The Burnham effect exposes devolution’s dirty secret

Share this article

The ‘Burnham effect’ that propelled Labour to victory in Makerfield is only the latest example of regional and devolved democratic leaders who are miles more popular than their opposite numbers in Westminster. Political talents as diverse as Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond prospered after being sprinkled with devolved political fairy dust.

So do these roles attract democratic titans more easily than the humdrum day-to-day point scoring in Westminster, or are they just soft jobs that make their occupants look good?

If Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister before the year is out we will be running a live experiment to discover the answer to this question but, however he fares, it’s clear the Tony Blair-inspired devolution experiment has fundamental flaws that need to be fixed. 

The idea behind devolution is sensible enough, of bringing decision-making closer to the people it affects. But too many of Blair’s reforms have just added expensive extra layers of politicians who behave in exactly the same way as the ones in Westminster, so decisions are no better or more principled than they were before – just more expensive and political.

Then there’s the boundary problem. Administrative lines on maps rarely match the natural boundaries a public service needs. Flood prevention ought to match river catchments, but rarely does, and transport authorities ought to cover travel to work areas around towns and cities but often don’t. The results are delays, expense and poor decisions whenever different Councils can’t agree on a service that overlaps their edges, or local areas being overlooked in geographically-bigger strategic authorities, which is the opposite of what devolution is supposed to achieve. 

Devolved accountability doesn’t work properly either. Regional mayors and devolved First Ministers spend huge amounts of public money raised through taxes levied by Westminster, so they never have to face the music for the taxes that raise the cash they’re throwing about. Unsurprisingly, all those incentives encourage ever-higher spending, with the political bonus of being able to blame Westminster for being mean whenever local services aren’t working properly, no matter how inefficiently-run they may be. 

Extra politicians cost a lot more too. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs in Westminster are not responsible for representing their constituents on topics which are devolved to Holyrood, the Cardiff Senedd or Stormont Assembly, whereas English MPs are. Covering the full range of Government portfolios for a single constituency costs just one MP in England, but four in Wales (three Senedd and one Westminster), three in Scotland (two Holyrood and one Westminster); and six in Northern Ireland (five Stormont and one Westminster).

In money terms it costs about three times more to cover the same workload wherever there’s a devolved government. No wonder our economic productivity is so bad. Nor is it fair or right for Westminster MPs representing Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish residents to speak in debates or vote on laws which only apply to England, but Parliament still allows it.

Last but not least, this week Labour gerrymandered the voting system to improve their chances in the upcoming elections for a replacement Manchester mayor. That’s in spite of a nationwide referendum on changing the voting system in 2011, which produced a big majority in favour of ‘first past the post’. It’s naked rule-fixing with absolutely no democratic mandate at all.

How can we fix Tony Blair’s devolution mess so decisions are taken closer to the communities they affect, by politicians who are genuinely accountable to the people they serve?

How to fix Blair’s devolution mess 

We should start by slashing all those expensive extra layers of politicians, by electing a single local Councillor for equal-sized wards, to represent local residents in every tier of local government which applies to their area whether it’s a County Council, a mayoral assembly or anything else. And do the same for Parliamentarians by electing a single representative in equal-sized constituencies to represent electors in every national government which applies to their area.

So, for example, a Welsh Parliamentarian would work in Westminster for UK-wide issues, and the Cardiff Senedd for devolved ones. Sitting days in Cardiff and London would be co-ordinated to avoid clashes, and all the extra costs, layers and inefficiencies would be swept away. 

Next we should fix the problem of overlapping and inefficient local boundaries by creating flexible authorities to match each different public service’s natural geography, so we aren’t trying to deliver safe flood defences inside a transport area that’s designed around the travel-to-work footprint of a particular town or city, but has nothing to do with local river catchments at all.

The Councillors representing local residents in each service area would meet in the usual way, elect a leader to deliver the service and hold them accountable through normal democratic scrutiny processes. As with the Parliamentarians, sitting days for each flexible local authority would be co-ordinated to avoid clashes, and we’d have cut not only the costs and layers of regional governments, but also the number of politicians and bureaucrats too.

Most fundamentally of all, we should strengthen accountability by making sure politicians can only spend money if they’ve levied the taxes to pay for it themselves.

Local councils are better at this than regional mayors and devolved governments, because they set council taxes and keep a slowly-rising share of local business rates as well. So we should update and extend this scheme to make as many local authorities as possible financially independent from devolved and national governments. And so the rest need smaller top-ups for their budgets as well.

This wouldn’t just make politicians a lot more accountable for whether they’re spending taxpayer funds efficiently and well. It would axe all the one-sided incentives for ever-higher spending too.

Would the ‘Andy Burnham effect’ in Makerfield have been anything like as strong if he’d been Mayor under these conditions? Who knows but, if he had, at least we’d know that the country’s likely next Prime Minister had proven himself properly in advance.

Share this article