Cameron versus councils: will this government really relinquish control?
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Version 0 of 1. It’s a crunch week for councils in England. The tone they take in Harrogate, where councillors are meeting for their annual jamboree, will go far in determining relations with the government for the next five years. David Cameron sent a shot across their bows by declining an invitation to attend. He doesn’t like the Local Government Association’s critical line, despite the Tories having taken back control local councils after the May elections. Yet Cameron’s Downing Street neighbour, George Osborne, continues to love-bomb the cities, led by Manchester. The new commercial minister, Lord Jim O’Neill, was there last week telling a major OECD conference that the chancellor would display his affection in the forthcoming budget, dropping big hints about transport investment, despite Network Rail’s decision to abandon the trans-Pennine electrification. Instead of Cameron, the LGA has bagged Michael Heseltine for the keynote speech . Let’s forgive and forget the former environment secretary’s deep impatience with councils, leading him to create development corporations to run his urban regeneration programme. Nowadays, his brief is to impart confidence in devolution and he does it majestically. But councillors surely won’t be misled into believing the various initiatives coming from the Tories add up to a coherent package. There’s some give, but lots of take. Communities secretary Greg Clarke is conducting a review of business rates. The money matters: businesses contribute £23bn, a fifth of council revenues. Would this ostensibly devolutionist government really relinquish control to local authorities, and allow them to rise? The LGA is now warning that councils face cuts of £3.3bn next year, but has been less vocal on how local taxation should be reformed. It’s partly the big question of whether residents are ever likely to pay enough tax to cover the cost of the services they use; but it’s also partly the nagging question of inequality between areas. Perhaps health secretary Jeremy Hunt, appearing at the annual conference alongside the chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, will enlighten councillors on what exactly NHS devolution will entail, given that he shows no sign of winding up his increasingly interventionist central regulators or making clinical commissioning any more locally accountable. The health question boils down to money. Behind DevoManc there is an implicit promise that getting close to Osborne will reap rewards. But the bigger Mancunian ambitions grow, the less need Greater Manchester may have for the LGA. The LGA also has to fend off the ever-present threat of secession. But the LGA knows that in austerity more for booming Manchester has to mean less for rural north Yorkshire or struggling Sunderland. As long as prosperity and incomes remain so divided geographically, the spectre at the local feast is redistribution. And if the money comes from the centre, the Treasury will always say it needs to follow the cash and make sure it’s being spent appropriately. That means keeping an eye on what the mayor of Greater Manchester is up to – which doesn’t sound much like devolution. Distributional justice doesn’t just apply between places but inside them. Just as England needs some central mechanism for redistributing money, so does Greater Manchester. What happens when Mancunians discover they are paying for an expensive and underused tram to Rochdale? Manchester, like other councils, has funds available for local schemes, but they get doled out on the back of an assessment of differential need, which tends to mean the poorest districts get more. It’s easy to paint Whitehall as oppressive but a vast city region could look equally oppressive from the viewpoint of a ward or estate. Katie Ghosh, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society , puts it this way: “So far the debate about English devolution has been largely Treasury-driven, fiscally focused and aimed at larger economic centres. The starting point of devolution, however, must be an awareness that it is essentially about bringing power closer to people. Devolution cannot just be economic – it has to be democratic too.” How does this mesh with chancellor George Osborne’s insistence on plenipotentiary, conurbation-wide mayors? What rights of veto, if any, do Wythenshawe or Westhoughton get against the might of Greater Manchester? It’s not a new concern. When in power, Labour had a short-lived flirtation with various initiatives to empower communities below the level of elected councils. Some Tories see the way forward in getting rid of councils altogether. Michael Gove, when education secretary, used to go around pronouncing himself a localist, adding that he meant taking power away from councils and giving it to schools (although what he really meant were shadowy chains and unelected chairs of governing bodies). Now at justice, he is “delocalising” probation, substituting private companies and charities for local authority involvement. Talk to us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic and sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday. |