-EU withdrawal with local authorities in England. I took it to be a very significant statement when he said that that might involve new consultative machinery, including possibly a new consultative body between the Government and local authorities in England. I have to say that the fact that it takes EU withdrawal for Her Majesty’s Government to produce proposals for formal institutional consultation between the leaders of local authorities in England and the Government is a pretty damning commentary on the state of our constitutional arrangements in this country. One of the themes that comes through very strongly from Brexit is that English local government and the regions and cities of England are essentially government from London in a colonial fashion, in much the same way as Scotland and Wales were before devolution. One of the very big issues raised by Brexit is that whatever happens over the next year, whether or not we leave—and I hope we do not—Parliament is going to have to address with great seriousness in the coming years the government of England as a nation but also the relationship between this colonial-style government that we have in Westminster and Whitehall and local government across England as a whole The one telling exception to this pattern is London, because London has a directly elected mayor and the Greater London Authority. As a former Minister, I know that the whole way that London is treated is radically different from the way that the rest of England is treated because it has a mayor and the GLA. When the Mayor of London phones Ministers, sitting there with 1 million votes—somewhat more than my noble friend has as the county councillor for Wigton; I know he has done very well but he does not sit there with quite so many votes—I assure noble Lords that Ministers take the Mayor of London’s call I remember vividly that when I was Secretary of State for Transport I met the then Mayor of London, who is now the Foreign Secretary, and he did not know who the leader of Birmingham City Council was. It only happens to be the second largest city in England. That is a very telling commentary on the state of the government of England. How England is going to be treated is massive unfinished business in our constitutional arrangements, and Brexit has exposed a whole set of issues relating to the government of England that will now have to be addressed.