Ex-top civil servant defends One Yorkshire proposal

Philip Rycroft, a former permanent secretary to the Department for Exiting the European Union, called the One Yorkshire notion “quite attractive” and said proposals for the make up of devolution should never be dismissed.

In the second part of his interview with The Yorkshire Post, Mr Rycroft said that devolved administrations around the world were not always based on economies and often centred around shared culture and history.

However Mr Rycroft, who was born in Kirby Malham near Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales, added that such a settlement may be difficult to achieve given the Government’s mandate that devolution deals be based around city regions.

“Nothing in this space ought to be excluded and it should be what people feel comfortable with,” he said.

“I personally believe that, with its slightly romantic nature, that One Yorkshire was quite attractive.

“People feel an identity with Yorkshire, it is one of the most powerful identities in England.

“Obviously Yorkshire encompasses many different geographies. There are very rural parts, there are big cities, York is a very different city to Leeds or Bradford. But overarching all of this, we do feel an identity and connection to that geography and sense of place and would like to see an expression of that in local government.”

Yorkshire has one active devolution deal in South Yorkshire, with elections planned for a mayor for West Yorkshire due in May. North Yorkshire continues to hold discussions over how its devolution deal will manifest itself and a model for the east of the county has yet to emerge.

“If you go around the world and look at how states are organised, they are not all based on an economic footprint,” said Mr Rycroft.

“They have a combination of history, culture, people’s sense of identity and the economic makeup.

“I think that Yorkshire will be represented more around the cities and something in North Yorkshire and something in the East. I think that the hope for One Yorkshire is probably a way off but as an aspiration it is worth keeping in view.”

The former mandarin’s intervention comes after he called on Saturday for a significant increase in devolved powers to the regions of England, saying that the Government’s levelling up agenda would have limited success if it was administered from Whitehall.

Branding the make-up of local government in England “a bit of a mess” he added that there was an urgent need for greater symmetry around how systems were managed.

“The way that successive Governments have approached this is clearly led to an outcome which is, bluntly, a mess. You have cities with mayors, cities without mayors, metro mayors, not metro mayors, single tier authorities – there is no coherence to that.

“There is an argument that not everything needs to be completely symmetrical. But it would be useful to have a consistent approach to proper devolution, which gives serious power and responsibility to those parts of the country that are capable and wish to take it up. It seems to me we are a long way off that.”