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Patchwork Britain

Greater Manchester gets moving.

Greater Manchester has won itself more powers in return for introducing a directly elected mayor. The move confirms that politicians are learning what works when trying to decentralise power. And there are several signs suggesting that decentralisation will not stop here.

Chancellor George Osborne has announced a major change in how Greater Manchester will be governed. The city-region (currently overseen by a Combined Authority arrangement) has agreed that its next leader will be a directly elected mayor, with the first elections likely to be held in 2017. And in return for this stronger governance model, the Treasury has promised the city region more control over its own future. The area will in future control the budget for policing (the new mayor will also take on the powers exercised by the police and crime commissioner – a post which will no longer exist after the changes); housing (including a £300 million housing investment fund); local transport; and aspects of skills provision. The announcement also highlighted the prospect of further devolution in future – including control over budgets to commission services to help the long-term unemployed back into work and the ability to drive health and social care integration across Greater Manchester. Some of the details of these changes still need to be worked through but the significance of the announcement should not be underestimated. This is a bolder package of reforms than many predicted. And it suggests that, after mixed success in a range of decentralising reforms this term (city mayors, city deals, police and crime commissioners and community budgets, for example), government may finally have learned the lessons for successful decentralisation highlighted in our research. We argued that this requires leadership from the PM or the Chancellor. George Osborne has been critical to this latest success. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did have differences over the best approach to decentralisation. But Osborne has clearly won them over, probably because, being Chancellor, he is in the position to offer attractive concessions. Watch this space for a Liberal Democrat ‘win’! We also argued that decentralisation needs to be made palatable to local politicians by protecting their powers and offering a ‘prize’ for taking on more robust governance arrangements. Creating a mayor could have been threatening for Greater Manchester’s leaders. But the new mayor will need two thirds of council leaders to agree with his or her main decisions and will mostly take powers from central government rather than drawing them up from local tiers. And the approach of doing deals with cities one-by-one was time consuming but has clearly contributed to the initiative’s success, allowing the Treasury to navigate Manchester’s local politics in a way that a one-size fits all process might not have allowed. We have argued that the public need to support and consent to reform – particularly if reforms are to survive electoral transitions. This poll suggests that the increase in powers might have been enough to get popular support for the change. And while the Chancellor and Manchester’s leaders decided against a referendum approach, it’s clear that public concerns were considered. For example, the public tend to oppose reforms that are seen as creating ‘more politicians’ but by scrapping the police and crime commissioner post, there is no net gain in politicians. The success may provide a model that leads to further decentralisation. And there is another dynamic emerging that may create bottom up pressures for further change. The UK has slowly developed a very peculiar – and British - model of governance. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different devolved powers. Greater Manchester’s powers and governance model are similar to that of Greater London’s but far from identical – and both London and Greater Manchester’s mayors will have far less power than the nations. The Combined Authority model which Greater Manchester is moving away from still exists in Liverpool, West Yorkshire, the Sheffield city-region and the north-east. Local enterprise partnerships also fulfil some regional functions. And beneath this patchwork regional tier, we still have a mix of unitary local authorities and two-tier councils. The inconsistency in the powers held by areas of similar sizes or strengths of identity has until now, not been a major feature of political debate. But we are beginning to see voices point to this inconsistency as being ‘unfair’ and using this unfairness as a reason for further decentralisation. Yesterday’s Evening Standard highlighted that the Centre for London has opened up a debate on why London should not receive similar powers to Scotland given their similar size. Meanwhile, the city regions of Leeds, Sheffield, Merseyside, and the north-east, are all actively pushing for powers similar to those envisaged by Manchester. And counties and unitaries are also arguing that they should be included in any serious decentralisation programme. This dynamic could lead to a ratcheting effect, with cities competing with each other to get ever more powers. A similar ratcheting may also emerge as political parties compete to ‘own’ a decentralisation agenda they see as politically attractive. It is noticeable, for example, that Ed Miliband criticised the reforms in Greater Manchester as not being radical enough. But further decentralisation is not necessarily certain. We have learned much from the latest move to decentralise powers to Greater Manchester, which could be put into action elsewhere. But there remains plenty of uncertainty too. It is unlikely that a Chancellor (or Prime Minister) will stay focused on decentralisation for a sustained period. And there is no guarantee politicians will be as keen to decentralise powers elsewhere. In the 2011 ‘City Deals’ process, Manchester was the first city to do a deal and it gained considerable new powers and freedoms. Had all other cities involved in the process achieved similar progress, the City Deals process would be seen as a considerable decentralising success. However, other cities took longer to agree deals and were not judged to merit the same level of devolution, partly because their models of governance were deemed less robust but also because of concerns about the ability of local leaders to work together. Some commentators are reporting that cities such as Leeds and Sheffield are already in discussions. Will Greater Manchester be the new minimum standard for city-region devolution – or is this initiative a one-off, successful only because of concerted leadership from the Chancellor and Greater Manchester’s strong starting point?
English Regions
North West
Publisher
Institute for Government

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