England's mayors should be given sweeping new powers over public services including social care, childcare and skills, according to a paper written by one of the people shaping Andy Burnham's devolution plans. JP Spencer, head of devolution policy at the thinktank ThinkLabour, calls for mayors to take control over large parts of service provision, offering a glimpse of how the probable next prime minister could shift power out of Whitehall.
Burnham's vision for devolution
Spencer is one of a small team of policy experts feeding ideas to Burnham as the Makerfield MP hones his policy platform with a view to becoming prime minister later this month. Earlier this week, Burnham unveiled plans to move parts of the Downing Street operation to Manchester, warning: 'The days of Whitehall fighting the devolution of power into the regions and nations are over, for good.'
England has some of the worst regional inequality in the western world, with seven of the 10 poorest regions in northern Europe – something many experts blame on the country's highly centralised politics. Spencer said: 'National command and control systems have proved insufficient to tackling our more complex problems.'
Proposed powers for mayors
His paper argues for 'a radical reshaping of the state around local democratic boundaries at local or strategic authority level supported by a central state that encourages rather than controls.' Under his plans, mayors would appoint health and education commissioners to oversee local schools, GPs and childcare providers, similar to the role of police and crime commissioners.
Mayors should be given direct control of sixth-form colleges and the government's skills agenda, possibly receiving more than £4bn from the growth and skills levy to help pay for that. Meanwhile, health commissioners appointed directly by mayors would have oversight of public health and primary care.
Policing and accountability
On policing, Spencer endorses Shabana Mahmood's plans to reduce the number of police forces, although he recommends aligning them with mayoral areas and allowing mayors to become police and crime commissioners, as some already have. Burnham is reportedly sceptical about Mahmood's proposals, which would merge 43 forces in England and Wales into between 12 and 20 larger regional constabularies. Aligning them with mayoral areas could provide a solution to concerns that large forces would be unaccountable.
Spencer's ideas were previously considered by the current housing and local government secretary, Steve Reed, though ministers decided not to go further than the existing devolution bill, which allows mayors to ask for new powers. Reed said the bill would allow mayors to ask for the powers that Spencer and others close to Burnham have been advocating, and made clear he would also like to push the agenda further. He told the Guardian: 'This country is being pulled apart by regional economic inequality. The answer to that is to go further on devolution.'
Political reactions and concerns
Angela Rayner, Reed's predecessor at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, will give a speech on Wednesday night spelling out her commitment to further devolution. Rayner has been mentioned as a possible successor to Reed under a Burnham government.
However, some in Labour are concerned about the rush to push power out of Whitehall. Some MPs in Kent, for example, are understood to be concerned at the prospect of a mayor for their county, who would almost certainly represent Nigel Farage's Reform UK. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to Keir Starmer, warned on Wednesday that the push for devolved power needed to be coupled with cuts to Whitehall. 'In the past, we've gone down the path of replicating checks both in the regions and in Westminster, creating more state rather than more power in those regions,' he told Restate's Remaking the State conference. 'So for this to truly work, Westminster must trust local leaders to make the right decisions.'
