The devolution agenda for local government increasingly seems like a juggernaut with unstoppable momentum.
The Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill has reached the committee stage in the Commons and no week goes by without another devolution deal being signed up between the Government and a local government area.
Last week, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) urged a little caution in the arrangements for devolution. In its review of the first wave of City Deals (in effect, devolution’s little brother), the standout recommendation was that relating to effective and well resourced scrutiny and accountability systems.
If that is a concern for the City Deal, the PAC says that by extension, it is of critical importance for local government devolution.
Those concerns are certainly worthy and probably well founded. However, if one takes a quick look at the Bill, there is cause for some optimism in this regard at least.
Although the Government is in effect making policy through 'doing deals' with local government (which perhaps does not inspire confidence that issues around accountability will be to the fore), nevertheless the Bill provides a fairly strong platform upon which such deals will be placed and in that respect, the Bill does not want for statutory provisions regarding issues such as governance, accountability and scrutiny.
Indeed a great deal of the Bill is given over to constitutional arrangements for devolution rather than the specifics of what might or might not be devolved. Those key provisions providing for devolution from Government (and indeed reverse devolution i.e. transfer of functions from existing local authorities to combined authorities) are quite simple and straightforward.
This is because those provisions are merely enabling provisions giving the powers to the secretary of state to make the necessary orders in respect of any particular functions.
Far greater space is given over in the Bill to those rules governing issues such as the mayoral combined authority, accountability of combined authorities (with or without an elected mayor) and governance arrangements generally. Of course, a cynic might argue that the issue of accountability is inevitably going to be fairly clear cut in this case. If government is passing functional responsibility to local government, it is highly unlikely to be happy to be left with accountability on its own doorstep.
If something goes wrong it is likely to want to point the finger quite clearly at local government, which has asked for the powers and has received them. With devolution comes responsibility and accountability.
In due course when the PAC comes to review devolution, there may be much that it does not like. However, if they find that it is not a success and in particular if there is any lack of accountability then the responsibility belongs to the new combined authorities. Those local authorities that submitted their bids and signed their deals cannot really argue with that. It is very clear from the start what they are signing up to.
Michael Mousdale is head of local government at business law firm DWF
