My Lords, I am pleased to introduce the draft Combined Authorities (Consequential Amendments) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 10 March. In speaking to it I shall also speak to the other three orders in my name on the Order Paper relating to the three proposed combined authorities.
The orders we are considering this afternoon, if approved, will bring about the establishment of combined authorities in three major metropolitan areas: across Merseyside and Liverpool, around Sheffield and South Yorkshire and in West Yorkshire. The purpose of these combined authorities is to enable the councils and their partners in each of these areas to work together more effectively to promote economic growth, to secure more investment and to create more jobs. These combined authorities will be central to delivering the outcomes in the city deals that the Government have agreed with each of the areas. They will also provide the governance needed for any future growth deals drawing on resources of the local growth fund.
Each combined authority will be responsible for economic development, regeneration, and transport across the functional economic area. All the councils in each area have agreed that their combined authority will be able to exercise their functions on economic development and regeneration. The combined authority will also have the transport functions currently exercised by the area’s integrated transport authority. That integrated transport authority will be abolished when the combined authority is established.
The process for setting up a combined authority is set out in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Crucially, all the drive and initiative has to come from the places involved. It is what we call a bottom-up process. It is a process where the first steps are taken by the councils involved. The first step is for the councils to undertake a governance review in their area looking at how decisions are taken on economic development and regeneration, and on transport. This review will allow the councils to decide whether the combined authority approach is the most effective way for them to work together and with their public and private partners, particularly the local enterprise partnership for the area concerned to promote economic growth and prosperity. All the councils concerned have followed this process and concluded that a combined authority is the right way to work together and with their partners to drive growth.
This Government’s approach is one of localism, which reflects our belief that residents and their representatives are best placed to decide what happens in their area. Where councils come forward with a proposal for a combined authority—like the three before us—which commands wide local support and we consider that the statutory conditions have been met, we invite Parliament to approve a draft order to establish the proposed combined authority. If, in the future, local councils decide that changes are in the area’s best interest—perhaps another council joining, or one leaving—and statutory conditions have been met, we would bring an order back to Parliament for approval to enable the change to take place.
As the 2009 Act requires, each group of councils concerned have provided the Government with detailed information about how they wish the combined authority to operate, to take decisions and be open, transparent and accountable. The Government have consulted on each proposal, and each proposal has been considered in the light of relevant statutory conditions to make sure that the proposal: is likely to improve the exercise of statutory functions relating to transport, economic development and regeneration in the area; is likely to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of transport in the area; and is likely to improve the economic conditions in the area. In each case I can tell the Committee that the Government consider that these tests are unambiguously met. The Government have also had regard to the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities and to secure effective and convenient local government. Furthermore, we are clear that in each of these areas the combined authority would command wide local support—from local businesses, other public bodies and from local people and their democratically elected representatives.
I turn to the draft orders themselves. Three of them provide for the establishment respectively for combined authorities across the areas of Greater Merseyside, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. Each of these three orders specifies the formal, legal name for the combined authority, to which all the councils concerned have consented. But—and I know that this is an important matter and one of great interest to many noble Lords in the Grand Committee today—how that authority will brand itself, including the use of any brand name, will be entirely a matter for the combined authority.
Each of these three draft orders also make provision for the abolition of the integrated transport authority for the area, about the transport and economic functions the combined authority will have and about its membership and constitutional arrangements. A combined authority will be governed by its members and subject to scrutiny by one or more overview and scrutiny committees with a membership drawn from members of the councils concerned to hold the combined authority to account. Good governance practice will mean that such committees will be politically balanced, enabling appropriate representation of councils’ minority parties in the governance of combined authorities.
Combined authorities are also subject to the same transparency and audit requirements as local authorities, so they will be audited by an external independent auditor. Meetings of the combined authority are open to the public in the same way as local authority meetings, and in future people will have the right to film and use social media to report on council meetings. This applies equally to meetings of combined authorities.
Finally, the fourth draft order simply makes amendments to transport legislation which are applicable to all combined authorities.
In conclusion, these draft orders will enable the councils concerned and their partners to work together more effectively to deliver economic growth across their areas. Establishing these combined authorities is what the councils and their partners in these areas want. They want this because they believe it is the
most effective way for them to promote economic growth. In creating their combined authority, they are putting the promotion of economic growth at the heart of all that they do. This is a priority for them. It is a priority for the Government. I commend the draft orders to the Committee and beg to move.
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