IRRV Alert - week ending 5th February
News
Consultations
Reports
Committee questions Lord Heseltine and local government leaders on next steps (1 February 2021)
Committee questions Lord Heseltine and local government leaders on next steps
1 February 2021
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) is to take evidence from Rt Hon Lord Heseltine and Rt Hon Professor John Denham, as well as representatives of local government, in its inquiry The Evolution of Devolution: English Devolution. The session will take place virtually at 9.30am on 2 February 2021.
- Watch Parliament TV: The Evolution of Devolution: English Devolution
- Inquiry: The Evolution of Devolution: English Devolution
- Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Background
Fifty years on from the Redcliffe-Maud Commission’s recommendations for comprehensive reform of English local Government were rejected and over twenty years since devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the governance of England remains centralised, complex and a constitutional anomaly compared with the rest of the UK. While there has been executive and legislative devolution to the three devolved nations, there has been no equivalent process for England. The UK government in Westminster effectively wears two hats – as both the UK and the English governments.
Purpose of the session
This session will probe what has become known as ‘The English question’, which asks: how should England be governed and what is England’s place in the Union? PACAC’s inquiry is seeking to define these questions with a view to informing the Committee ahead of the Government’s publication of a White Paper on English Devolution (publication date as yet unknown) so that the Committee can scrutinise the Paper and any subsequent legislation.
The Committee will ask, among other questions, how power might be devolved in England. In the first evidence session of this inquiry, in October 2020, an academic expert described what he called a “deeply confusing” mixture of local governance structures in England made up of County Councils, District Councils and Unitary structures (which have an amalgam of County and District responsibilities). Another academic called this a “mish-mash of top-down, technocratic, negotiated deal-making”.
This second session of the inquiry will have two panels. The first will see the Committee asking representatives of local authorities what reforms may be needed to devolve power in England. The second panel will ask the former Deputy Prime Minister, Rt Hon Lord Heseltine, and the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (now a politics Professor), Rt Hon Professor John Denham, to explore the big picture questions of English governance and devolution.
Witnesses
At 9.30am
Panel 1
- Cllr Sir Richard Leese, Chair of the Local Government Association’s City Regions Board and Leader of Manchester City Council
- Cllr David Williams, County Councils Network Chairman and Leader of Hertfordshire County Council
- Cllr Julian German, representing Britain’s Leading Edge, a collaboration of 12 rural County Councils, and Leader of Cornwall Council
Panel 2
- Rt Hon Lord Heseltine, member of the House of Lords and former Deputy Prime Minister
- Rt Hon Professor John Denham, Director of the Centre for English Identity at the University of Southampton and former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government