Agenda item

Devolution away from Whitehall

 

Councillor Toby Neal asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

 

Does the Leader agree with me that figures demonstrating an imbalance between infrastructure spending in London and elsewhere show that the government takes a London-centric approach to politics and demonstrate the need for greater devolution away from Whitehall?

 

Councillor Jon Collins replied as follows:

 

Thank you, Lord Mayor, and can I thank Councillor Neal for his question.

 

Yes, I agree. Major infrastructure projects show that the South and South East dominate with 60% of funding allocated to them. In 2013 London got 32% of the total spend and the East Midlands got 6%, so there is a massive imbalance.

 

The government does take a London-centric view as MPs spend a lot of time there and the vast majority of advisors and staff live there. London is a fantastic City but costs are escalating beyond affordability and it is not in its interests to keep growing when the rest of the country isn’t.

 

Devolution is necessary to achieve local powers for transport, planning, health and social care, etc. It is important to make a case for a Combined Authority to enable local powers which can be secured through negotiation with the government and the Chancellor.

 

I would argue that those kind of powers should be available to any group of authorities  that can get together to work as a Combined Authority, that can make a case for devolution, make a case in the context of value for money and ability to deliver good governance but are available locally so that local people can have a greater say in what happens in their communities, in their towns, in their cities, in their counties, rather than the kind of say that they currently get through the one size fits all approach to service delivery championed by Westminster, championed by Whitehall and supported by, I’m afraid,  political parties of all kinds and, of course, backed up by very centralised and centralising Civil Service.

 

But the Manchester model, from my perspective, is only a starting point and I think some of the work that one of our own MPs, Graham Allen, has done whilst chairing the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee, actually highlights the way forward on this. Some of us will have seen the document Graham Allen’s committee has produced, and I won’t summarise all of it, but what I would say is that essentially what he’s arguing for is summed up by saying that other parts of the country should get a little bit of what Scotland’s been offered. I think specifically he argues for a constitutional position for local government with independence from central government guaranteed in law, a guaranteed proportion of the national income tax taken topped up to address local need, with the discretion for local authorities to spend that funding on an agreed and enhanced list of responsibilities, and a timetable for the introduction of tax varying powers, although I think that is a secondary issue.

 

Fundamentally, the argument is not that we want to take more money from people, the argument has to be, and is, that we want greater say on behalf of local people for the money that is already collected locally and simply handed over to Westminster, only for chunks of that to then come back, but come back with strings.

 

So, that’s why I think the devolution argument is such an important argument. Not only an important argument, it’s an argument that at the moment has particular currency, but also with the proposals going forward to parliament for greater devolution for Scotland, we are at a particular moment when we as local authorities, as local councillors, as communities, cities, counties, regions can say “you know what, what’s good enough for Scotland is good enough for the rest of us and, if you can trust Scotland to make the right kind of decisions, you can trust other parts of the country to make the right kind of decisions as well”. Scotland is rightly being given greater control, greater responsibility, greater autonomy over each decision making process but, actually, as a population, the population of Scotland is only some 200,000 people more than the population of the East Midlands. Now I’m not arguing that the East Midlands is a nation, but what I am arguing is that if they can be trusted to make some of those decisions then we can be trusted to make those decisions too. It’s the way to rebalance this country democratically; it’s the way to rebalance this country economically. It is absolute common sense we need to be pressing for it now because we have a unique opportunity and I really think that there is a possibility that we can, on this agenda, be successful.

 

Autumn Statement

 

Councillor Mike Edwards asked the following question of the Deputy Leader of the Council:

 

Can the Deputy Leader comment on the Chancellor’s autumn statement and does he share my concern that public spending is set to return to levels not seen since the 1930s?

 

Councillor Graham Chapman replied as follows:

 

Thank you, Lord Mayor, and thank you, Councillor Edwards for the question.

 

I want to start off by saying that the Chancellor has no money. There is no money left.

 

The current deficit is £107 billion; it is supposed to be by now, according to his initial plan in 2010, around about £47 billion. It is this amount because welfare spending is increasing, but not the sort of welfare spending the Chancellor is targeting, it is welfare spending on the elderly, it is welfare spending on housing benefit because there's a housing boom and rents are going up and the housing market is escalating. So welfare benefits are continuing to increase.

 

There has also been a £27 billion fall in tax receipts and that is because of low pay, that is because the tax giveaways to corporates has been excessive and beyond our means, and that is because there has been inadequate public sector capital investment to create a multiplier which gets people into decent jobs in order to be able to pay taxes.

 

With this context what would you expect the Chancellor to do and what did he do? He gave away more money yet still, more than he raised. He changed the stamp duty regime and he graduated it. You would've expected that to be cost neutral, however, that is going to cost the exchequer £800 million. He made promises for £7 billion worth of tax cuts, to give him credit he didn't say when and he didn't say how, but they are totally unfounded at the moment. He abolished tax on inherited pension funds and he froze fuel duty despite the fact that petrol prices came down. To give him credit he gave £2 billion to the NHS, it isn't a permanent thing, it is a sticking plaster to see over winter. He also dished out a few Christmas trinkets such as the abolition of tax for air flights for under 12s. I'm sure that's going to make a big difference to the growth of the economy.

 

The other interesting thing, before we answer why, is what he did not do. There is no long term strategy for recovering income, to bridge the £27 billion shortfall. There is no long term investment plan. He did indeed announce £15 billion for the roads programme over 6 years, but if you look at the roads programme over the last 6 years it amounted to about £15 billion depending on whether you included the local government contributions, if you did, it was actually more in the past than he's announced for the future. He made a big fuss about research and development investment  (£5.9 billion), but it's over 6 years, and for the last few years that has been exceeded, so it's actually a reduction in research and development investment. In 2010 alone there was £1.4 billion worth of research and development investment in the Ministry of Defence. He did nothing about skills, the one guaranteed way of increasing GDP, increasing wages and increasing tax take. Nothing has been done about the skills deficit in this country.

 

So we then ask what his motives were. One of the motives is to create a mini housing boom, or to sustain a housing boom until May next year. That is why he's changed the stamp duty. That is also why he's changed the pension arrangements so that people can get access to their pension pots in order to invest in housing, and that will start in April, so there may be a month when some of that feeds into the economy. But that is carefully judged to create the feel good factor before May; he's playing with the long term economy in order to get that feel good factor. Freebies to the client election group, for example tax exemption on inherited pensions. Then there was the grand gesture to let people know that basically he was a tax cutting Chancellor, and that is why he offered the £7 billion inducements which are totally unfunded and untimed but that, again, is to create the boom.

 

Having done all this he's left with a problem. He's left with a problem of increasing debt, he's left with a problem of falling revenues, he's left with a problem of extravagant promises and he's left with a problem of low long term investment in the one thing that will get the economy growing - long term growth.

 

So what then does he do to balance his books? He has a one club policy and that is to beat the state. This is where the answer to the question comes. If he implements what he says he is going to implement there will be a 42% reduction in the non-ringfenced departments between now and 2020. That is police, it is the armed forces, transport and it will also be local government.

This will mean, for us, a further cut of £77 million on our net budget and we will also have to absorbing pressures of up to £30 million from additional needs of the elderly, because the elderly population is increasing, and the continued need of child protection, because that is still going up and still needs to be responded to. This will mean that our budget, by 2020, will have fallen, over 9 years, by 42% on the base 2010 level.

 

We have survived better than most councils. I won't go into the reasons, but we have survived, but if this does happen we are talking about loss of leisure centre, libraries, home care services to the disabled and elderly. We are talking about total loss of youth services, children's centres, early intervention, road repairs, building maintenance, pest control, and parks maintenance. This is so that we can maintain a skeleton care service for the elderly and a service for children in need and children who are vulnerable.

 

Meanwhile taxes for the best off will remain at 45%. Council Tax on a mansion worth millions in parts of London will be less than some of the average Council Tax in parts of the North. All at a time when corporations are stacking up cash balances they can't invest because there is insufficient demand because they haven't got the confidence because we don't know what's going to happen over Europe and wages are so low that demand is relatively flat. So they are stacking up cash balances while we are having to cut and, at the same time, there has been an announcement on a reduction in tax for the oil industry, many of whom contribute towards the Conservative party, and all that is happening while we and our population are facing the prospect of 42% cuts.

 

It is unsustainable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said its unsustainable. The Office of Budget Responsibility have pointed out how dramatic it is. The BBC has also drawn our attention to the dramatic nature of the cuts, although it did get some substantial criticism from the government for doing so. The National Audit Office has expressed concerns, as well as local government experts.

 

What does, however, give me a tiny bit of hope, is that the Conservatives will never get the chance to implement it, and it is up to us to make sure that that happens.

 

Arts funding in Nottingham

 

Councillor Glyn Jenkins asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture:

 

Would the Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture tell Council how much money is spent per head of population on arts funding in Nottingham compared to figures in London, and does he agree with me that more money should be spent in other areas?

 

Councillor Dave Trimble replied as follows:

 

Thank you, Lord Mayor, and can I thank Councillor Jenkins for his question.

 

Like the Leader, I understand that London is the capital city and I know that it has fantastic art galleries, among many other great leisure and cultural institutions. But that doesn’t account for the level of bias towards London against the rest of the country.

 

Just a year ago a report was produced entitled ‘Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital’. It highlighted that London receives £20.00 per head of population whilst the rest of England receives just £3.60 per head of population.

 

On top of this, in the same year the Department of Culture, Media and Sport distributed £450 million of public funds to national cultural institutions. Of that, London got £69.00 per head and the rest of the country got £4.60 per head, a ratio of 15 to 1. London has 15% of the national population but gets 15 times more of the national cultural institutions pot. How can that be right?

 

Lord Mayor, you may think it can’t get any worse but it’s not even a double whammy, it’s a triple whammy. In an article published just last week in the trade mag ‘Arts Professional’, entitled ‘Exclusive: London authorities fail to pull their weight’, it shows that London boroughs themselves spend very little of their own money on the arts. Whilst this is a surprise, it really shouldn’t be, well, why would they spend money on the arts when it’s already being done for them by the government?

 

What’s even more galling is that wealthy London boroughs such as Westminster and Islington spend virtually nothing per head of population on the arts, whilst the core cities like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds are among the highest spend per head of population.

 

It’s no wonder that the largest cuts in the arts are hitting the core cities hard. In Nottingham, since the coalition came to power, we have cut over 50% of our arts funding, whilst under the Labour government Nottingham benefited from Nottingham Contemporary and the New Art Exchange.

 

We have a very strong working relationship with the local office of the Arts Council and I’m absolutely certain our arts offer would be all the poorer without them, but what is absolutely clear is the need for a far greater share for the East Midlands. Out of the 9 regions, the East Midlands gets the second lowest amount per head in the country. Arts Council England distributes £320 million a year and, just a month ago, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee concluded that a clear imbalance exists in favour of London. It stated that Arts Council England should restore some balance across the country and should do so with great urgency.

 

Lord Mayor, earlier the Leader answered a question on a London centric approach by the government to infrastructure. He concluded that we needed greater devolution from Whitehall in order to counter that. Like infrastructure, spending on the arts also needs a much brighter light shining on it, after all, investment in our arts are enjoyed not only by our city residents, but also by residents right across the county and beyond.

 

Combined Authority

 

Councillor Gul Khan asked the following question of the Deputy Leader of the Council:

 

Could the Deputy Leader update Council on progress towards achieving a combined authority with fellow councillors across Nottinghamshire?

 

Councillor Graham Chapman replied as follows:

 

Since February this year, Nottingham City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and the seven Nottinghamshire districts have been working more closely together to grow the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire economy. It goes under the effete title of the Economic Prosperity Committee.

 

Over the past year, it has become ever clearer that the coalition Government, and the Labour opposition, all believe that Combined Authorities should be established to co-ordinate regeneration, economic development and transport. Recent announcements about Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority show that Government will consider devolving considerable money and power to Combined Authority areas.

 

A Combined Authority would allow Nottingham and the other Nottinghamshire authorities to put much of the co-operation we have developed over the past year in the Economic Prosperity Committee on to a statutory footing. However, a new Combined Authority would not replace existing authorities. Instead, the Leaders of the nine existing authorities would meet as the N2 Combined Authority to co-ordinate their efforts to grow the economy. It would only receive powers from central government, not from existing councils.

 

It has 3 advantages:

 

(1)  it will force councils to co-operate on economic development in particular, and is seeking powers such as for strategic planning, housing, skills, employment, business support, transport and strategic housing. There is also a list of further powers including policing and licensing;

 

(2)  it will ask for central government budget for skills, further education, housing development, tourism currently with the Homes and Communities Agency, and transport. Given the severe cuts in local government budgets it may also be the only way in which councils can survive;

 

(3)  it will give the council independence from some of the arbitrary decision making of the Local Enterprise Partnership.

 

However, there are risks. First we get bogged down in unnecessary governance squabbles such as metro mayors. Second, we spend all our efforts on process and little on what we are actually going to do.

 

Fortunately, there is consensus that we don’t want a metro mayor, not even from Mansfield. Manchester got conned, or perhaps it’s what elements of Manchester wanted all along. As for the second point, fortunately the Economic Prosperity Committee has already spent time on policy.

 

The third danger is disagreement over the division of resources handed down, and that is going to take some great level of diplomacy and give and take. It is inevitable and just need to be managed.

 

We can’t avoid process entirely in order to set the organisation up. Leaders met on 28 November to discuss what changes they would like to see in the area, and how a Combined Authority could help support these changes. The Economic Prosperity Committee will meet again on 19 December to discuss whether existing proposals for a Combined Authority will meet the area’s needs. Should this be the case, each of the nine authorities will then make a formal decision early in the new year on whether to create a Combined Authority.  The next step would be to submit our proposals to Government. 

 

Garden Refuse Collection

 

Councillor Roger Steel asked the following of the Portfolio Holder for Community Services:

 

Does the Portfolio Holder agree with me that in view of the changes to the weather in recent years that the garden refuse collection should be put back by one month in 2015, thereby extending it by a month in the Autumn to capture late leaf fall?

 

Councillor Nicola Heaton replied as follows:

 

Thank you, Lord Mayor and I would like to thank Councillor Steel for his question.

 

In light of nothing occurring in the last two months to change my position, I refer him to the answer I gave to his question at Full Council on Monday 13 October of this year.

 

Redeployment of skilled workforce

 

Councillor Roger Steel asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Jobs and Growth:

 

Will the imminent completion of the A453 and the tram extensions in 2015 affect the number of local people currently employed who have hopefully developed further skills? How will this skilled workforce be redeployed and indeed sustained?

 

Councillor Nick McDonald replied as follows:

 

Thank you, Lord Mayor, and can I thank Councillor Steel for his question.

 

Can I firstly say how pleasing it is that, at one time having opposed lines 2 and 3 of the tram, the Tories now in Nottingham are now not only regular users of the tram, or at least Twitter would suggest that, but they now appear to recognise the significant employment benefits it’s brought to the City and, indeed, seem anxious to ensure that it’s employment benefits are protected long term. I think on this side of the Chamber we would all applaud there damascene conversion.

 

Of course, the issue of how we ensure that employment benefits from major construction projects like this are preserved is extremely important. As Councillor Steel may be aware Nottingham City Council’s Jobs Hub works with employers to get Nottingham citizens into work and help them to develop their skills. It is through the work of the Jobs Hub that we have been able to ensure that so many opportunities have been given to people in Nottingham, particularly young people over the last few years and, indeed, last week achieved our 1000^th apprenticeship for Nottingham City residents since we first began our apprenticeship initiative in 2012. A major achievement, I’m sure you will all agree.

 

What Councillor Steel may not know is that the work of the Jobs Hub extends far beyond the tram and the A453 and, indeed, the Hub now includes, not only a dedicated sector approach, but a dedicated Construction Advisor.  We are currently advising on 17 major infrastructure projects, including the A453 and tram extension and we have had some real successes in getting contractors to take on Nottingham employees and apprentices.  There are 14 more construction projects in the pipeline throughout the City on which we will focus as they come on stream. 

 

There are actually three ways in which we support employment in the construction centres - access to a sector based work academy, construction based employment training, and referrals to approved construction agency.  In addition, over 50 residents have been supported into construction related apprenticeships since April this year. More generally we have supported 882 Nottingham citizens into work through the Jobs Hub this year, 345 have been in construction.

 

I think the question is a fair one, how do we ensure that when we have major projects draw to a close the experiences and skills gained by those local people working on those projects are protected and sustained? The answer is that because we have one of the best, if not the best, employment support services in the UK within the Council, we are able to use that service to ensure access to opportunities for a wide selection of projects, not just the A453 and the tram, and it is worth noting that the list of current and future projects shows just how our regeneration agenda has grown and become more ambitious over the last few years. So lets list a few of them:

Basford Hall Development

Harvey Hadden

Highcross - Radford Homes

Kingsthorpe/Stonebridge Housing Development

Lenton Flats refurbishment

Nottingham Trent University (Clifton Campus)

Robin Hood Chase Housing Development

Southglade Food Park

University of Nottingham Chemistry Building

University of Nottingham George Green Library 

Central Fire Station

Gas works

Bestwood Park Drive West

Nottingham Skills Hub

Sneinton Market, with many more in the pipeline

 

I would hope anyone hearing that list would agree with me that our local agenda of delivering regeneration and growth is an ambitious one, and to refer back to the comments and questions from my colleagues earlier, doing that in an environment in which we’re dealing with unprecedented cuts to our local government revenue budgets.

 

My final word on this relates to procurement. One of the ways we can best ensure more local people benefit from local opportunities is by ensuring that the Council spends its money in a way that makes sure local people get opportunities. I would ask this Council, firstly, to note the progress we’ve made on this front, having raised the percentage of local suppliers from 22% in 2011 to 46% so far this year, that is a rise of over 100%, and the fact that we now have in place a procurement policy introduced this year that commits the Council to a 10% year on year rise in the percentage of local suppliers to 2017, a 5% year on year increase in the number of local jobs delivered, 1 apprenticeship per £million spent at least, alongside a commitment to move all of our suppliers to paying the living wage to those employees, including in the care sector. A commitment not just to the number of jobs but to the quality of pay, something rightly raised by Councillor Edwards and Councillor Chapman earlier.

 

So, in summary, yes I fully recognise the need to ensure that local projects deliver local jobs and do so sustainably through our Jobs Hub, through our long term list of major schemes, and through our own procurement we are ensuring that is the case. Long may that continue, because getting our local people into work, into good, sustainable, well paid work, is a key priority of this Council and rightly so.