Nick Clegg: How to free northern cities from the 'stifling grip of Whitehall'
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Version 0 of 1. English cities should not be forced to elect London-style mayors as a condition of receiving greater devolution, according to Nick Clegg, putting him starkly at odds with the chancellor, George Osborne. In an interview with the Guardian in Stockport on Thursday, the deputy prime minister said compelling Greater Manchester and other strong city regions to introduce their own Boris Johnsons was not the answer to freeing them from “the stifling grip of Whitehall and Westminster” - a necessity which has “suddenly assumed much greater urgency thanks to the Scottish referendum”. In his “Northern Powerhouse” speech in June, Osborne insisted he would only discuss “serious devolution of powers and budgets” with cities prepared to “move to a new model of city government - and have an elected Mayor.” But Clegg said: “I’m more interested in attacking the over-centralisation of Whitehall than I am in getting local areas to jump through more Whitehall hoops...While it’s a very good thing that George Osborne is now - if quite late in the day - showing some interest in all of this, I don’t think we should allow Whitehall to do what Whitehall has always done in the past, which is to basically turn decentralisation into an exercise of hoop setting for local areas. I want to flip it round. What I ideally want is for us to enshrine – both in culture and possibly in law – a standing right for local areas to assume more powers from Whitehall. Powers which can only be refused by Whitehall if there was a very good reason for doing so.” A one-size-fits-all solution was not the answer, he said: “I know some mayors who are brilliant and some who are rubbish,” he said, singling out “that bloke in Doncaster” - Tory MP Philip Davies’ dad Peter – as “a complete joke.” Peter Davies was voted out last year after a controversial reign in which he tried to ban gay pride, cancel town twinning and called climate change “a scam”. Clegg said he was currently investigating whether new legislation was necessary to ensure that Whitehall could not simply refuse to relinquish power to cities. His team is investigating “if we need to enshrine, in an almost quasi-constitutional way, a reserved power model,” he said. If he decides that current laws cannot offer what he called “Devolution On Demand”, Clegg will order draft legislation to be drawn up to the same timetable as that for Scottish devolution. “The aspiration is to do all of that by the beginning of next year. Not to pass it, to publish it,” he said. The powers enjoyed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) need to be “radically devolved,” he said.“The DWP, along with the treasury, remains one of the most over-centralised parts of the Whitehall state,” he said, adding: “I’m absolutely convinced.. that local projects are invariably better at adminstering the welfare and work support programmes than the DWP is in Whitehall.” Acknowledging that Greater Manchester is in the best position of all English city regions to be entrusted with more powers, Clegg said there were virtues in the combined authority model which runs that area. “Leaders in Greater Manchester have obviously developed a pretty smart way of working together,” he said, adding: ”At the end of the day, if it aint broke, don’t fix it. Yes you need improvements in local government as more powers are devolved but I don’t think it is – and this is obviously where there is difference of opinion between myself and George Osborne – for the treasury or indeed anyone else in Whitehall to impose a straitjacket solution on a place like Greater Manchester.” In 2012 the people of Manchester (but not Greater Manchester) narrowly voted against the introduction of a directly elected mayor in a referendum. Asked whether Greater Manchester should get control over its entire budget of £22bn, as suggested in a recent thinktank report by Respublica (commissioned by Greater Manchester’s research unit, New Economy) Clegg said: “I don’t know what that full £22bn is so I’m not going to give you an answer to a question that’s slightly synthetic. But what I can say to you is that the budgets which are administered in great cities like this should of course be further decentralised. He refused to reveal what Osborne would pledge to fund in his Autumn Statement, but was clear that the £15bn demanded by northern English cities earlier this year for their ambitious One North transport plan would not be forthcoming: “Not in the autumn statement. We’re not going to suddenly magic up £15bn. And anyway, One North says these projects are going to have to be funded from now until 2030. And you’d need to look very closely as whether some of those costings stand up to scrutiny. I’ve seen enough in my time in government to know that tunnelling, for example, is an extremely expensive thing to do. You want to create a new high speed tunnel link across the Pennines sounds like a very attractive idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if costs increase rather than decrease.” On Thursday afternoon Clegg chaired the first meeting outside of Whitehall of the cabinet’s local growth committee, attended by ministers including the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey. Explaining why he convened the meeting outside of London, Clegg said: “The more I chair these committees about other parts of the United Kingdom from Whitehall offices, the more I think it’s important to do it outside Whitehall. The whole point of the local growth committee, the reason I formed it, the reason I chair it, is to force Whitehall to think about the rest of the country and not just the south-east.” |