| PETER SHIRLEY Stop infantilising our local government, Prime Minister
ISHOULD this past week have been in Limpopo, northernmost South African province and home to a substantial chunk of the famous Kruger National Park.
I, however, would have been there not for the wildlife, or even the wild life, but for the eminently respectable annual conference of IASIA, the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, of which I’m a long-standing member.
True, I’ve certainly not missed the embarrassing game-hunting, game-shooting, wild game, etc. introductions that some overseas chairmen of conference sessions would doubtless have thought both original and mirthful.
And probably the endless curiosity about the antics of – for many delegates – our still relatively new Prime Minister Boris would soon have palled too.
But this I’d gamely (if you can’t beat them…!) have tolerated, not least because those colleagues with decent memories might well recall when I too had positive things to say about the man who for eight years was Mayor of London – an office generally presumed abroad to be more powerful and prestigious than it is here.
He never made it easy. Many delegates, whether or not they knew anything of his chaotic public and personal life, could certainly recall the man celebrating Britain’s first London 2012 Olympic gold medal by limply waving a Union Flag while stuck embarrassingly on a zip-wire. It could sometimes be a tough gig, therefore, trying to persuade a predominantly overseas academic audience that, as London Mayor, the man had a record of some genuine achievement, if not on the scale of his hugely more experienced predecessor, Ken Livingstone.
But I tried, always starting with the headline statistics of his very election: twice, with over a million votes – over four times West Midlands Mayor Andy Street’s total in 2017 – to a post no other Conservative politician has come near to winning.
Evaluating his policy accomplishments was tougher, but, thanks to eventually effective delegation, there were, alongside the self-serving vanity projects, several tick-worthy boxes.
London’s homicide rate did fall dramatically between 2008 and 2016, by even more than it did nationally. More so-called ‘affordable’ homes were built than during Livingstone’s two terms – though, in London especially, that ‘A’ word is always debatable.
London Underground usage increased significantly, though ticket office closures continued and, when his planned night service finally arrived, he had gone.
It was bye-bye to fare-dodgerfriendly ‘bendy buses’, and hello again to environmentally friendly, double-decker Routemasters, albeit it at huge cost and some passenger discomfort.
Then there were the ‘Boris Bikes’ – nowadays the posher-sounding Santander Cycles – which, while not operating at the promised zero taxpayer cost, now constitute, I believe, Europe’s largest cycle hire scheme.
And, of course, like Paris for Bergman and Bogart in Casablanca, Boris will always have those undeniably memorable 2012 Olympics – notwithstanding that the idea and groundwork were Livingstone’s, the cost wildly over budget, and the legacy still debatable.
Over the years, then, I’ve felt able to talk – reasonably dispassionately, I hope – with international conference delegates about these things.
But the topic I’ve always most emphasised has been finance: using London as a kind of headline illustration of how devolved government in the UK generally is centrally over-controlled and under-funded, compared to many of their countries’ systems.
In this I was much helped, unknowingly, by the man himself, who, as mayor, professed similar concerns.
For in 2012/13 he established a London Finance Commission, chaired by LSE professor and finance expert, Tony Travers, which swiftly produced a cleverly entitled report – Raising the Capital – with some seriously radical content.
Impossible to summarise satisfactorily, the commission’s conclusions were that London’s growing and changing population placed increasingly acute pressure on local services, while its existing subnational governments lacked the financial powers to provide effective solutions.
A few illustrative stats: under 7 per cent of tax paid by London residents and businesses was redistributed directly by locally elected bodies; 74 per cent of London’s funding came through central government grants – compared with Berlin’s 25 per cent, Paris’s 17 per cent, and Tokyo’s 8 per cent.
Taxation powers were merely one important part of the required reform. But the Commission
It could be a tough gig trying to persuade an academic audience that, as London Mayor, the man had a record of some genuine achievement
recommended that “the full suite of property taxes” – council tax, business rates, stamp duty land tax, capital gains property development tax – be devolved to London government (GLC and/or boroughs), which should have devolved responsibility for setting tax rates, revaluation, banding and discounts.
There was plenty more in the same vein – freedom to impose modest tourism and environmental taxes, planning fees and charges, and so on. My concern here, though, is less the Commission than the CommissionER.
Ever the catchy phrasemaker, Johnson launched his report by referring to tax-enfeebled London as “a political and economic giant but a fiscal infant …” However, while it was obviously the London mayor’s commission, making London proposals, the mayor himself seemed more ambitious.
So, come the 2013 Conservative Party conference in Manchester, there he was, leading a cross-party campaign with the London councils and core cities groups – including, of course, Birmingham – arguing that England was much too centralised and calling for a comparable suite of fiscal reforms for England’s largest cities.
Of course, nothing much changed substantively. London could still be tagged a “fiscal infant”, as could our whole local government system.
What changed was the man and his career: his personal political ambitions, the gift of Brexit, and the Johnson/Cummings project of running the most unaccountable, centralist government of our age, in which the biggest city councils are mere marginisable infants. A conference paper title for Limpopo 2021 perhaps.
Chris Game, Institute of Local Government Studies, University of
Birmingham