Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

The Minister does not seem to understand. It is not about transposing from an urban to a non-urban issue. This is a matter of principle about democratic accountability for taxpayers’ money being used and that, when people sit at a table, there is some form of democratic accountability back to the people for whom they are making those decisions. The kind of membership that the Bill proposes has no democratic accountability. It is not about transposing a model from urban to rural; it is a matter of principle. If people are spending taxpayers’ money as part of a mayoral combined authority, whether urban or rural, they should be democratically accountable back to the people whose taxes they are spending.