Emergency Motion on ‘Devolution deal’ for the ‘Manchester City Region’

This emergency motion has been submitted to Left Unity conference by the Wigan branch

This conference condemns the imposition by the Government, with the eager support of Greater Manchester’s Labour Grandees, led by Wigan’s Lord Peter Smith and Manchester’s Sir Richard Leese, of an alleged ‘devolution deal’ for Greater Manchester, announced last Monday (3rd November) which will change the way a renamed Greater Manchester will be locally governed, without any prior public consultation, debate or scrutiny, and regardless of whether the people of Greater Manchester agree with it or not.

Conference believes its imposition deprives everyone living in Greater Manchester from being able to take part in a thoroughly open and democratic debate on what genuine devolution to the English regions might ideally look like (and what those ‘regions’ might consist of) based on the promises made by the Prime Minister, subsequent to the referendum result in Scotland. Also, based on the calls made by Labour nationally, for a constitutional convention to discuss how we are governed and what devolved powers ‘the regions’ might have within that.

devo-1

Conference believes that it also deprives them, following on from such a discussion and debate, to then vote for, or against whatever the system finally proposed.

Conference notes the so-called ‘devolution agreement’:

i) simply offloads the administration of some of national Government’s existing responsibilities and obligations onto a new (initially unelected) Mayoral led Council system, with a Cabinet made up of the leaders of all of Greater Manchester’s local authorities, which would take over the powers of the existing Greater Manchester Combined Authority (formerly known as AGMA) which most residents will probably have never heard of, but was behind the hugely unpopular Greater Manchester Congestion Charge idea, (which they did at least give residents a referendum on), Greater Manchester’s Police Commissioner (whose job will cease to exist) and Transport for Greater Manchester (formerly GMPTE/GMITA).

ii) is focused not on the needs of Greater Manchester residents but on new Mayor working with ‘other partners’ to help employers, and to promote business and commerce in the City region, their success at which will have a kind of incentive bonus attached to it. Also, to oversee the integration of health and social care, and a 10 year £300 million housing investment programme. However, there is no mention as to whether the extra money the Government will be providing (subject to a whole raft of conditions imposed by the Government – including imposition of the new City Region Mayoral system) will be in addition to what NHS England currently spends in Greater Manchester, and all of Greater Manchester’s ten existing local authorities already annually spend on social care and on housing investment, etc.

The new City Region Council (or Assembly) would be effectively little more than a well paid committee controlled by Labour, which applauds the work of the new Mayor, simply endorses what he or she decides and does, and then gets stuck into the free buffet and drinks provide for by the public purse, and putting in their claims for out of pocket expenses for attending.

iii) will result in job cuts, and service cuts somewhere in the country if not also in Greater Manchester, since from the point of view of the Treasury – the principal reason for the entire exercise is to reduce Government spending and present budget deficit.

iv) has little or nothing to do with allowing ordinary people in Greater Manchester or throughout the English regions to have more say and democratic control over their own lives and communities, and in how Government revenues are spent in their area and wider region. The only reason the word devolution is used, being in order that the whole exercise, and the considerable savings to the Treasury, can be better politically dressed up by the Government (and Labour) as an exercise in such to the English regions, and as the Chancellor is reported as saying is “in order to make Greater Manchester a “northern powerhouse” i.e. is simply in order to try an put a better spin on a continuing programme of public spending cuts for the ‘region’.

v) will help to further entrench so-called public-private sector partnerships, and the privatisation/out sourcing of public services in local Government including the potential franchising of railway stations, the introduction of compulsory smart ticketing across all transport networks, and re-organisation how existing local council services are provided and run.

vi) does not devolve any real power and political decision making downwards to local communities across Greater Manchester whatsoever, but will instead help to concentrate them in the hands of a single person in the shape of the new Mayor.

vii) takes Greater Manchester out of the North West region (Merseyside’s Labour Council leaders may yet follow suit shortly) leaving the Tories with a much better chance of winning back at some later date (they hope) what’s left of the region (i.e. the more rural, leafy bits of Lancashire and Cheshire) which will have less clout than they would if the NW’s included the existing metropolitan areas of Greater Manchester and Merseyside.

viii) involves Labour’s Greater Manchester Grandees such as Lord Peter Smith from Wigan, and Sir Richard Leese from Manchester, simply accepting what the Coalition are going to give them in terms of a financial settlement over the next decade, rather than investigating what any devolved region including the Manchester City Region, might actually need, to do all the things that the people in the region want it to do (i.e. a needs budget), and demanding sufficient finances from Government to implement that.

ix) shows how little the Labour Party’s Grandees in Greater Manchester ultimately care about the views of even Labour’s own members and supporters, let alone the wider public, in simply agreeing the Chancellor’s proposals without any proper form of public consultation, or scrutiny, and denying the public any right not only to discuss what kind of devolved Government they might like or want to see in England in the future, but to even have any say on the one they’re going to get either.

This conference calls for, and supports the building of a broad-based grassroots campaign across Greater Manchester to demand that the public be allowed the right to have a say on this or any other proposed ‘devolution package’ for GM and/or the NW, before it is implemented, in the shape of a Greater Manchester wider referendum.

Additionally, within the framework of such a campaign for Left Unity members to oppose this particular undemocratic bi-partisan deal by Labour and the Tories, which benefits the leading politicians of both parties (for different reasons) rather than the people of Greater Manchester, and is little other than an attempted political stitch up by them providing cover for the already planned Government spending cuts by both the main parties.


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1 comment

One response to “Emergency Motion on ‘Devolution deal’ for the ‘Manchester City Region’”

  1. Jack says:

    I don’t understand point Vii – do you mean in theory if the whole of the northwest becomes a devolved region in the future? Which I suspect (and hope) will be unlikely! ?


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