Has devolution been a documentary or a political thriller?
June 18, 2023
There’s a scene in The West Wing where Democrat President Bartlett is deadlocked with the Republican House. The Budget renewal has passed its deadline. Government is shutdown. President Bartlett walks up to the Capitol to speak to the Republicans directly. They make him wait. A power play. Bartlett calls their bluff and walks out.
Great TV, but not realistic. Mind you, if TV was realistic, it would lose its drama. So apologies in advance – this column is more documentary than political thriller.
I was elected in May 2019, and visited all the council leaders in Sunderland, Gateshead, Durham and South Tyneside. I asked their views on joining with Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland into one regional Combined Authority. All seven councils are together known as the LA7. Local councils lose no powers – everything new is devolved from Westminster.
Why? The North East needs to integrate buses, Metro, and rail. So people can get around the region quicker, cheaper and more reliably. The primary barrier to transport devolution is the Tyne & Wear Metro. 36 stations are north of the Tyne. 24 are south. You can’t devolve 60% of a system.
Plus it was in my manifesto, and politicians should keep their promises. Sure, unpredictable events can knock you off course, but you must make every effort.
Within a month, Theresa May resigned as Prime Minister. In July Boris Johnson was elected Conservative leader. His first major speech promised “levelling up.”
I spoke to Jake Berry, Northern Powerhouse Minister. If the LA7 unites, I asked, what’s on the table? You’d get more money, he replied, maybe an extra £5 million a year. We wouldn’t give you as much as Manchester – they get £30m a year, but have a much bigger population.
North of Tyne gets £20m core funding. £5 million extra to double the size was a non-starter.
Then Johnson prorogued Parliament. Government was in chaos. I got a letter from Jake Berry on 31st October 2019 offering me powers to fine people for smoking on buses. I’m not joking.
So after the 2019 election, I visited Treasury on 3rd February 2020. It’s one of those pub quiz questions – who was Chancellor at the time? Sajid Javid.
Other city regions were getting 100’s of millions of devolved transport money. We weren’t. Can we have the money if we come together as an LA7, I asked? Not without a directly elected accountable individual, they said. In that case, I asked, can you allocate us the money on condition that we unite?
The Budget on March 11th, 2020, allocated hundreds of millions of transport funding for the North East – subject to a Mayoral Combined Authority including all of Tyne & Wear.
Then Covid hit. And lockdown. And Dominic Cummings’ eye test in Barnard Castle.
But the phones still worked. My officers and I plugged away with Government ministers, and on 3rd June 2020 got a letter from Devolution minister Simon Clarke asking me to convene partners in the region to develop an economic recovery plan, and devolution proposals.
All seven council leaders worked well together through Covid, putting region above Party. We agreed a joint submission for Government investment in the region. It included the North East transport plan, and an economic package that later formed the basis of the devolution deal.
In September 2020 I convened a meeting of the LA7 leaders with the minster, Simon Clarke. Just days before that meeting, he resigned, for genuine personal reasons. The meeting was likely to be cancelled.
I’d never heard of the new minister, Luke Hall, so Googled him. An MP in Gloucestershire. I rang the Tory metro Mayor for West of England. Got Luke Hall’s details, spoke to him, and the meeting went ahead. Some LA7 leaders had reservations, but all agreed to explore the possibility of LA7 devolution.
Second lockdown came. In January 2021 I met with Luke Hall, and Treasury Minister Kemi Badenoch. I pitched how more devolved investment and powers would generate a stronger North East economy. A win-win.
After that meeting they wrote to me, copying in other North East leaders. Offering devolution to the whole LA7, with more money, and transport powers including bus franchising. This was 18th January 2021, and if we could agree outline details by March, we could have the money and powers in place for a new Mayoral election by May 2022. I said I was willing to shorten my term of office to allow such an election.
However, 2021 was an election year for Northumberland, Durham, and the elected council Mayor in North Tyneside. Some didn’t want to be negotiating in the run up to those elections. So the consensus decision was to wait.
The May 2021 elections saw Labour lose control of Durham Council. I met the new Durham leadership. They felt a duty to their electorate to explore a Durham-only deal first – fair enough. Let me know if I can help, I said, it’s not a zero-sum game. A stronger Durham helps the rest of the North East.
Speaking of zero-sum games, some have criticised devolution deals for not reversing austerity. Our councils, NHS, schools, railways, and just about every public service have been cut since 2010. But devolution is not an either/or. Failing to land a deal gets you nothing, and lets down the people you’re elected to represent.
In the September 2021 reshuffle, Luke Hall was replaced by Neil O’Brien. His background was in think tanks. I phoned mutual contacts, and set up some calls. He was pro-devolution. The trick, as always, is getting money out of Treasury.
And so in late autumn 2021 council leaders and I gave a formal mandate to our officials to negotiate a deal. Durham explored a separate county deal.
Negotiations continued while Boris Johnson was under pressure over Partygate. On 11th March 2022 the council leaders and I met with Neil O’Brien in the Lumen, where the North of Tyne is based. We agreed a process to move forwards.
I met with Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to add child poverty prevention to the devolution deal.
As we approached summer, the Johnson government became increasingly unstable. I wasn’t the only one worried a new PM might kibosh devolution.
A total of 31 ministers resigned on 5th and 6th July 2022, forcing Mr. Johnson to resign. Government was paralysed. Greg Clark replaced Michael Gove as secretary of state for levelling up on the Thursday. By the Saturday morning I was talking to him to keep our devolution deal front and centre of his department’s priorities. Full credit to him, he came through for us.
Except for Metro funding. It’s complicated, but in essence, the Department for Transport said the new money meant they’d stop our existing funding stream. Our officials made a good counter argument, but DfT wouldn’t budge.
I spoke to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. In Birmingham, or Manchester, people commute on the national rail network, funded by central Government, I said. So why are we penalised for having an efficient Metro system? Long story short, he was persuaded, but said the money would need to come from Treasury, not his department. I met with Simon Clarke, by this time Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In the end, we agreed the Metro funding in addition to the new money.
Around this time, Durham’s leadership concluded they would not get a good enough deal on their own. They would certainly not get any transport money.
I’d spoken to Treasury ministers about scaling up core funding from £20m a year at the North of Tyne, to £35 million for the LA6. That gave us more than Manchester (£30m) and almost as much as West Midlands (£36.5m) with much larger populations. It took a lot of persuading, but they agreed to £35 million.
But bringing in Durham would take us to £48 million a year. There were differences of opinion – putting it tactfully – about whether Durham could rejoin the deal at this late stage. There was genuine concern that Durham council might reject the deal, and delay the whole process.
By now Liz Truss had been and gone, and Michael Gove was back in post. I’d been speaking to him and his team for some time, nudging up the offer to £48m. We thrashed out the details in two final meetings with me, Mr Gove, and our council leaders.
Individual councillors might not have been involved in negotiations, but they do have a democratic mandate. That’s where our council leaders did all the work – bringing their councillor colleagues’ concerns to the table and getting agreement. I deserve no credit for that, my role was much more central government facing. As it should be.
We’re almost there. Only 3 of the original 7 council leaders are still in post. The council cabinets have all approved it, as have my cabinet and I. There’s a legal process to run, where the Secretary of State lays an order in Parliament this autumn. Then we have an election for Mayor in May 2024.
And then a fortnight ago London Labour HQ took away the right for members in the North East to vote for me to be Labour candidate. Which is ironic, given that devolution is about letting people in a region make decisions. I suspect the devolution story is not over…. maybe it’s more like TV than I thought.
*For those of you who are guessing what the building in the photo is, it’s the Treasury in Feb 2020
