My Lords, I, too, welcome the Bill. I listened with great interest in particular to my noble friend Lady Hollis about concentric circles. The Bill is prescriptive in some important respects. It refers very early on to “a combined authority” and a mayor of a combined authority, which appears not to allow for a more complex arrangement of functions between local authorities that might wish to be part of more than one combined authority. That
appears to be inconsistent, first, with the Bill and, secondly, with having a mayor of a combined authority. Those are matters that no doubt we will turn to again later on.
I wish to comment briefly on the position in Yorkshire with regard to rural and coastal areas and the complexity of the arrangements. A noble Lord is present who is a former leader of Sheffield City Council. I am sure that he will contribute during the Bill’s passage. There is a very strong case for making the two conurbations of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire into a combined authority, leaving North Yorkshire, the East Riding and Hull Humber to decide separately what they want to do. There is a case for the two metropolitan areas of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire to combine together to rival the strength of Greater Manchester.
Of course, the truth is that in Yorkshire, as in many parts of the country, the strength certainly of West Yorkshire is that it has North Yorkshire to its north and South Yorkshire to its south. Without them it would be a much diminished conurbation. Therefore, of enormous importance to the future development of West and South Yorkshire are the arrangements for North Yorkshire, East Riding and Hull. It would be enormously damaging to the Yorkshire region if North Yorkshire, East Riding and Hull did not have strong combined-authority or local-authority powers—many of the powers that the conurbations seek.
There is an understandable temptation for rural areas such as North Yorkshire to want to remain independent, but noble Lords may be surprised to hear that there is a lot of discussion in North Yorkshire about the merits of coming much closer to West Yorkshire, East Riding and Hull. One of my concerns about the Bill is that the understandable haste to have mayors alongside these strengthened devolved authorities will make more difficult the gradual bringing together of parts of Yorkshire. Once you have a mayor of South Yorkshire and a mayor of West Yorkshire, they are not likely to want to go in with North Yorkshire. If North Yorkshire had a mayor, it would be much more reluctant to give that up and combine with West Yorkshire. Therefore, in our later discussions on the Bill I will counsel that there is a disconnection between granting more, genuine devolution to parts of our local areas and necessarily divorcing that for a while from mayoralties, not because mayoralties will not come about but because once you establish a combined authority with a mayor it will make bringing authorities closer together all the more difficult. It will depend on working together, not being part of a community together.
My view from the conurbation of Leeds and West Yorkshire is to recognise wholeheartedly the importance of strong devolution in our rural and coastal areas, but Yorkshire without its coastline or its dales and moors would be greatly belittled. I would like to feel that the Bill will enable all parts of my region to be strengthened and even, although this will probably strike terror into the hearts of people at the Treasury, offer the possibility of moving towards a Yorkshire region, because that makes enormous sense. If we can countenance, as we have, a semi-independent Scotland, why should we resist a strong Yorkshire? Just because
regional devolution was originally a Labour idea and got kicked into touch, I hope that it will not necessarily be kicked into touch on ideological grounds. There would be an enormous amount to be said if it was. To secure that would require statesmanship and long-term strategic thinking but would result in a devolution to that part of England that would, in my view, be greatly welcomed in large parts of that great county but would also lead to a viable, vibrant and strong economic and social community.