A short bonus post this week (my main one is coming at the weekend) as I have a report out on mayors and public services which may be of interest to readers.
Pleased to hear your report being taken seriously by those able to institute necessary changes. It could be a real game changer, and anything we can do to move public services away from asset stripping private contractors is a bonus in my mind.
The paper Sam refers to is freely available and excellent.
I recall putting a certain amount of this into a background paper in 1988 or 1989 for a Carlton Political Committee Seminar where the key note speaker was Michael Heseltine and the wind up speaker was the Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley. By this time the Poll Tax (Community Charge) was taking up much bandwidth. The idea of directly elected mayors (favoured by Hezza) was unpalatable to small c conservatives - I recall the horror with which Home Office people regarded it and many backbench MPs who thought it would undermine their standing in their home patches. One idea which has not been discussed is creating Public Law Chambers of Commerce & Industry as found in France, Germany and most of the EU, with statutory powers and compulsory membership. With financial clout some chambers have, for instance, developed housing for the local workforce. There is widespread responsibility for ensuring that proper training takes place. Having local business authorities supports the independence of local government authorities. (The public law chambers do not act as lobbyists in the way the BCC is able to.)
As long as you don't find yourself after an election with a reality-blind, ideologically driven mayor like we have in all the major cities in France who are in constant conflict with more practically minded and people-oriented heads of conurbations, departments and regions. The conflict within a conurbation between mayors of the different communal entities leads to chaos, service decline and insecurity.
Generally in favour of all of this Sam. What I will say, as someone working in Skills with 9 of the 10 devolved areas who currently have a budget is, my goodness, they need to work together more. There is so much reinventing of wheels going on and, for example, tiny little differences in the way they want us to code data that means the same thing. Given the various levels of experience (and, dare I say, competence) across the country, they could save a lot of time and energy becoming a bit more like each other (not carbon copies, of course) on generally agreed principles. More and more institutions will be working with multiple CAs as more devolution happens (not least due to the merger mania of ten years ago in Further Education) so this has the capacity to spiral out of control quite quickly...
Just reading the full paper now. The only issue with Mayors getting 16-19 funding direct is the *only* thing they'll be able to do to make a real difference is close uneconomic school sixth forms with less than 250 kids in (which AoC have been pushing for years, of course), but persuading a local politician to do this is even less likely than a far off minister...
Yes agreed, and ideally Labour would bring it back though they would be worried someone would stick a PR for general elections amendment on the bill and cause trouble.
Always thought local government should be elected by PR, given the bizarre results FPTP produces (especially one party fiefdoms), and then after a few years, say to the electorate how’d you like it for Westminster? An incremental reform
Nothing here about the failure of Bristol's mayoral system and what lessons can be learnt from that? Marvin Rees promised much and delivered little despite embracing a rhetoric of "getting things done" and oozing contempt for performative politics. He also pushed mega schemes (a Bristol underground!) while bits of infrastructure were falling apart and visibly taking agest to fix. He surrounded himself with yes-people and didn't try to build meaningful co-operation across parties as well as getting embroiled in conflict with the (overlapping) WECA mayor. I'm sure there are lessons about how to do things better that aren't just about the failures of one incumbent though.
I do mention it briefly! But in any system of devolution you're going to get failures due to poor quality candidates winning. That's democracy. Key thing is to have accountability processes in place (upwards and downwards) to mitigate.
I’d like to see mayors voted by 16-18 year olds (like the Scottish and Welsh regional assemblies). And combine it with a programme of civic education run through school PSHE classes. Local and National governments are naturally incentivised to focus on the issues their voters care about. If we can get more young people then we might get more improvements in environmental policies, education and youth social care.
As a Councillor in Essex, I can say there's very mixed enthusiasm for these proposals, saving Basildon where Labour's leader is evangelical about devolution, but he's an outlier. Everywhere else is much less keen, perhaps with the slight exception of ECC but even Kevin Bentley, with his LGA experience, accepts we will be the last to devolve, in part because locals are very attached to the current system, in part thanks to historic parochialism, but also as a sheer function on geographical size as a large County.
Could this also be an opportunity to rationalise local government? E.g. it makes absolutely no sense that Bracknell, Wokingham and Reading are 3 separate councils - most services could be better delivered by a single entity, which would also be able to think more holistically about things like roads and planning/ house-building?
Pleased to hear your report being taken seriously by those able to institute necessary changes. It could be a real game changer, and anything we can do to move public services away from asset stripping private contractors is a bonus in my mind.
As always a serious post.
The paper Sam refers to is freely available and excellent.
I recall putting a certain amount of this into a background paper in 1988 or 1989 for a Carlton Political Committee Seminar where the key note speaker was Michael Heseltine and the wind up speaker was the Environment Secretary, Nicholas Ridley. By this time the Poll Tax (Community Charge) was taking up much bandwidth. The idea of directly elected mayors (favoured by Hezza) was unpalatable to small c conservatives - I recall the horror with which Home Office people regarded it and many backbench MPs who thought it would undermine their standing in their home patches. One idea which has not been discussed is creating Public Law Chambers of Commerce & Industry as found in France, Germany and most of the EU, with statutory powers and compulsory membership. With financial clout some chambers have, for instance, developed housing for the local workforce. There is widespread responsibility for ensuring that proper training takes place. Having local business authorities supports the independence of local government authorities. (The public law chambers do not act as lobbyists in the way the BCC is able to.)
TYPO: raising council tax beyond tightly proscribed limits.
Should be: PREscribed.
As long as you don't find yourself after an election with a reality-blind, ideologically driven mayor like we have in all the major cities in France who are in constant conflict with more practically minded and people-oriented heads of conurbations, departments and regions. The conflict within a conurbation between mayors of the different communal entities leads to chaos, service decline and insecurity.
Generally in favour of all of this Sam. What I will say, as someone working in Skills with 9 of the 10 devolved areas who currently have a budget is, my goodness, they need to work together more. There is so much reinventing of wheels going on and, for example, tiny little differences in the way they want us to code data that means the same thing. Given the various levels of experience (and, dare I say, competence) across the country, they could save a lot of time and energy becoming a bit more like each other (not carbon copies, of course) on generally agreed principles. More and more institutions will be working with multiple CAs as more devolution happens (not least due to the merger mania of ten years ago in Further Education) so this has the capacity to spiral out of control quite quickly...
Yes, this is an important point and why it's important to have mayors meeting regularly.
Just reading the full paper now. The only issue with Mayors getting 16-19 funding direct is the *only* thing they'll be able to do to make a real difference is close uneconomic school sixth forms with less than 250 kids in (which AoC have been pushing for years, of course), but persuading a local politician to do this is even less likely than a far off minister...
A shame the Tories got rid of preferential voting for mayors. You need some sort of voter consensus if you want to push forward with meaningful change
Yes agreed, and ideally Labour would bring it back though they would be worried someone would stick a PR for general elections amendment on the bill and cause trouble.
Always thought local government should be elected by PR, given the bizarre results FPTP produces (especially one party fiefdoms), and then after a few years, say to the electorate how’d you like it for Westminster? An incremental reform
Nothing here about the failure of Bristol's mayoral system and what lessons can be learnt from that? Marvin Rees promised much and delivered little despite embracing a rhetoric of "getting things done" and oozing contempt for performative politics. He also pushed mega schemes (a Bristol underground!) while bits of infrastructure were falling apart and visibly taking agest to fix. He surrounded himself with yes-people and didn't try to build meaningful co-operation across parties as well as getting embroiled in conflict with the (overlapping) WECA mayor. I'm sure there are lessons about how to do things better that aren't just about the failures of one incumbent though.
I do mention it briefly! But in any system of devolution you're going to get failures due to poor quality candidates winning. That's democracy. Key thing is to have accountability processes in place (upwards and downwards) to mitigate.
I’d like to see mayors voted by 16-18 year olds (like the Scottish and Welsh regional assemblies). And combine it with a programme of civic education run through school PSHE classes. Local and National governments are naturally incentivised to focus on the issues their voters care about. If we can get more young people then we might get more improvements in environmental policies, education and youth social care.
As a Councillor in Essex, I can say there's very mixed enthusiasm for these proposals, saving Basildon where Labour's leader is evangelical about devolution, but he's an outlier. Everywhere else is much less keen, perhaps with the slight exception of ECC but even Kevin Bentley, with his LGA experience, accepts we will be the last to devolve, in part because locals are very attached to the current system, in part thanks to historic parochialism, but also as a sheer function on geographical size as a large County.
Yes it's going to be hardest to make work in the big southern counties. You may see single authority versions in Essex, Kent etc...
Could this also be an opportunity to rationalise local government? E.g. it makes absolutely no sense that Bracknell, Wokingham and Reading are 3 separate councils - most services could be better delivered by a single entity, which would also be able to think more holistically about things like roads and planning/ house-building?
I didn't want to get into that in this paper but yes I think some rationalising and layer removal would help.