How to devolve power

The Labour conference in Manchester this week came straight off the back of the Scottish independence referendum results. The Scotland debate has undoubtedly sharpened focus on devolution of power away from Whitehall, so our fringe event on the subject was timely. Devolution of power can take many forms and the fringes were awash with ideas about how to capitalise on this renewed sense of people power.

The Institute’s event, in partnership with IPPR, included Labour MPs Liz Kendall and Stella Creasy, our Research Director Tom Gash and Graeme Cooke of IPPR. Conversations quickly moved beyond decentralising power at local council or city-region level to the idea of ‘people powered public services’. How can communities and individuals genuinely participate in political decision-making, design and delivery of services? How can people be given more choices over how they spend their own budgets to ensure the money really benefits them? What are the limitations of people power and when do we need politicians to be decisive for us? At this event we heard some of the political thinking behind why decentralisation could go further and some of the challenges involved. There was much debate, but some consensus emerged over three main points:

• Politicians need a compelling argument for why devolution of power matters. Liz Kendall argued that debates have to start with why devolve power, not how to. And all panelists had good reasons why; that central government doesn’t reflect the diversity of communities, that local areas are best placed to innovate and deal with budget cuts, that self-organising communities can advance social justice and that the knowledge of what works best in services (for example in health and social care) lies not with central analysts or politicians but with the people that use services. These arguments, they suggested, would work better with the public than an abstract commitment to decentralise. But the audience questioned whether citizens could always be left to resolve policy and delivery questions on their own andsaid politicians still need to articulate the ‘how’ better for it to be believed.
• Politicians and Whitehall need to change the way they work. Stella Creasy argued that while the public have long ceased to trust politicians, the bigger issue now is that they don’t think politicians are effective. A more devolved system, she argued, could mean MPs spend less time advocating for constituents who have problems with local services and more time working alongside them to directly change services. Politicians also know that giving away power is easier to say in opposition than to do when you’re running a department. That’s why the Institute has argued that parties need to show they are serious about decentralising by making a Cabinet level commitment to it and by using the next spending review to give spending powers away to local areas.
• Politicians need to focus on functions not structures. The panel largely agreed that creating more politicians or administrative bodies isn’t going to help sell devolution of power. One of the panelists told the meeting that they would ‘not campaign for regional assemblies’ – rather local people should decide what structures are appropriate.

It was striking that there was still, however, no definitive consensus on the answers to why, exactly which functions and how to devolve power. As the Institute for Government has said, pushing power away from the centre of government is often easier said than done. As with any big policy it’ll be important for Labour to show voters that they can deliver on devolution of power. Our recent polling suggests that the public want politicians to explain better how they will implement and pay for policies before they promise them. Parties have from now until May to make decentralisation a realistic policy plan that the public understands and genuinely feels a part of.