It is welcome that the next Labour government will radically redistribute powers away from London to where it is most needed to ensure sustainable economic growth. This is the most credible way to ensure poorer people can prosper from economic growth facilitated by municipalities as many did during the industrial revolution. But Ed Miliband’s speech this week should be the start of that journey and not the end.
The experience of recent years is that, while cuts have disproportionately targeted local authorities (which deliver many prevention services), the overall quantum of public spending in the city has actually increased. This is because the cost of responsive services (eg. welfare, health, social care) has increased, thus failing to reduce the overall expenditure on public services and increasing dependency.
Despite this challenging environment, Labour authorities across the country are delivering efficient and effective outcomes with their residents. Much more could be done with greater devolution and we could use money flexibly to meet local needs, rather than respond to Whitehall diktats. We could help rather than hinder the national agenda with genuine localism, whilst also saving the taxpayer money from Whitehall inefficiencies.
York has an important role to play as a medium sized city in skills for business growth, for employment and for the future workforce. The key question that we need to respond to is how we work at the city and the city region level to ensure that the skills provision enables as many people as possible find employment, links people with job opportunities and promotes apprenticeships as a route into the job market. We have a considerable track record of success here in York, beginning with our work on 16-19 participation and built on by the LCR contracts. We need to ensure we improve productivity in an area and encourage new businesses and jobs to be created whilst engaging with all employers in providing training to develop their own skills for the future to encourage a growing city. We need to strengthen and promote partnership working between schools and employers to improve career advice and enterprise training in areas.
The skills needs of a local labour market are inherently local issues, and a nationally controlled delivery model fails to meet the specific needs of cities, businesses and individuals. The services are fragmented with no recognised point of local co-ordination.
Evidence shows that where local areas are delivering the Youth Contract (such as in Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield) over double the number of young people have got into training compared with the national Youth Contract scheme.
In our evidence to the DCLG select committee on fiscal devolution, I called for two things. Firstly to codify the central-local government relationship. This codification should be informed by the findings of an independent commission, similar to that of the calman review in Scotland – covering all statutory responsibilities, the complex funding formula (including Barnett), the balance of national and local taxation and constitutional relationship with Whitehall. Secondly in the interim, some small measures to increase local freedom would be helpful. One example would be to allow local authorities to retain a larger percentage of business rate growth – would increase the local incentive to grow.
Finally, as a proud member of the Co-operative councils innovation network, I should underline that devolution and decentralisation doesn’t and wouldn’t stop at the local authority level. To be meaningful and transformational, we as local authorities need to give away power to communities and individuals. We have led the way in delivering our library service through mutualisation, putting residents at the heart of our new approach.
However none of this will be possible without a Labour government. To win the general election we need to expose the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for their centralisation and wrong spending priorities. We need to win the consent of the people at the ballot box to ensure we can give to the very same people the power they give to us. We must be bold and brave.
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James Alexander is the leader of City of York council