'We do not have devolution', mayors tell MPs

Yesterday the mayors of West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands told the Levelling Up Select Committee that they should be allowed to “get on with it” and stop the “meddling” of central government.

Andy Street, the West Midlands Mayor, told the committee that the Government wasn’t delivering the “principle of devolution”

“Surely the principle is that there is a direct election [...] we (mayors) are put in place, we lay out our plans before?” he told MPs.

“But then what happens, despite all of that, the decision-making still rests in London.

“That is not devolution. It goes against the principle of ‘better decisions are taken closer to the scene of the action’.

He said mayors needed to be “entrusted to take the right decisions, not in a sense have their proposals marked by civil servants in London” who don’t add much value by approving and being involved in local decisions.

It is understood that both the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, want to give mayors powers over taxation.

It comes after Mr Gove told the committee in June that he would be arguing for fiscal devolution including devolved business rates.

Mr Street told the select committee that devolution of taxation powers is “very very necessary” and under consideration by the Chancellor.

It comes as Michael Gove, who was sacked under Liz Truss before being reappointed by Rishi Sunak, continues to gather influence again in Whitehall after his involvement in key decisions over housing, onshore wind, and the opening of a coal mine in Cumbria.

Tracy Brabin, the West Yorkshire Mayor, said that Mr Gove “needs the support of the whole of Government” and his responsibility for levelling up “cannot be a one man operation”.

She told MPs that a key change that ministers need to make is to move the financing of levelling up away from pots of funding that communities have to bid against each other.

She called on the Government to allow mayoral authorities to “get on with it” by being given funding settlements like Scotland, rather than relying on bidding against each other.

“This is just not working. It is a waste of money and time and those areas of deprivation, those local authorities whose budgets have been absolutely slashed are behind others in the queue because they don’t have those resources,” she said.

Ms Brabin also told MPs that one now-ex-Downing Street advisor travelled 200 miles to her office from London to tell her whether she could use grass on a bus station roof and what colour the bins are, as part of a sustainable transport settlement.

“We got through the bidding process and still there are hands meddling,” she said, adding: “Fortunately that person is no longer in post, but I still am, so we continue doing the good work”.

Andy Burnham and Andy Street are currently working with the Government as part of the West Midlands and Manchester’s transitions to become “national trailblazers” for “London-style” devolution deals.

Mr Burnham told MPs that he hopes that the deal could be finalised by the end of January, which will be a template for other combined and devolved authorities to follow in the coming years, such as West, South and North Yorkshire.

He called for a single funding settlement from the government to be given to Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.

“We need to get away from this idea of winners and losers in a bidding contest”, he said, such as competitions like Great British Railways which has been delayed until next year at the earliest.