Every mayor will have a local skills plan
All of the metro mayor manifestos have plans to boost local skills, but each metro mayor candidate then has a local twist on the idea. Steve Rotheram in Liverpool City Region is proposing a “Young Person’s Guarantee” promising a job, training opportunity or an apprenticeship to every young person out of work for more than six months, while Sam Williams in the West of England wants every school to have a careers advisor, support the combined authority’s “Future Bright” career coaching programme, and improve language training and English courses.
That the candidates are proposing their own local skills plana makes sense for two reasons. First, the metro mayors have control over their adult education budget within their local area thanks to the devolution process. The mayors can design and must deliver skills programmes that match their city’s local needs and what they promised to their voters. They are responsible for this area locally, and better outcomes depend on their leadership.
Second, improving local skills is crucial for improving local prosperity. Cities are ultimately local labour markets, and a more skilled workforce is strongly associated with the performance of the local economy. Yet while the national debate on post-18 education often focuses on universities, in many places there are a large number of workers who lack any qualifications. These workers need access to apprenticeships, training courses, and other kinds of non-university, adult education. Mayors now need to provide these to close the economic divides in cities and across the country.
Mayors want to build homes – and are changing the politics of the green belt
Almost every candidate has a section addressing housing in their city. Candidates have a clear understanding that our cities are not building enough homes, and proudly state how many homes they intend to build or have built, even if they may lack powers over planning and housing that other mayors have. Andy Street in the West Midlands describes building almost twice the amount of homes over 2017-19 as the target required as “great progress”; Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester sets out how rough sleeping was reduced by over half in his tenure and how he aims to build more homes for social rent; and housing is a key battleground for the competing plans of Shaun Bailey and Sadiq Khan in London.
This is a big difference from how local politics in England has often worked, with politicians in local councils commonly pledging to stop development or tear up local plans. The mayors want to take on the responsibility for housing in their cities, and as such, need to propose solutions for their cities as a whole. It is a vindication of the logic of city-region governance – rather than having multiple squabbling councils in big cities trying to avoid their common housing problem, making decisions at the level of economic geography forces local politicians to tackle it head on.
These housing pressures have also impacted how manifestos handle the green belt. While most major manifestos do pledge to protect the green belt, this is not true everywhere. Andy Burnham’s manifesto pledges to “minimise the impact of housing on the green belt”, a distinct change from his 2017 promise of “no net loss of green belt” after the collapse of Greater Manchester Spatial Framework last year over green belt release in Stockport. Other candidates such as Stephen Williams in the West of England are specific about wanting to protect green fields rather than the green belt per se.
The problem for the mayors is that if they take ownership of housing outcomes in their cities, they will have to accept changes to the green belt as their cities grow, or be blamed for shortages and worsening affordability. Mayors can approach this by pushing for strategic reviews of the green belt with the help of co-operative local authorities. This would ensure that the most appropriate areas for growth (such as undeveloped land next to railway stations) are all released for new development at the same time, rather than constantly losing green space thanks to un-coordinated and constant ‘nibbling’.
Council tax is a key political dividing line
Taxation is a tricky topic for politicians, whether they are in national or in local government. Yet even though it is controversial at the local level, taxation in England is highly centralised. The chancellor has enormous power to raise or decrease all sorts of taxes, while councils have much more limited power over council taxes, business rates, and a few other fees and charges.
The lack of power councils have over taxation is compounded by the removal of grant funding and austerity within local government. The ever-growing demands of statutory spending items such as social care mean many local authorities are forced to raise council tax as much as they can every time they can, regardless of the party which controls them. The system for funding local government is increasingly in need of top-to-bottom change and greater fiscal devolution, but little has been forthcoming from national politicians who anxious of the political risks of reform.
The metro mayors are an exception though to the rest of English local government. They have far fewer statutory spending responsibilities, and many of their activities are funded by precepts which sit on top of existing council tax bills for local authorities. They have more freedom to either raise taxes to spend on local priorities, or cut taxes to save money for residents. This is heightened by the fact that council tax – due to its highly regressive nature – makes up a much higher share of housing costs in cities in the North and Midlands of England where housing is otherwise cheaper than it is in cities in the South.
As a result, local taxation emerges as a key divide in the metro mayor manifestos. Conservative candidates, such as Matthew Robinson in West Yorkshire pledge “no new taxes” and Andy Street in the West Midlands has committed to no council tax precept until at least 2024. Most Labour candidates, such as Sadiq Khan in London, declare that they “want council tax to be as low as possible but [won’t] apologise for having to increase the council tax precept to keep Londoners safe”, or remain silent on the issue and emphasise the benefits of their spending plans.
Altogether, this indicates that the debate on fiscal devolution is developing at the metro mayor level, and the public has an appetite for deciding locally how much tax and spending should take place. For Labour, it is a sign that that fiscal devolution does not have to mean spending cuts for poorer areas, provided they can win the argument and mayoral elections. For the Conservatives, local taxation is emerging as a key issue among their local parties in cities. In other words, the case for local government funding and finance reform is being won in the metro mayor contests.
If mayors want to fix local buses, they may need to consider road charging
While in London the Mayor has been held responsible for the capital’s transport network by voters for decades, the same cannot yet be said for all of the other metro mayors. However, many of the candidates want to change this by using the powers in the Bus Services Act 2017 and the funding unlocked by the Government’s National Bus Strategy to take control of local buses.
Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire, Liam Byrne in the West Midlands, Stephen Williams in the West of England, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool City Region, Jessie Joe Jacobs in Tees Valley, and Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and Aidan van der Weyer in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have all expressed interest in intervening in the bus market their manifestos, typically through franchising. This raises the prospect of the metro mayors taking ownership of the National Bus Strategy in their cities, and is a step towards them taking full responsibility for urban transport, ‘levelling up’ the mayors outside the capital to London’s level.
Despite this though, introducing charges for car travel in cities is uncommon in the manifestos, with many mayors ruling it out. Stephen Williams in the West of England is unusual for pledging to ask for the power to introduce a Workplace Parking Levy in city centres and office parks.
This is despite the fact that London’s bus services depends on the congestion charge. The revenues help support more and higher quality buses, and the reduced congestion in cities also makes buses more rapid and reliable. If the mayors want to have bus services and public transport as good as London, they may need to consider London-style approaches to paying for it.
Mayors are taking on more responsibility. Government should provide it.
Altogether, the mayoral candidates want the mayoral offices they are running for to be stronger and to be responsible for making their cities better. This chimes with the public mood – Centre for Cities has shown that 83 per cent of metro mayor voters support more devolution to the mayors in at least one policy area.
It is now the job of national politicians to listen. Voters and their local politicians want to take tough decisions locally. But this can only happen if Government commits to answering this call. While the past year with Brexit and the pandemic has been exceptionally busy, the next year should see Government restart the devolution agenda, starting by publishing the long-awaited devolution white paper, which was promised again in the recent Plan for Growth. By doing so, the Government will place the mayors on a firmer footing, and allow them to assume more responsibility for local problems and local decisions.
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