West Midlands Combined Authority Order 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-06-06
Topic: Government Operations
Jeffrey Rooker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I was very pleased by the Minister’s response to my question about the other place. I thought that I had seen it on the news that the Delegated Powers Committee had met for a total of 15 minutes, but I do not know what business it had. I thought, "Well, they haven’t spent long on the West Midlands, that’s for sure". For those who seek your Lordships’ House’s abolition, this is another good example of us performing our function of scrutinising and raising issues. The one thing I am sad about is that all the speeches appear to have been from this side of the House, when there is a lot of West Midlands experience among noble Lords on the other side I agree with the comments of my noble friend Lord Hunt and shall not repeat them, but some central points have to be explored. No one can deny that the seven metropolitan councils are coterminous—that was how it was all designed back in the 1980s. There is a plan now for combination creep. You cannot have proper accountability arrangements where there is no clear coterminosity—the National Audit Office has said that, and I shall give more examples. We have the seven authorities which will have two members on the council and the five non-constituent councils—Cannock Chase, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Redditch, Tamworth, and Telford and Wrekin. Added to which are planned: Shropshire Council—which is in the old language a unitary county council; I shall come to that in a moment—and Stratford-on-Avon. I have also read as I have searched through the documents on this that Warwickshire County Council might want to join—it costs non-constituent councils only £25,000 to join, by the way. If so, this would push Rugby, Warwick and North Warwick District Councils into joining them. This would take the combined authority numbers up to 29 if one includes the mayor. It would get quite large—I am not criticising that—but this is not a coterminous combined authority The devolution deal with the Government set out in November—of which I have a copy here—clearly requires an elected mayor. It is a condition of the devolution deal with the Treasury. There is no argument: if you do the deal to get the powers you must have an elected mayor. The West Midlands Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) Order 2016 has already been published and I have a copy here. Obviously we are not discussing that order today but we could have taken both orders together because they are all part of the same issue Paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum to this order refers to the Government doing "bespoke devolution deals" with local authorities. That means they are making it up as they go along. There is no plan for Parliament to scrutinise and no plan for the National Audit Office to test their programmes for economy, efficiency and effectiveness. There is no plan and so you cannot test it, report back on it or consult on it. There may have been some consultation but the order is growing like Topsy as it progresses and other authorities jump on the bandwagon. There has been no proper consultation within the normal meaning of the process The Wikipedia entry for the West Midlands Combined Authority says that it is, "commonly referred to as Greater Birmingham Combined Authority, or simply Greater Birmingham" This is very unfair on the better-run authorities of Sandwell, Dudley and Wolverhampton. I make that quite clear. On the other hand, it is more accurate to refer to Shropshire Council as the Greater Shrewsbury and Oswestry Council given the blatant unfair treatment of south Shropshire, thought to be because south Shropshire is wholly represented by Lib Dems and the Tory cabinet are all in the north of the county Leaving aside the names, there are some serious governance issues with which the Government are playing fast and loose. Unlike my noble friend, I am not opposed to elected executive mayors who are genuinely accountable. That was my position when I was a Member of the other place and it remains my position now. However, once the mayoral order, which we are not debating—its shadow is sitting here—is agreed, the mayor will not be executive and will be mayor of only part of the combined authority; that is, the seven constituent founder councils, which will have two votes each as opposed to the others having one vote each It was reported in the Birmingham Post on 26 May that this system is known as the "smothered mayor model". It makes the mayor just another member of the cabinet with the seven leaders. You smother the mayor—end of the issue. No wonder the respected West Midlands police and crime commissioner, David Jamieson, has expressed misgivings about the nature of the role. He is looking for a colossus for the role and there is not one in the Midlands at the present time. We have not got the Dennis Howells or the Adrian Cadburys any more. We need them, it is true, but we do not have them There is no doubt that, within the proposed combined authority area, the place with the land for major industrial investment is Shropshire, where I live in Ludlow. I was informed at a recent public meeting by the council leader that no new factories were welcome—yet this is the area of the country that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution at Coalbrookdale However, when the Minister was speaking, I was not certain whether we would get an update on all those who are seeking to join the combined authority. I have searched on the web because that is all you can do these days. The minutes of the Shropshire Council cabinet for 6 April on membership of the West Midlands Combined Authority is a full document from the chief executive about joining and signing up. The point is made about the fee and everything else. The document also states at paragraph 3.1.1 that it wants to support business, "including expansion of high level manufacturing" I firmly believe that there should be more industry investment in the West Midlands to capitalise on our reputation for making things and being the centre of the Industrial Revolution. We have too many industrial museums, with the Black Country Living Museum and Ironbridge, but not enough factories. However, we must have proper governance, and that is my concern. If there is no proper governance, companies from outside the West Midlands that are thinking of investing cannot conduct due diligence on investment locations. It cannot be done because there is no plan. I do not believe that the approach that is being planned for—I shall put some meat on this—whereby chums and mates pick up the phone to carve up the opportunities, is the proper way to do things. The informal system that is envisaged is not accountable and is not the right way to conduct public administration.