Coronavirus crisis could see momentum for devolution disappear, MPs warned

(back row, left to right) Councillors Shabir Pandor, Denise Jeffery, Judith Blake and Tim Swift, (front row, left to right) Susan Hinchcliffe, Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Simon Clarke MP after the signing of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority devolution, at the Nexus Building at the University of Leeds. Photo: PA

Speaking at the Housing, Communities, and Local Government Committee in the Commons yesterday (Monday), Andrew Walker, Head of Research at the Local Government Information Unit warned there was a risk that promises made to move powers out of Whitehall may not be met if ministers are distracted with recovering from the pandemic.

He said: “Whilst I think that the crisis does make the case for decentralisation more clear and more important, I think there is also a risk actually that we get diverted from it.

“I think there's a risk of capacity in central government to want to push ahead with something like devolution when there's so much else that they will need to be dealing with, and we saw we saw a similar thing happening when Brexit rather sort of steered us off course.

“And I think there is also a political risk, I think there's a huge amount of pressure on governments to show that they are in control and indeed to feel like they need to keep control of the agenda, and they may be reluctant to want to give away power.

“So mayors that are elected, that are in post, I think have a really important role in continuing to make that case.”

The discussion came as West Yorkshire Combined Authority was undertaking a consultation on its own devolution deal, announced in March.

But Ed Hammond, Director at the Centre for Public Scrutiny, said the debate over Yorkshire devolution was “a case study of the problem” with the system where the structure should be less important than the goals.

He said: “There's been a debate going on about about devolution to West Yorkshire, or to greater Yorkshire, or different parts of Yorkshire for quite a while and I think that really that's the sort of case study of the problem really, that we have this debate between central government and local areas about what the correct model is, and what works best for us in in Westminster, in Whitehall, rather than thinking quite creatively about what it is that we need to actually do? What's the aim? What's the goal? What's the strategy?

“And we sort of rushed to these kinds of structures.”

The Government has repeatedly said it is committed to further devolution, with talk ongoing in North Yorkshire and the East Riding and Hull.