Pride and Prosperity
No one cares more about any place than the people who live there. This basic truth is unquestionable. Yet our politics has for too long ignored this, choosing instead to embrace a creeping centralisation of power - decade by decade - in Whitehall and Westminster.
In any democracy, people expect that the people they vote for can change things. But, given a lack of power and resources, councillors and local authorities are often unable to make basic improvements to their place. And the national government faces an overwhelming array of decisions to be made about every place, ranging from where cattle grids should go to what taxes places are allowed to levy.
This is bad for democracy. Monuments of civic pride still bear the names of farsighted local leaders from past generations.. They were also able to develop the public services that their communities needed, ranging from gasworks to municipal hospitals. Yet, modern works of civic infrastructure and community-driven public services are few and far between, with examples held up as the exception rather than the norm.
For example, three statements of local ambition stand in Halifax, West Yorkshire: the Town Hall, the Borough Market and the Piece Hall.
Built between 1779 and 1896, they symbolise the pride of the town in its status as a centre of administration and commercial prowess. The Town Hall was designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, and opened in an elaborate two-day event overseen by the future Edward VII. The Borough Market was built to be the hub of the town, bringing people together amongst a multitude of shops and fresh produce, as it does today. The Piece Hall is a magnificent statement of civic architecture, which acted as a centre of the woollen trade and formerly brought together thousands of local people in mass singalongs.
These monuments of local confidence were built by the town, following a grant of powers from Parliament. They are still focal points for the community. Testaments to local pride and the ability to get stuff done. Yet local action on this scale is unimaginable today.
When Halifax wanted to redevelop the Piece Hall, £7m funding eventually had to be found from a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant. With its shops and events, it is now a very successful example of economic regeneration. But it should have been within the power of Halifax’s leaders to do it themselves. Likewise, the current £4m restoration of the Borough Market is supported by a grant from a central government high streets fund.
When the decades-old North Bridge Leisure Centre needed redeveloping, a successful application was made to the centrally held Levelling Up Fund. But, whilst now back on track, the programme stalled for two years over funding issues, creating local anger over the loss of swimming, football and leisure facilities for the people of Halifax.
Now I happen to have been born and raised in Halifax - but this is not just a story of Halifax. This is a story of how villages, towns and cities have been disempowered. Killing off progress and pride in communities, resulting in places with less ability to get anything done or respond to the economic change that is defining our era.
This is not about nostalgia. Devolution cannot bring back the mills and mines that underpinned prosperity in hundreds of communities. But centralisation has reduced places’ ability to adapt to deindustrialisation and economic change, and Whitehall has neither the knowledge, nor the power, nor the inclination to deliver for every community.
Following years of decline, there is a deep sense that the country does not work. At the root of issues like maintenance of Newcastle’s Tyne Bridge or the saga of the Leeds tram is a country in which places must ask for permission and money before they can deliver anything. This is bad for living standards, bad for economic growth, and bad for our sense that our democracy can get things done. It has left some places overheating and others stagnating, often forcing people to leave places they grew up in and care deeply about to find opportunity.
This drives a deep resentment. The visible symptoms are complaints about roads, parks, leisure centres, lack of jobs, houses, decaying high streets and services. The root cause is invisible but lurks behind each: centralisation.
This is because the UK has been running a radical experiment in centralisation. Since the Second World War, this experiment has led to us becoming an outlier amongst the G7 and other advanced economies. Through extreme centralisation and Whitehall control, we have sought to impose national consistency and control over local initiative - and achieved neither.
In the past, people knew that local institutions had local roots with local accountability and local pride in improvement. This self-sustaining engine of progress has been lost in the name of trying to achieve national consistency and national accountability. So often, people ask politicians: We voted for you, you know we need this fixed, so why can’t you fix it? And so often, the answer lies in the labyrinthine structure of governance - particularly within England - in which it’s almost impossible to understand who has power. Is it their Councillor, Mayor, Police and Crime Commissioner, Integrated Care Board, a development company, an agency headquartered somewhere else, or a plethora of other organisations?
This makes it impossible for people to know how to use their vote to effect change on the things they care about. If the essence of democracy is the connection between votes, taxes, and visible change, the centralisation of power and bizarre governance structures are not just eroding trust; they are eroding democracy itself.
There have been major shifts in where power is held in our constitution over the last half century or more. In recent decades, governments of both major parties have used the language of parliamentary sovereignty to erode the power and dignity of places.
In the UK, the government’s authority derives from its majority in parliament, but parliament in our modern democracy is sovereign because of the authority derived from elections. The word ‘devolution’ is itself unhelpful because it obscures this truth. It means literally to roll down, as if parliament pushes down sovereignty to wherever it pleases.
We must instead conceptualise a project of restoring power to local areas and their democratic institutions, to ensure our constitution reflects real social and political identities, not a project of granting new powers in some radical experiment. Sovereignty flows from the people to local authorities, mayors and parliament, not the other way round. The radical experiment was extreme centralisation.
This paper calls for a definitive end to this experiment, looking a decade into the future to outline principles that should define our future state.
The creation of mayoral authorities across England fixes the missing piece of our governance - so decisions, services, and redistribution can be delivered at this more strategic level. Over 50% of the population of England is now covered by mayoral devolution, with around 80% of these covered by established mayors with the most powers and funding. And local government reorganisation into unitary authorities helps too, by creating clearer accountability that will be better understood by voters while allowing places to do things differently.
Soon, all places should have devolved powers and budgets. This will require changes to who is responsible for what, who pays for what, and how our constitution works. There is no quick fix for the present state of disempowerment, but our guiding principle should be that all places need clarity about the leadership of services.
This means building places up and restoring local power - and pride and prosperity - across the country. This paper makes the case for three interconnected principles to achieve this. Places with control over resources will be more accountable to their citizens. Places represented in parliament will be properly respected in our parliamentary government.
A restoration of civic power is needed. ‘Civic’ is an ancient term related to matters of citizens and municipalities. Reaching back to our past can be a guide to our future. A country where citizens are clearer about who is responsible for what, with liberated places driving higher living standards and local pride, getting more done both locally and nationally. Harnessing the basic truth that no one cares more about a place than the people who live there.
Three principles
Public Service Reform: public services should be delivered by and be accountable to democratic institutions, matching the geography of the people who use them, supported by tiers of government above.
Fiscal Reform: the democratic institution delivering public services in an area should have the ability to collect revenue to deliver those services, with some national redistribution to account for place-based inequality.
Constitutional Reform: the second chamber of parliament should reflect place-based identities and the democratic legitimacy of the nations and regions