Philip Rycroft’s Comments on the Devolution and Levelling-Up agendas

Thank you for inviting me.

I’m going to talk about three things very quickly: 1) why devolve? 2) why has devolution in England got stuck and 3) what might happen next?

1) Why Devolve?

It’s the right thing to do democratically. It brings Government closer to the people.

Devolved Government tends to be more trusted, as we can see in Scotland and Wales. It is of course not guaranteed that devolved government always better but what it does as a bare minimum is allow Government to be more responsive to local circumstance and local need. International evidence suggests that more devolution corresponds to less regional inequality, and in the past we have seen numerous attempts by British Governments to reduce regional inequality which have failed, so why not give the opportunity to local people to see whether they can do a better job of improving their own future?

Finally, whilst some things are better handled at a state/national level, for some policy areas (e.g. Education) it seems extraordinary to me that in England state officials in London are seen to be able to better manage education in Yorkshire than the people of Yorkshire themselves. Education is best managed at the scale of Scotland, which is similar in population size to Yorkshire.

2) Why Hasn’t it happened more in England?

England is the most centralised polity in Western Europe, and there seems to be an iron law in politics: every Government comes into power promising more devolution and then fails to deliver it.

The result of several half-hearted attempts over the years is an extraordinary landscape of regional and local governments in England. Combined Authorities and Metro Mayors DO represent progress but, as you know, the powers compared to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are still very limited, particularly in the fiscal context. Compared internationally, the amount of money controlled at the regional level in England is pitifully small.

Why is it like this? Devolution is complex and difficult subject-matter, and never high up on the agenda of incoming governments; Whitehall and Westminster have never prioritised the territorial management of the United Kingdom itself, as we have seen in the handling of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The English regions receive even less attention in a Whitehall context.

The roots run deep and are related to the British State and the way it evolved through Empire; the Treasury is all-powerful and instinctively resistant to letting go of any fiscal powers, hanging onto things grimly as evidenced through the lack of a proper deal originally given to Scotland and Northern Ireland 20 years ago (which has been partly redressed more recently). Furthermore, demand for devolution is inconsistent across England; regional assemblies do not appear to be popular (the 2004 referendum in the North East is the classic example) and there are different levels of strength of regional identity across England, which does allow to some extent the ‘divide and rule’ approach. Politicians just don’t like to let go.

Those are my rough rules as to why devolution in England has been slow.

3) What happens next?

I am not hugely optimistic about immediate prospects; we know that there has been a delay in the Devolution White Paper, now folded into the ‘levelling up’ white paper.

What we have seen over the last 18 months or so is all those centralising instincts of Whitehall through Covid, through planning reform, through the way that ‘levelling up’ is being administered principally through challenge funds (which I personally don’t think work in terms of channelling money to the most productive outcomes in the regions). There is some hostility to devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as seen through the Single Market Act, and the way Whitehall is responding to this is a classic gambit: putting Neil O’Brien in Number 10 and think that will solve the problem. This may help a bit, but what the situation needs is a serious cross-Government effort.

That may seem like a counsel of despair, but it is more a counsel of realism. However, I believe the world is slowly changing; Mayors have made a mark across England, and for this and any subsequent government it becomes increasingly difficult to turn the clock back in terms of Metro Mayors and the impact they have. The outcome of the Mayoral Elections, with victories by differing parties, means a more competitive political landscape, and this makes the argument for devolution less partisan. There is also a dawning realisation that the wider problems of the UK union cannot be resolved without dealing with the question of England, both representation of England as a polity and serious devolution within it. A serious constitutional reform in the UK has never really advanced according to an ordered plan and has always required extra-parliamentary pressure and the conversion of at least one major party to reform.

These conditions are now ripening, and while it might not happen in this or the next parliament, in the not too distant future we will see substantial devolution in England, because it is the right thing to do, and I hope Yorkshire will be at the front of the queue.

Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to speak.