More thoughts on Labour's Devolution Proposals

As I have previously written  here, having supported elected Strategic Mayors with powers devolved from Central government (NOT taken from local councils) and unitary authorities when the Conservatives were putting them forward, I'm not going to do a U-turn and change that position just because Labour has come round to it.

I argued at the time that a directly elected Strategic Mayor for Cumbria would have been a good thing, and provided that a decent devolution settlement comes with the creation of a strategic mayoral authority and they don't do anything daft like trying to cover too big an area it still would be.

I would strongly support a Major for Cumbria and also a Mayor for Lancashire, but trying to have one mayor for both counties would in my opinion not work as well because the area concerned is so huge and so diverse. Mayors are supposed to be local. We shall see what they come up with - the numbers quoted for the minimum size of a Mayoral authority in the Labour proposals could only be reached by combining Cumbria with another area, presumably Lancashire, but they say there may be "exceptions in special circumstances." Let's hope Cumbria is one of them.

There are some huge ironies in this situation, of course. I'm convinced that one of the main reasons Labour opposed a Mayoralty for Cumbria in 2022 is they thought the Conservatives would win it. Of course, if they had agreed to it at the time the election would have been held in May 2024 and L:abour would have won the post easily.

Now, having swept the board in last year's election they have come round to the the idea. If that means they imagine they would win the election now I think they are seriously underestimating how much damage the last six months have done to their support, but that isn't the issue for now which is should we have Local Government Reform and how should the process be run.

When the Conservatives were in government there was a huge attempt to organise local government reform and creation of regional mayors by agreement. It may be forgotten now, but the reason that Cumbria now has unitary authorities was that councillor of all parties in local government were agreed that we wanted them. The only area on which the Conservative government imposed a solution was the issue on which ALL the local parties were completely split - did we want one unitary council for the county or two, and what should the boundaries be?

Hence the second massive irony - Labour was able to stop the creation of a mayor while they were in opposition because the Conse4rvative government was trying to being them in by agreement, now Labour are in government they are determined to steamroller their new approach through and putting strong pressure on councils to agree.

To anyone naive enough to think Labour cares too hoots about the views of local councillors and residents I offer you this evidence that they don't. Labour's consultation document asking councils to bid for what sort of local government reform they wanted came out in mid-December with replies due in early January. Councils had to sort out their response over Christmas on very tight timescales. That isn't a proper consultation, it's a steamroller.

Labour has dropped strong hints that if councils in areas which currently have a two-tier structure cannot agree on a plan for reform, a unitary council solution will be imposed on them by the national government.

Personally, and despite being a supporter of Strategic Mayors and unitary councils I think that is totally wrong. Local government reform should be locally driven from the bottom up, not imposed from the top.

One issue which was hardly noticed in Cumbria and North Yorkshire a few years back but is generating real heat is putting elections back. There was hardly a peep when elections in the areas which had local government reorganisation a couple of years ago had elections delayed for a year, perhaps because it wasn't obvious at the time which party if any stood to gain by doing it, so it wasn't seen - at least not by the main parties - as a gerrymander or an attempt to hide from democracy..

This time there is no such agreement as Reform UK has decided that any attempt to put back elections is aimed at holding back their momentum and are shouting their heads off against the idea.

If there had been a consensus that it was OK to put elections back a year so you can better organise the new body you are holding elections for, I would have been OK with it, as I was in Cumbria. However, deferring elections should never be lightly done. And certainly not when it can be made to look like an attempt to hide from the voters.

I don't blame the councils of whatever colour who have gone along with submitting requests to delay elections. The Labour government practically encouraged councils to ask for such a delay and gave them a very short window to decide whether to do so, and the government's timing made it impossible to consult the public - who ought ultimately to be the final arbiters. I do blame the national Labour government for a very bad process which effectively steamrollered this through.

So although I support the principles of local government reform, I ahve some grave concerns about how Labour is implementing it. Let's hope they start listening to local councillors and voters before they make any more serious mistakes.