Shortly after the Scottish referendum I was speaking with a friend, who also happens to be a councillor, about what the result might mean for the rest of the United Kingdom and specifically the English regions.
We both agreed that it was good news and would lead to powers moving away from Westminster. Then things got a little weird. All of a sudden they stopped talking to me about power and started talking about structures. It will be great, they said: ‘Every region can have mayors! Then each can set up an assembly of 60 or so elected members to scrutinise the mayor, with committees and officers; and don’t forget arm’s length bodies to run transport, and …’ on and on they went.
Now as it goes I am in favour of more powers for the regions. It is pretty absurd that an area like Greater Manchester, which has a population larger than Northern Ireland, should have so little control over the decisions which affect the people who live there and an elected mayor probably is the best way to administer any new powers (although I’ll pass on the London-style elected assembly, thanks).
So If I do not disagree with my friend that much, then you might wonder why I am telling you about our conversation? Well, first, because I spent two hours of my life listening to their masterplan which I am never getting back, so I might as well get a column from it. And, second, because it illustrates a wider point, which is that too often talking about devolution actually turns into a debate about political structures rather than one about giving power away.
If you needed any more evidence of this you only needed to look at Tuesday’s debate in the Commons. It was entitled ‘Devolution following the Scotland Referendum’. It soon became clear that this was not going to be a debate focused on giving power away. Instead it was going to be a debate about English votes for English members of parliament.
This reveals the real disconnect between the concerns of some of the political class and the rest of the public. After all, power and who has it really is the issue in modern politics. The voters have been screaming it for a long time now. Whether it is expressed through raging against immigration, tax-avoiding multinational companies, mainstream political parties or all of the above, it is clear that many people are tired of the feeling that the decisions which affect them are being made elsewhere, for someone else’s benefit.
People want a little power back and they want a say over the things that really matter to them. If politicians are not prepared to do that, then they really should consider if they are talking about devolution at all, or whether devolution has instead simply become a byword for local government reform?
What they should be doing is using the devolution debate to address voters’ everyday concerns: How can patients have a greater say in which treatments they receive? How can parents have more choice about which school their child goes to? And how can residents have more power to improve the area where they live?
What’s more, the potential solutions to many of these problems are already being formulated. As Bex Bailey reported last week, Liz Kendall is already making the case inside the party for giving patients individual budgets, while Alan Milburn has long been an advocate of giving the parents of children at poorly performing schools the power and money to move their children to a better one.
Addressing these issues and giving the public the fresh thinking they are craving is key to winning the next election. So it is time we open up the devolution debate and made reforming these bread-and-butter public services part of the conversation as well. We are always wondering why voters do not trust politicians. Perhaps it is time we asked why politicians do not seem to want to trust the people.
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Rich Durber is a former speechwriter for a shadow minister and writes a fortnightly column for Progress. He tweets @richdurber
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It’s frustrating that the Tories see (or at least pretend) that EVEL is the equivalent of the Scottish parliament. On the plus side EVEL is frequently described as a ‘first step’ or ‘small step’ by people like Redwood, so hopefully it can evolve into a quasi-English parliament that can set about devolving power within England.
If we let the British political establishment devolve power within England we’ll end up with an asymmetric dog’s breakfast. A ‘whole England’ approach is needed and for that we need an English demos.
This is spot on but I think there’s a danger that the left paints it as an either/or situation. The principle of subsidiarity is that the right kinds of powers need to be devolved to the right levels and structures. IPPR North’s Decentralisation Decade report attempts to set out how 40 different central government functions need evolving to different levels – including to individuals and neighbourhoods.