#6 Inside Labour: To deliver growth, shift power to communities

If ‘all politics is local’, then the government is right to put mayors at the heart of the number one mission to deliver economic growth.

And a new report out today by Labour Together - Mayoral Matters - finds those living in mayoral areas are supportive of increased devolution. In fact, the further advanced the settlement, the more supportive residents are. More findings from that report are below.

The UK has been over-centralised for too long

The first milestone announced by the Prime Minister last week was that the government would deliver higher living standards in every part of the United Kingdom by the end of the Parliament. This will be tracked at a national and regional level to ensure it is felt right across the country.

For too long, the UK has effectively been an economy running on one cylinder. We have seen stagnating living standards in some areas, often correlated with poor life expectancy.

But it has not been all rosy for the areas doing well economically either - with housing costs booming and renters seeing the dream of home ownership drifting further away.

Changing this will require action by central government. But mayors and local government across the country must also be empowered to deliver for their own communities.

For Labour, these plans to give more powers to mayors build on a proud legacy. The last Labour government created the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Greater London Authority restored London-wide governance in the capital, with a single accountable ‘Mayor of London’ to represent London on the national and international stage.

We also passed the legislation to create combined authorities and began the ‘Total Place’ pilots to get at the root causes of deprivation.

And Pat’s speech yesterday builds on this reforming zeal by setting out plans to work with local areas to deliver a ‘test and learn’ approach inspired by leading businesses.

To be fair, recent Tory governments created more elected mayors in England, bringing the total number up to 12. But they also sold the country ‘levelling up’, a gimmick which failed to deliver the change that people were desperate for.

There is now a consensus that the country has been over-centralised for too long, contributing to the issues highlighted above. Labour is now planning to take this devolution agenda to the next level with a White Paper expected soon and legislation in 2025.

A mandate for further devolution

Given this will be a long-term project, it is key to understand what the public think.

Polling published by us today shows that voters are giving a cautious welcome to the shifting of powers to mayors in the areas that have already seen it.

For the first time, Labour Together has conducted public opinion polling in the 12 current mayoral areas and the two future ones with elections in 2025. We wanted to understand how those who actually experienced devolution felt about it.

Three things stand out to me.

Firstly, mayors are an increasingly visible and important part of the institutional landscape - and people tend to think they are doing a good job. Excluding don’t knows, people thought their mayors were doing a good job overall by 55% to 45%.

Secondly, the places that have had the most devolution tend to be the most welcoming of it. Excluding don’t knows, people in Greater Manchester, London and the West Midlands thought that the process of devolution was going well by 55% to 45% too.

Thirdly, there is strong backing for the government’s plans to give more powers to mayors. This backing is strongest on economic levers such as housing and transport, but also extends to health and education.

There’s loads more data in the report itself, available here.

This won’t achieve the change we hope to see overnight. But as our polling shows, devolution is already starting to make a difference to people in the places that know it best.

The government is right to back mayors to make decisions for their local areas. National renewal demands nothing less.

Jonathan Ashworth
Chief Executive, Labour Together

In case you missed it

• Areas With Most Devolution Have More Confidence In Their Mayors, Research Shows | “A new report from the think tank Labour Together found that across the 14 mayoral areas, which includes two future devolved mayoral areas, 30 per cent of those polled believe devolution has gone well so far.”

• Public Service Reform and Devolution | This report from October, by Sam Freedman, sets out how empowering mayors with greater oversight of the health, education, criminal justice and other public service systems, could help Labour deliver its public services mission. JP Spencer, Director of Devolution Policy at Labour Together, writes a foreword.