England’s big city mayors are leaving Glasgow trailing in their wake
A decade of devolution to metro mayors of England’s largest city regions has left Glasgow behind. It is time to give the city the powers and resources its English equivalents have.
A decade of devolution to metro mayors of England’s largest city regions has left Glasgow behind. It is time to give the city the powers and resources its English equivalents have.
There has been a lot of change in how the largest cities in England are governed in recent years, with more on the way. Every large city, from Manchester to Liverpool, has a mayor that chairs a city-region wide authority and some degree of policy autonomy. And the Government has signalled its intent to pass further powers down to these mayors in its recent English Devolution White Paper.
But over 10 years on from George Osborne’s announcement that Greater Manchester was to get the mayoral ball rolling, there is still one large city in the UK that doesn’t have these powers. And without them Glasgow risks being left further behind.
Scotland (as well as Wales and Northern Ireland) of course received a devolved settlement long before Greater Manchester. Giving Scotland a degree of devolved power was a 1997 manifesto commitment that Labour quickly honoured. While several powers, such as housing and transport, have gone to Holyrood, there has been seemingly little desire from the Scottish Government to pass these powers any further down.
Any supporter of devolution should see that the next logical step would be to continue to devolve down to the areas that Scotland’s many economies operate over on a day-to-day basis. Instead Holyrood has hoarded them.
This is a particular problem for Scotland’s largest city – which is home to around a fifth of the Scottish economy – in particular, and it shows in two ways. First, its politicians have very few levers to pull over things like transport and tax-raising. And second, what powers it does have are fragmented across many local authorities – the city’s footprint goes beyond the boundaries of the Glasgow City local authority into neighbouring authorities, while its commuting area stretches farther still.
Large English cities also faced these problems. The introduction of the mayor and combined authorities in England are designed to fix them. They have created a political office and an institution that can take on and tailor policy that better served the city. And they make matching (appropriate) economic policy to the area that people live and work their lives over possible.
So while Scotland was at the forefront of devolution in the 1990s, developments south of the border in the last decade now mean that Glasgow is being left behind. And with every further deal that Westminster does with the ever more prominent mayors of big English city regions, it is left ever further adrift.
The rationale for devolution to city regions doesn’t change when it crosses the Scottish border. Both the Scottish and the UK economies need a stronger performing Glasgow. The UK Government sees devolution to big cities as a way of achieving this. It needs the Scottish Government – it is a devolved matter – to follow through on this.
To do so it should create a mayoral strategic authority (the new name for combined authorities) to cover the Greater Glasgow area – an area that matches the commuting patterns of the people that live there. There isn’t a perfect geography to do this. As in England, this will likely be the source of much political disagreement. Note though that while there were bumps in the road, most large English city regions have overcome these disagreements to form an authority. And there is precedent for this in the Glasgow area with the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (covering 12 local authorities) and the Glasgow City Region City Deal (covering 8 local authorities).
And a directly-elected metro mayor or provost should be the face of this institution. Metro mayors in England have already had several meetings with the Westminster government since last year’s election. There has not been an equivalent voice at the table for these meetings for Glasgow.
Much of the current policy discussion around devolution is focussed on about filling in the map of England. From a growth perspective we should be much more concerned about giving powers and resources to Greater Glasgow that are currently enjoyed by England’s big city regions. The UK needs a stronger-performing Glasgow. And so does Scotland. It’s time the city region got the powers to help achieve it.
Leave a comment
Be the first to add a comment.