Is English devolution over — or is it just beginning?
(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
As the Covid-19 pandemic rolls on, a central element of the UK government’s supposed strategy has been revealed. Britain has shifted to a regional tiering structure of Covid restrictions, but this can only function when there is a well thought-out plan from the central authorities concerning local decision making. At the heart of this is the question of devolution and whether central government, including the civil service machine, is prepared to trust elected local officials, whether council leaders or Mayors.
If “levelling-up” is really a part of No10’s thinking, then it would have needed to consider how some regions in the UK might be faced with bigger challenges from Covid than others. To complicate matters, while the first recorded case was not in London, the spread of the disease was especially strong in the capital. During those turbulent days in mid-March when the government was deciding how to respond, there were rumours about a London lockdown, which the government decided not impose.
When the government started to lift lockdown restrictions from May onwards, many epidemiologists said that the there were still too many cases, especially in the North. But it went ahead nonetheless, presumably to prevent economic collapse.
Now the government has finally gone to a tier-based system in England, and it just so happens that the regions facing the strictest lockdowns are also the ones expecting to benefit most from the levelling-up agenda. Greater Manchester is right in the centre of this, especially after the spat between the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (pictured above) and No10. But there are many other regions in the North that are in a similar position, as there are in parts of the Midlands.
In my judgement, the regional approach to Covid-19 management makes sense. There are two simple reasons for this. Firstly, the countries that have handled the mess better than others — China, Germany, South Korea — have done so regionally. Secondly, the nations of the UK have devolved policies, and they have been pursuing their own course since the beginning. It is also worth noting that in many rural areas of Britain, the incidence remains very low. Why should their citizens be subject to unnecessary lockdowns?
I have been involved in devolution since 2014, during which time I chaired a Commission on economic growth in urban areas. The concept of the Northern Powerhouse — if not the name — originated from this Commission, and we were strong proponents of devolution around England, especially to metropolitan areas. It seemed clear to us that the correlation between strong centralised decision making and very wide, and widening productivity performance in the country, was not a coincidence. Devolving powers and responsibility is common around the world, and it was our belief that it should become the norm in the UK. We recommended that this should include tax raising and spending powers.
In the summer of 2014, George Osborne launched the Northern Powerhouse idea, and soon after embarked on what he described as a “devolution revolution”. By the following May, I had joined the government as a Treasury Minister to try and implement this agenda, and some of these initiatives got under way.
It was my experience that many government departments didn’t treat the devolution concept seriously, at both the Ministerial and civil service level. The two Conservative governments since then have flirted with the devolution agenda but have not thought it through beyond what it might mean in terms of Conservative party politics. The surprise victories of the Conservative candidates Andy Street and Ben Houtchen in the West Midlands and Tees Valley mayoral elections gave them the hope that, politically, it was the right thing to do. But this didn’t really result in a deeper consideration of devolution, beyond the image.
Decision-making on education, skills and health are among the vital areas that I believe should be devolved — but they have not been. As a result, despite the ongoing rise in the number of Covid-19 tests performed nationally, the lack of regional planning shows clearly the weaknesses in the devolution agenda as applied so far. Indeed, recent agreements with the Liverpool City region to persuade them to move into Stage 3 appears to include some responsibility — finally — for local control over test and tracing. But if we had a government that believed in devolved policies, then local test and tracing could have been in place much sooner.
How can central government now fail to offer the same incentives it was providing — nationally — in March to encourage compliance with its lockdown recommendations for Tier 3? This is not a sign of a government that is committed to credible devolution. It’s lazy thinking, of the same kind that was close to penalising school students at the most disadvantaged schools over their A-level results. They are symptoms of casual thinking, overworked central civil servants and elected Ministers not interested in detail.
Whatever the consequences of this Manchester-Whitehall disagreement, perhaps the devolution revolution is now really under way.
