Areas can get consolidation of local transport funding. They can get a role in designing and delivering future employment programmes and access to something called a long-term investment fund, but only if they can clear the bar of the upper tier and only if they accept a governance arrangement that is imposed from Whitehall.
I went back to look at what the Prime Minister promised when he made his levelling-up speech last year:
“Come to us with a plan for strong accountable leadership and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better”.
Will the Secretary of State tell me why a kid in Barnsley should have to turn down an apprenticeship because of the lack of a functioning bus service while a kid in Bolton can take one up just because somebody hundreds of miles away in Whitehall, who has never set foot in either of those communities, decided that they liked the look of the local leaders—the local leaders we chose—in one area more than another? Why is there not a right in the Bill for every area to have democratic control over their bus services, if that is what they choose?
The Secretary of State said that the last Labour Government did not devolve power in England, but let me remind him of what can be done, and what was done, with the right level of commitment and imagination. It was the last Labour Government who set up the regional development agencies. In the north-west of England, which I call home, we had the foresight to bring Media City to Salford. That was not just about the economic regeneration of one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country; it was also a key measure that started to rebalance the national debate that determined who had a voice and who got a place and was reflected in our national story.
Under the last Labour Government, the regional development agency in Yorkshire was among the first to see the potential of wind in Grimsby—the Grimsby docks are the windiest place in Europe—and I have met those young people who, a generation later, are powering the world from the Grimsby docks through clean energy and life-changing apprenticeships. It is not just in Grimsby that the Yorkshire regional development agency saw potential; it looked for potential everywhere. It understood the legacy of skills, because of steel cutting from the steel industry, that made Rotherham an ideal location for one of the most incredible advanced manufacturing centres in the world. That is what real power and devolution looks like.
All that potential in our communities, realised by the last Labour Government, has now been collapsed into the spectacle of two proud cities that were at the forefront of the industrial revolution—Birmingham and Manchester —begging for the right to introduce a tourist levy on hotel bedrooms. When they have come to Whitehall, it is not just Ministers’ doors that have been repeatedly closed to them, but their minds as well.