The Solent Deal is bonkers

We should be grateful to Councillor Stephen Morgan for exhorting us to respond to the consultation on the Solent Devolution Deal.  In case you missed it, the “deal” is described at http://www.solentdeal.co.uk/further-information/ .  However, although it is supposed to be a consultation,  I couldn’t find anything about it on the Portsmouth City Council website, and eventually I found a link on the Southampton City Council website, which also points to http://www.solentdeal.co.uk/.  ¹ (see footnote)

At the same time Hampshire County Council is consulting on a different series of options, including a different “Solent” area;  and various Hampshire district councils are also carrying out their own consultations on different proposals.

So it seems to be a bit of a mess.

I am all in favour of a radical reform of local government, including devolution of powers and funding, more rational areas and boundaries, and the method of election and governance.  However, it has to be done right, and I am not at all sure that the current proposals – whatever they are – come anywhere near to being right.

I will put forward my own conclusions at the end of this article, but first I would make the following comments on the content of the various proposals:

Areas, functions and boundaries

Most people would agree that functions such as strategic planning, transport and housing land allocations need to be carried out on a scale wider than any current local authority boundary.  The question always is:  what are the appropriate boundaries?  

In principle I think that the city-region (or “travel to work area” (TTWA) or “standard metropolitan area”) is the right answer.  At the margin there is  room for debate, but I would consider that the Portsmouth city region (call it “Greater Portsmouth”) should be defined by the rivers Hamble in the west and Em (the Sussex boundary) in the east, Petersfield and the SouthDowns in the north and obviously the Solent in the south.  (A case might be made for including Chichester, but that would set more hares running).  Similarly, Greater Southampton would stretch from the Hamble to the New Forest and as far north as Romsey and perhaps Winchester.

However, the so-called “Solent Mayoral Combined Authority” (SMCA) has a different basis.  It appears that the surrounding district councils (Havant, Fareham etc) objected to being absorbed into a South Hampshire authority, so the two city council leaders, together with the Isle of Wight, decided to go it alone.  The SMCA would therefore comprise Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight only, with the other district councils being invited to participate but without voting rights.

The SMCA would exercise a number of functions, mostly of a strategic nature – such as strategic planning, subregional economic development and  transport infrastructure.

The obvious unanswered question is how the SMCA is supposed to carry out these functions when it has no jurisdiction over the majority of the subregion.  It seems completely mad to establish a “combined authority” comprising only the two central cities without their respective subregional hinterlands.  How are they supposed to plan subregional housing land allocation or transport links if they are confined to existing boundaries?  How can it plan transport links to Southampton Airport when the airport is actually in Eastleigh?  How can it plan or co-ordinate public transport or franchise bus routes when many or most bus routes (never mind railways) cross city boundaries?

So as it stands, the Solent Deal proposal is bonkers.

Another key question is whether the two city regions should be separate or combined.  They are not like, say, Manchester and Salford, or Newcastle and Gateshead – completely integrated urban areas.  On the contrary they are separated by several kilometres of fairly open countryside (albeit punctuated by a few villages), have different economic bases, and comparatively few links.  There is not much in Southampton that you can’t get in Portsmouth (IKEA perhaps?) and vice versa. 

In any case, arguably, major rail, motorway and airport links need to be planned at a much larger regional scale - as in the late lamented SERPLAN (South East Regional Plan) abolished by the Coalition government in 2010.  For this purpose South Hampshire is not big enough.

If nevertheless Portsmouth and Southampton are to be combined, they should also include Havant, Fareham, Gosport, Eastleigh and New Forest (as proposed by Hampshire County Council).  Otherwise the proposal should be dropped.

Funding

According to the Southampton City Council website http://www.southampton.gov.uk/council-democracy/have-your-say/solent-deal.aspx

“the deal would give the region £900 million over the next 30 years to improve infrastructure, transport and housing, and provide training and skills and support for business. This will be £30 million per year in new funding.”

To put this in context, according to a report for Hampshire County Council http://documents.hants.gov.uk/communications/HampshireCountyCouncilFullReport.pdf , in 2014/15 the three Solent Deal authorities spent £1.192 billion.  So the “extra” funds would be 2.5% of last year’s budget.

Moreover, are the promised funds really “extra”?  According to a House of Commons briefing paper http://www.ukbriefingpapers.co.uk/briefingpaper/SN06649  “The powers and functions that are to be transferred to combined authorities are likely to come with existing funding streams, but this is not a statutory requirement. Future levels of funding for these activities will be dependent on Government decision-making.”  In other words it is simply a re-announcement of existing money and not guaranteed for the future.  This will enable future governments to blame the combined authority for future spending cuts.

Governance

Central government is obsessed with the gimmick of elected mayors.  I have never understood why anybody should think that an elected mayor is somehow more democratic or accountable than a council of elected members who in turn elect (and can replace) a Leader and/or Committee Chairs and hold them to account at Council meetings and in their party groups.

The argument seems to be that a single individual will attract more media attention and public recognition than a Council Leader (doubtful?) and hence there will be greater public interest and higher election turnout (I haven’t seen any evidence to support this theory). More relevant is that it invites media personalities (such as Boris Johnson) and cranks (such as H’Angus,  the Hartlepool United football mascot, who campaigned and was elected on the slogan “free bananas for schoolchildren”) to stand for election.  It is part of the anti-politicians, anti-politics campaign run by  right wing tabloid newspapers to “get politics out of politics.”  It is sad that New Labour endorsed it.

Fortunately, according to the above briefing paper, although the “elected mayoral model remains the Government’s strong preference”, “Local areas that do not wish to create a mayoralty have been invited to propose ‘alternative governance arrangements’. This could involve a reduction in councillor numbers; a move to all-out elections (where councils currently elect in thirds); district council mergers; or the creation of unitary authorities.”

So elected mayors are apparently not compulsory after all.  I am therefore disappointed that the Portsmouth/Southampton/IoW proposal includes this feature and I strongly oppose it.

Political balance

One of the features of the “first past the post” (FPTP) electoral system is that all parties hope that one day they will be the beneficiary of the system and will exercise unrestricted power for the length of their mandate (only to be undone when their opponents take over).  In recent years Southampton has been mostly Labour-controlled, while the LibDems or the  Conservatives have controlled Portsmouth (apart from a short period of Labour control in the late 1990s).  As far as I know, with the exception of Eastleigh, all the other councils in the area have been Conservative or “NOC” (no overall control). 

However, if we were to adopt the city-region model (i.e. Greater Portsmouth), the FPTP system would be likely to deliver a permanent overall Conservative majority, with Labour winning no or hardly any seats (cf. all the five Parliamentary constituencies are Conservative-held). 

The case for proportional representation (PR) can and should be made on more objective and non-partisan grounds, but certainly in the Greater Portsmouth area PR would ensure that Labour, with say 20-30% of the vote would at least be represented on the Council and might be in a position to block extreme right wing administrations or form part of a governing coalition.

My conclusions

My own recommendations follow from the above analysis.

• Local government does need to be fundamentally reformed (not just tinkered with).  The reform should be based on a comprehensive and rational analysis, probably carried out by an independent body, and certainly not an ad hoc menu of unco-ordinated local bids. Functions and revenue sources should be devolved from central to local or subregional government and their powers substantially entrenched.

• Portsmouth and its subregion need to be planned as a whole.  The unit of local government administration should therefore be the Greater Portsmouth area, including Havant, Fareham and Gosport.  This should be a single, all-purpose unitary authority (UA) with a population of ca 530 000.  I see little advantage in joining with Greater Southampton, let alone the Isle of Wight, which should also be unitary authorities.  The rest of Hampshire should probably also be a single UA – although one could make a case that north east Hampshire is within the TTWA of London – but I won’t go into that.

• We do NOT want an elected mayor.  On the contrary, the new UA should be permitted to delegate its functions to committees with executive powers – as existed before the “reforms” of the 2000 Local Government Act.  In this way individual councillors would again be able to have a direct voice in policy decisions and in their implementation.

• If there really is extra funding available (which I doubt) it should not be tied to any particular form of governance.  It should be nailed down in a transparent formal agreement.

• It is essential that the new UA is elected by proportional representation (preferably single transferable vote).  For example, the authority could have, say, 50 members, elected for a four year term in 10 constituencies each returning 5 members.  But obviously the details are for discussion. 

Anyway that is what I think.  If enough Party members agree with me, perhaps this could be the basis of a Portsmouth Labour Party submission to the consultation – and to the Government.

© Robin Paice 2016

¹ Stephen now tells me that it can be found hidden in the "News" section at https://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/ext/news/consultation-launched-on-solent-combined-authority-plans.aspx).  In addition, the Council's Market Research Officer has arranged for a link under "Consultations" together with a banner on the website homepage.