This week, the Labour Government published their Devolution White Paper, alongside their National Planning Policy Framework changes last week, and an expected Local Government Finance Settlement shortly.
Taken together, it is a mishmash of new tiers of government, new quangos and new taxes. It is a recipe for taking power away from local communities, and making local government less responsive to the needs of local taxpayers. Middle England will face higher council tax, rural communities will be kicked yet again, and Labour’s rotten boroughs will be given grubby handouts without public service reform.
Conservative record
In Government, Conservatives empowered local people. We abolished John Prescott’s regional government, cut red tape on local councils, gave local councils control over local planning, and enhanced accountability through elected local mayors and through Police and Crime Commissioners. We also decentralised power down to the lowest level: making it easier to create parish councils, letting parents create new free schools, giving residents power to protect their locality through neighbourhood planning, and letting local taxpayers veto excessive council tax increases through local referendums.
Conservatives supported joint working between local councils – which included some unitary restructuring as well as district mergers. But Conservative Ministers were clear that any unitary restructuring had to be locally-led and have local support, and it was not a condition of Devolution Deals.
Labour’s state-control
Labour, by contrast, have now returned to type. Local areas will be forced to adopt a new “Strategic Authority”. Planning powers will be determined by these bodies. They will levy a new precept on council tax. They will work alongside new nationalised quangos. And district and county councils will be abolished.
Unitary restructuring does not result in council tax bills being cut – indeed, the alignment of council tax across different councils has generally been upward. The imposition of mayoral precepts has led to higher council tax by Labour – as evident by Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan massively hiking up their council tax precept in London. Only Conservative mayors like Boris Johnson have cut the council tax precept and Andy Street and Ben Houchen charged nothing.
Labour’s true attitude on devolution is reflected in their planning reforms: waging war on the countryside whilst cutting house building in the cities; failing to champion the freedoms from leaving the European Union; and gagging councillors on Planning Committees. Their so-called ‘Grey Belt’ reforms explicitly remove the Green Belt requirements of “safeguarding the countryside from encroachment” and “assisting in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land”. Their new housing need targets have cut housing by -11% in London, -38% in Birmingham and -55% in Coventry, whilst increasing it by 106% in New Forest, 199% in North Yorkshire and 487% in Westmorland and Furness.
Conservative stance on restructuring
We expect Labour to invite ‘proposals’ from councils for local government restructuring; the ‘first wave’ of restructuring would then result in county council elections in May 2025 in those chosen areas being cancelled.
But no council should be bullied or blackmailed into local government restructuring. It should not be imposed by top-down Whitehall diktat. Conservatives have always supported greater joint working and stronger local accountability through directly elected leaders. But there are many ways to do this, and local government should be ‘local’ to residents, and respect proud local identities.
Any such structural changes should be local decisions, made by locally elected representatives listening to views of local people. We have put forward five tests that any restructuring should meet (listed below). By definition, devolution should be about local decision-making. As evident from Labour’s long-standing obsession with large regional structures,
Labour do not recognise the importance of local identities across England’s parishes, districts, boroughs and counties. City-centric Labour don’t understand rural areas.
Conservatives will work together, at all levels, to achieve the best outcomes for our residents.
