Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-22
Topic: Government Operations
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I said on Amendments 1 and 2 that we should avoid being overly strict on what structure and governance can be proposed and approved, but we need to be very careful that, in not being too prescriptive, we do not end up giving the Secretary of State carte blanche to do whatever he wishes. There has to be a set of principles by which proposals can be judged. We have set out four in this amendment: democratic accountability, the support of local government electors, the need to avoid risk to the proper functioning of local government within the area of the elected mayor, and that it should not be an automatic requirement that there is an elected mayor We should note the context here. In Greater Manchester there is to be an elected mayor without either a referendum or a full consultation with local people, and with an interim mayor elected by a handful of council leaders, not by the general public. There appears to be little evidence of positive public consent to the governance structure. Indeed, a referendum on an elected mayor in the city of Manchester received a no vote very recently. We need to be very careful that we do not introduce new structures that, because they lack democratic legitimacy, could put at risk the devolution of power that we want to achieve. The Government have to explain why, if an assembly is right for London, it is not right for Greater Manchester and other parts of the country As they stand, the proposals in the Bill run the very serious risk of creating a one-party state in some parts of the country without adequate checks and balances in the governance structure. Let me explain. It would not be good for democracy or for accountability for an elected mayor from one party to be able to appoint a deputy mayor of the same party from the combined authority, and then to chair that combined authority—dominated by that same party—with the overview and scrutiny function led by a chair of that same party and dominated by members of that same party. This is dangerous, because the only connection with the governance of the combined authority for an elector is to vote for the mayor, but nobody else. We want to change the electoral process to include the combined authority itself. That is because we do not wish to replace one form of centralism with another. This is about accountability, which cannot be guaranteed with the proposals that the Government are making. Our amendments are designed to improve the Bill’s failures in this respect Let me be very clear: this is not about refusing to accept the concept of elected mayors. The concept can work, with the right governance structures around such a mayor—indeed, the Government have a mandate to introduce them. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that the election of one person for the whole of a combined authority area would of itself be sufficient to secure public consent to the new arrangements We must amend the Bill to improve it in order to make the proposed structures more accountable, with checks and balances which everyone understands. We shall therefore examine the way in which overview and scrutiny will work, particularly as regards the rights of the public, the press and the media to obtain information, and the rights of opposition councillors to call for papers. We do not want to end up with meetings of combined authorities in which the business is conducted in secret pre-meetings composed of just one party, and then announced to the press and public as decisions in short public sessions with little debate or discussion All our amendments to the Bill are tabled with the aim of improving it and enabling it to earn broad public consent. It needs to be amended to achieve that and the requirements and safeguards recommended in subsections (3) and (4) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 3 are extremely important in that regard. In moving Amendment 3, I have spoken also to Amendments 9 and 10.