Right to press ahead on deal

Devolution consultation begins

IT HAS been less than three months since Chancellor Rishi Sunak signed off on the £1.8bn West Yorkshire devolution deal with council leaders in Leeds but the world has changed greatly since then as a result of coronavirus.

The national lockdown which was ordered 11 days after the deal was signed has put the country on course for a severe recession, with the pandemic expected to cost the Treasury in the region of £300bn as sweeping measures like the furlough scheme have been taken in a desperate attempt to minimise job losses and business bankruptcies.

The focus on the immediate health and economic ramifications of the pandemic has not only consumed Government but local councils as well. Despite – and in fact actually because of – the many urgent challenges being faced, it is right that West Yorkshire’s political leaders have pushed ahead with starting a public consultation on the devolution deal.

As they succinctly put it, any delay to the consultation would push back the implementation of the deal and hold back the region’s ability to stage what will be a desperately-needed economic recovery as the country gradually emerges from lockdown.

Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick said last month that the Government remains committed to its levelling up agenda and rightly stated devolution deals across Yorkshire will be “more important than ever” in rebuilding the economy.

The Government has also taken the decision to press ahead with postBrexit negotiations on the EU with one senior figure memorably telling Sky News reporter Beth Rigby that dealing with the issue at the same time as coronavirus is a question of being able to “walk and chew gum at the same time”.

The same attitude is rightly being applied in West Yorkshire on getting devolution off the ground at long last.