London still faces a battle with Whitehall to be fully trusted with devolved powers, according to Howard Dawber, Deputy Mayor for Business at City Hall. Speaking at a Centre for Cities fringe event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Mr Dawber praised Prime Minister Andy Burnham's devolution agenda but said some government departments still appear to have reservations about giving extensive powers to local leaders.
Past refusals and new opportunities
Mr Dawber claimed City Hall was once denied further devolved powers by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's government because the issue was "too important to devolve." Those reservations, he suggested, remain in some quarters at Whitehall even as Mr Burnham is preaching widespread devolution.
Mr Burnham's government has already granted the Greater London Authority (GLA) significant additional powers, including plans to allow City Hall to retain a share of income tax and pressing ahead with plans to ensure Mayors can impose a levy on overnight visitors - dubbed a tourist tax. However, Mr Dawber suggested that the power-sharing arrangement wasn't as cordial under Sir Keir.
"Honestly, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that we've got quite a lot of what we were asking for, including some stuff that was turned down in April where we'd asked for it," he told the fringe event. "I'd better not say which government department, because I'll get into trouble - we asked for some stuff from one of the government departments which we thought we could deliver really well in London, and the message we got back was: 'You can't have that because it's too important to devolve.'"
Fundamental change in approach
Mr Dawber refused to give specifics about what was rejected when pressed by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) but said there has been a "fundamental" change. "This is a government that has devolution as its operating system. That's the difference," he said. "They don't just believe in it, they know it works because the Prime Minister has seen it working. That's a change that's quite fundamental."
However, the Deputy Mayor suggested that some Whitehall officials were still not fully on board, adding: "I'm being very positive about the government because they're doing lots of good things, but I have heard one of the departments talking about, with one of the things that's been granted to us, setting up an assurance program with KPIs [key performance indicators], and a whole team at central government monitoring what you're doing. We don't trust you to spend the money is the inference. That's not devolution. That's what we've sort of had up to now."
Continued push for more powers
Mr Dawber suggested that City Hall was continuing to push ministers for even more devolution, including the ability to use innovative funding to finance major infrastructure projects. He also noted that power-sharing arrangements between Westminster and City Hall may need to be tailored as the GLA is a "very different animal to the other mayoral authorities."
"We're much bigger as an operation," he said. "We've got one of the biggest urban transport networks in the world, a massive generator of distance, we employ something like 75,000 people [in the GLA], if you include TfL and the Met Police, which means we spend twice as much money as the Foreign Office and we're four times the size."
Political reactions and criticism
Mr Burnham is battling accusations from critics that he is 'anti-London' during his early months in office. Proposed changes in council funding and impending "mansion" levies will disproportionately impact boroughs in the capital. The former Mayor for Greater Manchester failed to give London a mention in his speech, except for a line about achieving growth through "devolving more power to places to put them in charge and decide their own destiny."
Susan Hall, who leads the City Hall Conservatives on the London Assembly, told the LDRS: "We have a tax regime that is putting people out of work, a war on council funding, and a government that is happy to let London - the backbone of our economy - stagnate. The Prime Minister is making big financial pledges without any idea about how he is going to pay for them, besides punishing pensioners, and it just makes me worry that next month's Budget will be more misery for the people who actually go out to work every day."
Alex Wilson, a Reform UK Assembly Member, added: "Andy Burnham's failure to address his floated tax raid on Londoners is incredibly telling. The last thing our country needs is another leader who thinks he can tax Britain into growth. Britain needs a general election so that Reform UK can reverse the decline and protect the hard-earned wages of millions of Londoners."
However, Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said: "Andy set out a bold vision to rewire and transform our country. A new social care service, thousands more council homes, our water under public control, and reversing the devastating damage of Brexit. Giving our country hope again."
