Geraint Talfan Davies explores the history of English devolution
More than half a century ago devolution was regarded as a subject for Celtic obsessives, best indulged by consenting adults in private. In the 1960s, in the wake of some by-election successes by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, Harold Wilson’s government set up a Royal Commission on the Constitution that proposed legislative assemblies for Scotland and Wales.
However, given the commission’s origins, it was not surprising that its report and proposals had comparatively little to say about England, the union’s largest country by a country mile. That was left to a memorandum of dissent by two of its members.
Half a century later, Scotland and Wales have their own Parliaments, catching up with Northern Ireland that had had a Parliament – albeit flawed – since 1921. Today, with Andy Burham, an English fan and practitioner of devolution, about to get his hands on the keys to 10 Downing Street, it may be England’s turn.
It will be interesting to see whether a new Prime Minister with prior experience of limited devolution to a major city, and with roots outside southern England, will make the radical difference that is part of his inherent promise.
With its long eastern flank facing England, and four major English cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol – not far from its borders, Wales must take an interest. After all, how the UK Government handles England’s cities and regions tells us much about persistent central attitudes and to what extent they are changing.
Despite creating constitutions for a host of countries that were at one time part of a British empire, Britain has been strangely inept at constitutional change at home. Hence, below the UK Government and Parliament, we currently have an array of governmental arrangements:
- Three Parliaments – for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – with differing degrees of legislative competence;
- A devolved Assembly with non-statutory powers in Greater London;
- Combined authorities and combined county authorities across a large part of northern England, the West Midlands, the West of England and some parts of the south coast, all of which have varying functions
- Swathes of central England and the southeast coast governed by more conventional local authorities.
It is a patchwork born not only of entrenched local loyalties and rivalries, but also of an over-valued pragmatism and a seemingly English distaste for coherent constitutional reform that has afflicted all governing parties. It will be interesting to see whether a new Prime Minister with prior experience of limited devolution to a major city, and with roots outside southern England, will make the radical difference that is part of his inherent promise.
Those arguing for more radical reforms are often accused of an impractical, theoretical approach, prioritising neat administration over the realities of politics. But, within all the UK’s national entities, England included, it is surely not unreasonable to seek a parity of democratic capacity and accountability within each of its constituent countries. Thus, there is an all-Wales consistency and an all-Scotland consistency in the powers of their respective local authorities, although both Parliaments have legislative autonomy, albeit not in identical fields.
When looking at the UK Government’s struggles with reform in England one has to look beyond the surface politics to the deeper habits of the state, to the tension between the rhetoric and the substance of proposed reforms. One is also driven to ask whether Wales’ seeming difficulties in enhancing its own constitutional arrangements are a by-product of the timorous approach to England.
As the most vulnerable of the three devolved countries, we have a stake in the outcome.
Earlier this year, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in her Mais lecture, said this: ‘Spending differently at the centre is not enough. It is no coincidence that Britain is one of the most politically centralised of advanced democracies, and one of the most geographically unequal too. While local leaders are asked to plan for the long term, to be accountable for regional outcomes, the fiscal reward for local economic success flows straight to the Exchequer. We need to change that – to liberate our regions from stifling Whitehall orthodoxies.’
Setting aside the familiar elision between Britain and England, what is being proposed for England – unless Andy Burnham intervenes – is a smorgasbord of powers, first set out in 2022 by the Conservative government. It had no less than five options on the menu:
Level 1: only a limited strategic role in delivering services.
Level 2: deals with county councils or combined authorities that are not led by an elected mayor.
Level 3: deals with more expansive powers and requiring the adoption of a mayor – either as a directly-elected leader of a county council or as chair of a combined authority. This would include powers to establish development corporations, and other powers over transport, local roads, urban regeneration and support for economic growth. Most of the existing combined authorities hold the Level 3 package of powers.
Level 4: extra powers for existing Level 3 institutions subject to meeting capacity governance and institutional culture criteria. These powers will include powers over skills and careers, transport functions, local energy planning, housing and regeneration.
Trailblazer deals: deals already agreed with Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, also involving options to consolidate multiple funding streams into more flexible single settlements.
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Last year the Institute of Government calculated that devolution (however defined) covered 48% of England’s population, 54% of its economic output and 26% of the land area. It added: ‘[If all the new deals are implemented as planned in 2025, this will increase to 64%, 67% and 54% respectively.’ These calculations confirm that, though significant, it is not a ‘national’ plan.
For those with extremely long memories and obsessive interests, this is all a long way from proposals put forward in the 1970s in a Memorandum of Dissent to the Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution – the Kilbrandon Report. The dissenting report was written by Lord Crowther-Hunt, a political scholar who became a minister in Harold Wilson’s government, and an economist, Alan Peacock, who later became Chief Adviser to the Department of Trade and Industry.
They said: ‘We need in England to rationalise the jungle of boundaries and replace them, if possible, by one standard set of regional boundaries…We need in England to create a centre of power in each region comparable with the Scottish and Welsh Offices…It should be democratic government not bureaucratic government.’
They wanted a scheme that would be uniform across the whole of the UK, with England split into five regions – although they were willing to concede that seven English regions might be necessary. Their proposal for one enormous region for London and the southeast of England, would have included 44% of England’s population, and would surely have exacerbated historical but still fast developing imbalances. (See map) Each region would have a single chamber Assembly of about 100 members, elected by STV.
One of their key aims, was not only to empower regional governments, but also to rejuvenate Parliament. Writing at a time before the creation of the current array of Parliamentary Select Committees, they thought the centre was seriously overloaded and were keen to disempower central government and reduce the size of the civil service. Even with the current level of devolution across the UK, it is difficult to argue that the load on central government is very much less today.
In one sense, their proposals were, perhaps, politically naïve in that they envisaged that ‘freed from local concerns’ MPs would be able to concentrate on national and international matters. This is not how most MPs have ever seen it.
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However, their proposals were also an echo of the concerns of another Royal Commission, that on local government in England, chaired by Lord Redcliffe-Maud. Its report, published in 1969, had proposed 58 new unitary authorities, specifically to end ‘the separation of urban areas from their rural hinterlands’. It also proposed eight Provincial Councils for England that would have taken over the functions of the then existing regional economic planning councils. In 1970, the new Conservative government set Redcliffe-Maud aside.
It is interesting that Redcliffe-Maud’s concern ‘to end the separation of urban areas from their rural hinterlands’ – a pre-echo of Crowther-Hunt and Peacock – seems to have no echo in current proposals for devolution in England. It is a weakness of the city deals approach. Even in England, except in the breach, it is not a national plan.
Critics of the proposals for England argue that the main test will come in defining the any fiscal proposals – crucial to defining any new institutions as delivery agents of central policy rather than autonomous political authorities. They complain that the Treasury will still retain control of over core funding allocations. History tells us that the thought of central government in Britain disempowering itself within England is, to say the least, unlikely.
We shall see whether old habits die hard – if at all. As the most vulnerable of the three devolved countries, we have a stake in the outcome.
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