My Lords, it falls to me to give the Opposition’s official position on this amendment. I hope that in doing so I do not disappoint too many of my noble friends. Overall, we are not able to accept this amendment as it stands. There are a number of issues to raise, but there is the prospect of recasting the amendment by the time we get to Report so that we may well be able to accept it.
Subsection (1) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 3 must be subject to further consideration of the report by the Delegated Powers Committee which has crossed over this issue because it focuses on orders and delegated powers and talks about whether that broad order-making power is appropriate. Subsection (2) suggests that any order or a proposal must start with the combined authority and then go to the Secretary of State. My understanding is—my noble friend may be able to confirm this—that this is an iterative process. In any event, if that unwittingly stopped additional powers going to a combined authority after it had been set up simply because they were initiated by the Secretary of State, that would be a backwards step.
On democratic accountability, I am not sure from what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said whether this is an integral part of the elected assembly. We have a debate coming on the elected assembly in due course, and I will hold my comments generally until then, but I will make the point that if we were to accept the amendments’ proposition of an elected assembly, which I would oppose, we would end up with a situation in which we would have first-past-the-post elections for members of the combined authority, a supplementary vote system for the elected mayor and STV for assembly members. That seems unnecessarily convoluted.
We see circumstances where an elected mayor might be entirely appropriate, but we do not believe elected mayors should be prescriptive and mandatory. We think it should be for local areas to make their own judgments. That is the thrust of the amendment which will be our next business, but I shall deal with it now rather than have a repeat of this debate. The amendment I proposed to move was to make clear that there must not be an inevitable linkage between having the full benefit of the devolution provisions of the Bill and the acceptance by a combined authority of an elected mayor. It is accepted that devolution deals entered into ultimately involve an agreement, and if an elected mayor is included, it could be said that it is with consent. However, if there are circumstances where that is a clear red line for the Government—it was clearly so in the case of Greater Manchester, as my
noble friend Lord Smith outlined—our amendment was seeking to address and negate that proposition. It is difficult to implement at the margins because there is an iterative discussion going on. I shall take this opportunity to be clear where the Government stand on this, but before doing so, I should make it clear that strong visible leadership is essential to the success of devolution. That leadership could well come in the form an elected mayor, and combined authorities should have the opportunity to chose that course if they think it is right for them, but they should not be forced to have an elected mayor if they consider that an alternative leader model suits their circumstances. This view is consistent with the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in his No Stone Unturned report.
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The view expressed by James Wharton, the Minister in the other place, seemed to be more restrictive. In a Westminster Hall debate he said:
“If they want the Manchester model—the exciting package of powers that we are already delivering to the Greater Manchester area—a mayor will be a requirement of it. We in the Government believe that that needs to happen, and we will insist on it. If they want something less, then we can have a discussion about what that might look like”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/15; col. 79WH.]
Will the Minister tell us what “something less” amounts to in practice? What powers would not have to be taken up for the insistence on an elected mayor to be dropped? Will the Minister say what criteria will be applied in making that judgment? I am not seeking to be difficult but am genuinely trying to help people understand the opportunities which may be available to them. We have heard from the Southern Policy Centre, for example, that for some it may be genuinely more difficult to have an elected mayor model simply because of the geographical configuration of the area and the nature of the councils. If so, what are the limits on the devolution to which they might aspire? Clearly, without an elected mayor there will be no process under the Bill to allocate the exercise of specific functions to individuals and, particularly, no basis on which to transfer the PCC functions.
I am sure that the Minister will wish to take the opportunity to dispel the suspicion that the obsession with elected mayors has little to do with effective leadership models and more to do with the hope that they will deliver a political outcome different from the elections of the constituent authorities. The Minister grimaces at any doubtless unworthy suggestion, but I will be pleased to hear from her on that.
So far as the amendment is concerned, as it stands, for the reasons I have outlined, we cannot agree with it, but there may be the prospect, if the noble Lord feels so inclined, to recast it for Report. Elected mayors have been the substance of our debate on this group. We believe there should be no prescription but they should not be ruled out. That may well be what some authorities chose and believe is right for them.