Time to hear local voices in this national crisis – William Wallace

Cabinet ministers issue directions from London on how English hospital trusts respond to the crisis and how the desperate shortages of personal protection equipment (PPE) can be overcome.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, autonomous national governments have freedom to adapt their response to local circumstances, as well as a voice in UK policy-making. But who speaks for Yorkshire’s needs, or for the other English regions?

Ministers at their daily press conferences refer to ‘‘the four governments’’ as partners in combating this pandemic. Representatives of the three devolved administrations, as well as of the mayor of London, attend Cobra and other Whitehall committees.

The BBC News Channel broadcasts Nicola Sturgeon’s daily media briefing, with the Scottish First Minister regularly upstaging the Downing Street briefing by offering clearer answers earlier in the day.

English local government is almost absent from the Government response. Squeezed by successive governments over the past 15 years, struggling on sharply reduced revenues to cope with responsibilities for social care, few local authorities have the capacity to step in with local production and procurement schemes, to provide staff for local testing centres, even to bridge the gap between our nationally-run health service and the local provision of social care.

But it’s equally striking that ministers in London have paid so little attention to local authorities in responding to this national emergency.

The first group of test centres were outsourced – as Conservative governments always to prefer to do – to a large consultancy firm, most probably at a higher cost than local authority management would have needed.

We’ve heard stories of staff in Leicester being offered tests in Nottingham, even of NHS workers in Liverpool being offered an appointment either in Doncaster or Birmingham. Consultants may be smart, but they may well not know much about regional geography, and seem not to have realised that some health and care workers don’t own cars.

It’s not only in coronavirus policy that an over-centralised government for England co-operates with the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Sitting for five years on the Government’s Advisory Committee for the Commemoration of World War One, I listened to regular updates on plans and events in the three other nations of the UK, but no separate information of what was planned across the English regions.

I discovered last year that Whitehall’s approach to data analysis and management – a highly-sensitive issue for the next decade – is also shared with the other three governments, with universities in each nation designated, and funded, to contribute. It will not surprise readers of The Yorkshire Post that the centres in English universities which are also contributing are almost all in the South East.

Above all, the balance of public funding across the UK is determined by ‘‘the Barnett formula’’ for the three national administrations, but dictated by London for the English regions.

The interests and needs of five million Scots are thus financially protected, while the needs of five million Yorkshiremen depend on the goodwill of the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in London. Public spending per head on the North of England has been lower than the South-East, or Scotland, for many years.

Under successive Conservative-led governments, almost all senior ministers have represented constituencies in the counties around London – with the creditable exception of successive MPs for Richmondshire.

Labour at least maintained regional offices for central government. The Conservatives closed these. Regional government across England would redress the balance, and draw power, money and staff back from Whitehall.

Tony Blair’s Labour government offered a weak version of this to the North East in a referendum – and were defeated by a skilful campaign which Dominic Cummings organised, arguing (as later in the Vote Leave referendum) that the money it could cost could be spent on the NHS instead.

Ministers now stubbornly resist the case for Yorkshire-wide devolution, insisting on imposing elected mayors for major cities on Yorkshire, leaving the county’s towns and villages at the margins. Now Michael Heseltine has called this week for ‘‘a new sense of partnership between London and English regions’’.

Over-centralised government in England has shown its weaknesses in responding to the epidemic: slow to encourage and organise willing volunteers in local communities, not knowing how to negotiate with local companies and enterprising collectives to manufacture and deliver needed equipment.

Recent weeks have shown that many British citizens are willing to get out and contribute to their communities when need arises. After years in which too many voters have felt that political decisions were part of a distant game played in Westminster, we at last have tasks that we can help with, building a sense of solidarity and local pride.

We share a pride in Yorkshire; and we know our way round the region better than people in London. What we need is the regional structure of government, finance and administration to help us work together, after the crisis is over, as well as during the demands it has thrown up.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire is a Lib Dem peer and minister in the 2010-15 coaliton government.

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