Tag: South East

A THOROUGH CONSTITUTIONAL SETTLEMENT.

DON’T RUSH IT

There is a danger that an historic opportunity to reform our governance structures is going to be missed in the rush to settle the well named EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) issue.

We should take time, but not spin it out as some Labour Party politicians would wish.

I have tried to put together a whole range of issues that need to be addressed in a constitutional conversation with the people over the next 12 months. This could lead to legislation in the second year of the new Parliament. The purpose is to indicate the huge scope of change that politicians should be addressing rather than adopting our usual piecemeal approach to the subject.

I start from the lowest level of our democracy, on through what should happen in England and then deal with the House of Lords.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Every part of England should have a parish or community council with enhanced powers to deal with the really local issues that people care about.

Above them the whole of England should be run by unitary local authorities. It is unsustainable to have a situation in the North West for instance where Cheshire has four councils and Lancashire fourteen. The district/county model has always confused ratepayers and should have been swept away in 1974 at the time of the last reorganisation. This proposal would also deal with a major charge thrown against those of us who want a strategic tier for those parts of England that want it. The charge is that we would create more politicians. We would not. Hundreds of district councillors would be abolished. I don’t underestimate the political difficulty of combating the vested interests that will oppose this, but it should be tackled with courage.

REGIONAL/PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.

The city regions have become embedded and have all party support. Elected mayors for the whole city regions would bring them the direct democracy and transparency that they sadly lack at the moment. However the City Regions do not cover the whole country. The priorities of major towns and whole swathes of suburban and rural England are excluded from the City Regions. Supporters of cities say outlying areas should become commuter dormitories for the cities. This is unacceptable. The Local Enterprise Partnerships do not have the scale to tackle the big challenge facing parts of England.

The challenge is this. Scotland will soon have powerful enhanced powers. London and the South East are on a different planet of prosperity. The other regions of England need strategic bodies to match Scotland and the South East. Here we encounter major problems. Regions are a dirty word to the Tories because they are the administrative divisions used by the European Union. The boundaries of regions also present problems. Cornwall does not want to be in a region with Gloucestershire. Oxford has nothing in common with Kent. Should Cumbria be in the North West or North East?

These identity issues play into the hands of centralising civil servants in London who are hostile to any devolution. They helped to prevent John Prescott giving real power to the North East in 2004 with the resulting defeat of the plan for an elected regional assembly. It is a major falsehood to suggest people rejected regionalism in 2004. They would have voted for it if it had meant real power.

We need the people’s consent to the regional map of England so the legislation should be permissive. So I would favour a Northern Council, an idea I will develop in a moment. The Midlands and East might want smaller strategic bodies. There could then be a tier of government covering the Thames Valley. The real South East could get together. Wessex could emerge once again and perhaps it is time to recognise Cornish identity.

Returning to my patch I would like to see a Northern Council. It would stretch from the Scottish Border to Hull and Crewe. It has the economy and population of some of the smaller states in Europe and should have powers to match. These would cover transport, health, strategic planning, skills, economic planning etc. They would get a block grant from London without strings and would benefit from resources currently going to Scotland as the Barnett Formula is replaced by the Scots raising their own taxes.

The Northern Council would be a democratic body with people elected from constituencies based on groups of Westminster seats.

WESTMINSTER

I don’t want to go into the complexities of EVEL here. My solution would be for the designation of truly English legislation that could only be voted on by English MPs. There would be less of it than Labour fear, but they are right to demand that EVEL is conditional on a wider constitutional settlement.

Wales and Northern Ireland should get more devolved powers.

The House of Lords should be reformed once and for all. It should have 75% of its members elected from the English Regions. 20% should be appointed to allow for doctors, scientists, engineers to give their expertise . Such people might be reluctant to stand for office. 5% should be reserved for the faith communities.

We live in a time when the old party structure is crumbling. The voting system needs to reflect this. All elections for local, regional and national government should be by single transferable vote.

These changes can be dismissed as too radical and too challenging for vested political interests. The alternative is to patch up our existing arrangements against a background of growing alienating of the people from their politicians.

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WARSI QUIT OVER EUROPE TOO.

TORY TURMOIL.

No sooner had the Tory cat (David Cameron) gone off to Portugal, than the mice began to play back home. Sayeeda Warsi’s resigned and Boris Johnson threw down his Westminster gauntlet.

The press has concentrated on the criticism of the Prime Minister’s stance on Gaza but Warsi’s statement also contained significant criticism of his European Union policy and this was picked up by North West Tory MEP Saj Karim.

Karim began life as a Lib Dem MEP and clearly retains his pro European credentials. He joined Warsi’s criticism of the government’s Gaza policy saying Israel was being given more room than any other state but then went on to refer to the “directional shift” in European policy. He told the BBC that we would miss the advice of Ken Clarke and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve and could be embarked on a path to undermine our ability to negotiate concessions from the EU.

Ken Clarke has been the most prominent pro European Tory member of this Cabinet and Grieve’s sacking is widely believed to have been to clear the way for a fundamental reshaping of our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights.

Warsi’s resignation may be quickly forgotten, particularly if the Gaza ceasefire holds. However her criticism of the sacking of pro European cabinet members may be the first sign of a real fightback by the EU positive wing of the Conservative Party who have been silenced by the Eurosceptic madness that has swept the party up to now.

NO LEAP FOR THE SALMON.

After years of being called dull and boring the former Tory Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe had one great speech in him and it helped to bring down the mighty Margaret Thatcher.

Another former Chancellor, Alistair Darling has been similarly criticised for being dull. However on Tuesday those distinctive black eyebrows were fairly bristling during his debate with the leader of the Scottish Government, Alex Salmond. Darling believes we are better together and hammered away at what an independent Scotland would do for a currency. Mr Salmond, who had a great reception in Liverpool the other week, was deflated by the onslaught. It may have been Darling’s Geoffrey Howe moment and it may have saved the Union.

WHERE’S WARRINGTON?

I was travelling back from London the other day and it soon became apparent that the lady in front of me had got the wrong train. Instead of getting off at Milton Keynes, I told her the first stop would be Warrington. She phoned her waiting father with the bad news and in desperate tones asked him “Where is Warrington?”

The question had the fearful tone that I expect Russian dissidents expressed when they were told they were heading for exile in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

I don’t think she had ventured out of the South East before. The episode highlighted once again for me that for people living in the London area, the North is another country. It is a mindset which has influenced government policy and led to massive underinvestment in our transport infrastructure.

Let’s see if that’s going to change. It has taken years to begin to repair the damage done by the coalition in dismantling regional policy but now our big cities like Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool are trying to force the Chancellor to make real his pledge to create a powerhouse of the northern cities.

It may help that George Osborne is the MP for Tatton and will listen to demands for £15bn spending on trans Pennine transport links. He’s called the plan “imaginative” and promises a full response in the Autumn Statement.

Let’s see if big city power can deliver.

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AFTER PRINCE GEORGE, LET’S GET BACK TO THE ECONOMY

If only we could have an election now some Tory politicians might be thinking as they begin their summer break. A new born prince, the heatwave and cycling and cricket success have given our spirits a boost. Most important of all there is a feeling that the economy is turning even in the North which always lags behind the South East because of successive governments’ failure to have an effective regional policy.

House prices are edging up here and jobs are being created in the private sector to help absorb the haemorrhaging of public employment. In that connection the news from Bentley in Crewe that they are to build the company’s new sports utility vehicle enhances the North West’s successful car industry alongside Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Jaguar Land Rover at Halewood.

The key man in all this is the Chancellor George Osborne. He rivals the Prime Minister in importance when it comes to trying to stear the Tories to an outright victory in 2015. This is partly because of his power over economic decision making but also because of his central role in political strategy. For this reason Labour call him the part time Chancellor. It is a foolish charge. It makes sense to have Osborne tied closely to political decision making.

It is Osborne’s belief in concentrating on the main issue of economic recovery that has led to the ditching of “peripheral” issues like plain packet fags and a minimum price for alcohol. Lynton Crosby, the Tory party advisor has taken the hit for this regrettable U turn, but the Chancellor will have been involved.

I recently took the opportunity to observe George Osborne up close. He was giving a lecture in memory of that great broadcaster and champion of the North Brian Redhead. To the Chancellor’s credit, he spoke a lot about Brian and didn’t use the occasion for a bog standard political message.

He acknowledged the importance of having a northern constituency (Tatton). He told us his daughter had just been made Rose Queen at her school at Wildboarclough in Cheshire and that he was aware that things looked different from a northern perspective. That was certainly Brian Redhead’s view, Mr Osborne told his audience He missed out on the editorship of the Guardian because he refused to move south with the paper. For a long time he co-presented the Today programme from Manchester until being forced to join his colleagues in London. I used to join him on the train north on a Friday and he always said he was glad to be coming home.

Osborne concluded by observing that the North was not a monolith and should not be stereotyped. Although Redhead had worked in Manchester, he was born in the North East and lived in the Peak District. The Chancellor claimed that Cheshire had more private sector jobs than London.

It was an interesting and different sort of speech from a man that it is not easy to warm to. What will matter in the next two years however is not being liked but keeping the economic recovery going as interest rates begin to rise.

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