My Lords, my name appears on Amendment 62 in this group. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for referring to the debate I moved a few weeks ago on the importance of local government and of renewing it, reviving it and devolving more to it.
The problem is that the Government think that they are doing devolution within England, but they are not; they are effectively replacing with combined authorities, combined counties and mayoral combined authorities all the different forms we had of devolution, such as the regional development agency structure that we had until some 11 years ago. We have seen the problems caused by the fact that no comparable structure exists. The combined authorities are effectively doing spatial planning, strategic housing policy and strategic transport policy, but what we have not got is devolution to local government. The amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, is terribly important; I could add to the list in subsection (2) of the proposed new clause—we could all do that.
Subsection (3) of the proposed new clause really matters. It states:
“The Bill must also include provisions for a new framework of cooperation between local authorities and the Government based on mutual respect”.
I think that is really important. What we have at the moment is an attempt by the Government to run England out of Whitehall, and it simply cannot be done with 56 million people in England; it must be done through devolved structures.
So far, with the replacement of the regional development agency structure, in practice what we have is now a hub-and-spoke model in which schools are effectively being run through a regional structure and, more and more in Whitehall, one can see structures being created which are its attempt to manage the delivery of services across England. Whitehall is undertaking the management of services—as opposed to the policy which underpins those services, which is the role of Whitehall in the main—when it should not be managing the delivery of the service.
That met a major problem with Test and Trace. You simply cannot operate something as big and fundamental as that centrally out of one of the Whitehall departments. I hope the Government will understand that this really matters. It is not just a question of fair funding, money or, indeed, powers in some areas but about a fundamental reset of the relationship between central and local government across England.
If there were to be a change of government, I really hope that I would hear from the Opposition Front Bench that they would keep to the commitments that they have prioritised, that the new Government would do the same thing by producing a devolution Bill within 120 days of being elected, and that that would
“include provisions for a new framework of cooperation between local authorities and the Government based on mutual respect”.
We are here having a preliminary debate about what might happen over the next two or three years, but I sincerely hope that the Government understand the seriousness of this situation. With all the funding problems there are now, I do not think the situation can last that much longer.