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by Lib Dem team on 19 September, 2014
Scotland has voted to stay in the Union, we’re glad to say, but that’s far from the end of the story.
Politicians across the political spectrum in Westminster have promised more powers for the Scottish Parliament, the so-called “Devo Max”. That’s a good thing: there are plenty of areas where the Scots will do a better job of running their own affairs than Whitehall can, and being in the United Kingdom doesn’t mean every decision has to be made in London.
But what about the rest of us?
The Coalition government has done more than any other in recent decades to give powers to councils and cities across England, but we should go further. That’s not for any high-flown philosophical reason, it’s simply because there are a lot of things local councils and areas can simply do better than Westminster, and with more democratic legitimacy.
That means many of the things Westminster currently controls should instead be controlled locally, either by councils like Stockport or cities and counties like Greater Manchester. It also means giving more tax-raising powers to local councils: Central Government should tax us less (because they’re doing less), allowing local people to decide through the ballot box how much local tax they want to pay and what local services they want delivered.
The Scottish No vote is a huge opportunity. Westminster politicians have rushed to pledge more powers for Scotland, and the same logic applies to giving more powers cities, counties and councils in England.
8 Comments
English ‘Devo-max’ ? – AYE – for the WHOLE of ENGLAND – not the Balkanised claptrap you LieDims and Liebore want.
Signed – Northern Provincial Englishman !
This brings me no cheer. A panic attack has caused the three main parties to agree to constitutional change. They have talked the talk but let’s see them agree when it comes to walking the walk.
In 1997 Labour swept to power pledging to rid the House of Lords of its hereditary peers regardless of any other change. No party opposed this and yet, despite a 179 majority, Labour failed. 17 years later there are still 92 hereditary peers lording it over us. Constitutional change? Don’t hold your breath.
The England does need a devolved assembly, just like the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, I would prefere to see one for all of England, but there is no reason why there could not be several regional assemblies if the English prefered. Certainly what is not acceptable is Westminster trying to be a United Kingdom Government and the English Assembly as well. You cannot have a situation whereby certain MP cannot particupate in certain debates and cannot fully function as cabinet ministers. It could be a worse situation than we have now.
“There are plenty of areas where the Scots will do a better job of running their own affairs than Whitehall can”.
Well just name them for our enlightenment.
“It also means giving more tax-raising powers to local councils”. Well give us examples. Who pays?
As a citizen of the UK I expect to be subject to the same rules and regulations as every other UK citizen.
No, Trevor, please, not another layer of government. We pay far too much for it already.
I’d also support English devolution to elected regional governments – such as the northwest. Not only would it bring decision making much closer to us, it would probably be cheaper – no need for all those expensive London offices, civil servants and whatnot. Oh, and no need for all those MPs at Westminster if they were only dealing with the UK-wide issues.
What I am not keen on is the idea of devolving some responsibilities to the so-called “city regions”. They won’t be directly elected, nor will they be big enough to take on responsibility for the major services, like the NHS.
What a shambles by the political elites, with the Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Carmichael a major culprit.
Our United Kingdom has been saved by Gordon Brown to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.
On devolution there is absolutely no appetite for a further layer of Government ( regional assemblies were so unpopular even the North East would not have one in 2003). As for further tax raising powers for councils – this fills me with horror – imagine how much income tax Stockport would levy for supposedly needed services ( actually more high paid jobs with incredible pensions that the rest of us fund and don’t have ourselves to deliver at horrendous cost useless services).
So lets have some real democracy rather than the failed elites self interest of Clegg, Cameron and Milliband – eg referendums on Local Income Tax – I doubt this would get 10% support. Significant cuts to government spending (still 2 billion a week extra borrowing due to state spending) by cutting state employees and pensions with a proportion of the savings to lower income tax – this would I believe get significant support and do the economy good allowing it to invest in productive assets rather than costly public services.
The people need to have a say on these issues not have some clapped out political agenda such as local income tax foisted on them.
In this regard I am minded to agree with Labour’s stance of a constitutional conference with the people having a proper say.
Frederick Kenny’s comments are an example of how many British seem to assume that adding an extra layer of government would mean that we would have more (and less efficient) government with the same job being duplicated at two or more levels. Many Europeans are familiar with different levels of government whereby a task is performed at an appropriate level of government, but not duplicated or triplicated at inappropriate levels. Over much of Europe, assignment of each task to the most appropriate level can, and often does, result in less government, run in a more efficient way.
I became familiar with this concept when I represented a UK professional organisation on a working party of a related trans-European organisation. It was very interesting to see how this working party operated. Everyone worked hard to develop good techniques and standards for making and analyzing technical products and carrying out quality control. All were aware of the importance of using good European standards so that goods from any country that adhered to these standards could use them as marks of quality for international trade. Crude nationalism was absent and standards were selected following amicable discussion to select technical specifications based entirely on technical merit. Our working party included representatives of government, industry and academia from a wide selection of European countries.
It was very useful to learn about the different levels of government in other countries. Most of them have provincial governments that operate in the way that we are not familiar with in England, e.g. the Lander of Germany and the Cantons of Switzerland. Only the French seemed to be more centralized than the UK. French government people, unlike those representing the UK government and other European countries, were reluctant to comment even informally on specific technical matters unless they had been briefed by a senior civil servant. Hence they found it difficult to have their views included in our final report.
In contrast, I learned a lot about the pragmatic approach of the Swiss who were always very open in discussion. Also, they seem to be remarkably free from the “not invented here” syndrome. They are among the keenest to apply the best European standards because their international trade depends on it. When a European Standard is published in Brussels, the Swiss are among the first to adopt it, which they do by passing appropriate legislation by their national government. I suspect that the highly respected Swiss viewpoint is often taken account of by Brussels when EU standards are developed.
European Standards are highly regarded internationally. We ignore them at our peril because other large standards organisations in the USA, South America and Asia prefer to take account of European Standards rather than bothering with those drafted by individual nations. Clearly, if we listened to Nigel Farage and adopted our own “Little Englander” standards, our own trade would shrivel and die because UKIP standards would not correspond with those used by major commercial organisations in the rest of the world.