We’ll still need a strong, independent voice in Westminster

September 17, 2023

“Carve nature at its joints,” said Plato. Governance structures should match the functions they serve. I think that means the Prime Minister shouldn’t be responsible for emptying the bins.

Take the Levelling Up Fund.  If councils were allocated funding, they could plan long-term and dovetail projects with existing facilities and services.  Instead councils bid into a pot, and ministers decide which projects live and which die, in a glorified tombola.

Why are Westminster politicians deciding on train lines between Cardiff Bay and Cardiff Central Station?  Or a new ferry for Shetland?  Surely the Welsh and Scottish Governments should be entrusted with those projects.

It’s wrong to say nothing ever changes, though.  The Conservatives created Metro Mayors. Labour is promising a ‘take back control’ bill.  Although it’s not clear what that will include.  Or whether they’ll stick to it.  Even so, we’re far more centralised than our counterparts in Germany or France.  Or the United States (the clue is in the name).

Let’s try a thought experiment.  Assume the regions and nations of the UK were independent – to what extent would we want to integrate with each other?

Foreign policy should be the responsibility of central Government.  Income and corporation tax should be national, to prevent a race to the bottom.  I’d want us to have a single currency.  And consistent regulations on road safety, electrical infrastructure, medicines, and so on.

Economic development, though, works best at the functional economic area. In most places that’s the conurbation and its rural hinterland. Buses, metros, trams and local rail work best at the city region level, simply because 80% of all journeys occur on that geography.

We’re opening a new railway in the North East – the Northumberland Line.  Next year, passenger trains will run between Ashington and Newcastle for the first time since the 1960s.  Six new stations.  Journey times and carbon emissions halved.  A huge benefit to the region.  But Northumberland council spend years lobbying government, funding business cases, helped by me and some of our MPs.  Westminster did finally stump up most of the £162 million cost.  The North of Tyne is investing £10 million, and Northumberland council many £millions.  But if we just got our fare share of national infrastructure investment, it could have been built years ago, along with Metro extensions and road junction improvements.

Still, in any new imagined era of devo max we’ll still want a voice in Westminster. Our laws will still be made there. So the launch of the new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the North East last week is prescient.

Credit to Jarrow MP Kate Osborne, its first chair, and Lord Alan Beith, co-chair.  I was there, in the Palace of Westminster, along with several dozen of our region’s Labour, LidDem, Conservative and Independent councillors.  Two of our region’s MPs spoke, Ian Mearns and Emma Lewell-Buck.

I’ve always worked cross-party to get things done and all-party groups take the same approach.  We’ve secured the best funded devolution deal in England, and I want to build on it.  I want to build new Metro lines, and get a fully integrated public transport system.  That means working cross party for long-term good.

The APPG on democracy and the constitution recently found that the new voter ID system was a ‘poisoned cure’ that disenfranchises more electors than it protects.  The fact that it was co-authored by Sir Robert Buckland, who was the Justice Secretary when the changes were proposed, gives its report extra credibility.

By chance, I was on LBC’s Cross Questions with him last week.  He broadly defended the Conservatives’ record in office, as expected.  But agreed with me that the privatisation of the probation service was a mistake.  That too often foreign ownership of British assets is bad for our economy.  That more devolution is a good thing, and commended my record on getting things done.

The final joke question was “Who would you take to contact aliens on another planet?”  I said Oliver Postgate, creator of the Clangers, so he could translate for me.  At which point Sir Robert began whistling like the knitted, pink, extra-terrestrials.

Hopefully, increased cross-party working will see more Secretaries of State impersonating clangers rather than dropping them.