Business on the public accounts committee is hardly glamorous, but I am learning just how gemstone-precious are the insights it offers.
Recent discussions surrounding elements of the government’s devolution efforts to date have been enlightening in many ways: and not just as far as this committee’s driving aim – value for taxpayers’ money – is concerned.
A key objective of the government’s ‘city deal’ approach devolve more funding and responsibilities to local places. It kicked off three years ago in eight core cities. Further city deals and ‘growth deals’ have since been signed with scores of other localities. Some £2.3bn of government money has been committed to the deals.
It is already become clear that there is a lack of evidence of genuine transformation coming from this approach. That hardly gives confidence that public money is being spent wisely.
Councils the committee has spoken with indicate they feel the programme has acted as a catalyst to change some service delivery methods. But £2.3bn is an extremely expensive catalyst, with precious little evidence of positive impact on people living in the city communities. The government talks the talk on value for taxpayers, when what is needed is walking the walk.
In considering devolution, as big an issue, if not bigger, is accountability to the people who are supposed to be empowered by the processes.
Worrying signs have been coming from one major city. My home, Bristol, was the subject of one of the first eight city deals. Like a large number of other cities and regions, Bristol has submitted to the Department for Communities and Local Government proposals for greater devolution – a joint bid with its three neighbouring unitary authorities.
Staggeringly, the process of the bid being put together saw no involvement and engagement with members of the public. The first time its details became clear was when a press release was issued – around the same time an item was listed on a Bristol city council agenda for members to ‘note’, ‘discuss’ and ‘comment’. It came towards the end of a three-and-a-half hour evening meeting.
This was the first time the wider public had been able to see the bid. It is remarkable that the first public airing of the document was when it had already been agreed. The active consultation, involvement or engagement of taxpayers was entirely absent.
There was agreement among councillors that better decisions will come from better engagement, that what had happened in forming this bid was not good enough. And it isn’t.
The dictionary tells us that ‘devolution’ means the transfer or delegation of power. To whom?
Do we want devolution to empower local people, or disengage them?
In my view Labour has a responsibility to keep on beating the drum for greater devolution to local cities and communities. It is a point also well made by Albert Bore in a recent Progress article.
It must be genuine devolution, coming from the ground up, starting with local need, with priorities and objectives shaped from within and by the communities themselves, not foisted from ‘on high’ by remote figures who know nothing of life in the area their plans could profoundly affect.
Local people who pay their local and national taxes must have opportunities to influence the terms of devolution deals themselves. And where there is an elected mayor he or she has a special responsibility to ensure priorities are created with taxpayers, not done ‘to’ them.
The coming years are only going to see an acceleration of the devolution agenda. As progressives we welcome that. But we cannot consider it to be genuinely empowering if the people supposedly being given the power themselves have no say on the shape the devolution takes. That would be at best a contradiction in terms, at worst fraudulent.
———————————
Karin Smyth MP is member of parliament for Bristol South
———————————