Lord Smith of Leigh
Influential and long-serving Labour leader of Wigan council
LORD SMITH OF LEIGH, who has died aged 76, was one of the most influential figures in North-west England, as the Labour leader of Wigan council for 27 years and an architect – and the first chairman – of the devolved administration for Greater Manchester now headed by Andy Burnham as mayor.
In his time Peter Smith chaired the North West Regional Assembly, the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) and Manchester Airport. But his heart was in his home town of Leigh, which he represented as a councillor from 1978 until his death.
Smith went into local politics after visiting a “house-proud widow who was forced to use buckets to catch the rain coming through the roof that her landlord refused to repair”.
First elected to Wigan metropolitan borough council by a single vote, he chaired its finance committee for nine years before his election as leader in 1991. He worked to transform Wigan from post-mining decline to a thriving modern borough, while playing an increasing role on the regional stage.
Peter Richard Charles Smith was born on July 24 1945, the second son of Ronald Smith, a draughtsman, and the former Kathleen Hocken, a medical secretary.
Winning a scholarship to Bolton School, he read Economics at LSE, then qualified to teach. He later took an MSC in Urban Studies at Salford University.
Smith lectured at Walbrook College, Shoreditch, then moved back to Leigh, taking up a lectureship at Manchester College of Art and Technology until 2001.
His experience and financial shrewdness saw Wigan council through financial difficulties following the global banking collapse of 2008.
Forced to implement severe cuts in 2010, Smith devised “The Deal”, a series of informal agreements between the council and local stakeholders, an approach since followed by councils across Britain and in Europe based on the recognition that public services could not continue to do everything they once did and that the individual had to take more responsibility.
Tony Blair had made him a life peer in 1999 in
recognition of his pivotal role in local government. In the upper house, he became vice-chairman of the party committee monitoring John Prescott’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Margaret Thatcher’s government had abolished the short-lived Greater Manchester Metropolitan County Council in 1986. Smith was convinced that individual boroughs could not work in isolation, and championed wider cooperation, particularly on transport and health. This resulted in his election in 2000 to chair AGMA.
Smith was a prime mover of the initiative for a congestion charge to help finance public transport in Greater Manchester; this was defeated in a referendum in 2008. As chairman of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership he took the lead in bringing health and social care services closer together, continuing in this role after his retirement as leader of Wigan council in 2018.
Lobbying by Smith led to Greater Manchester being designated a city region in 2009 by Gordon Brown’s government. When the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was set up in 2011 he became its chairman, working to secure the devolution deal which saw the it take control of powers and budgets from Whitehall in 2014.
Smith went for the post of interim mayor when it was created in 2015, but his fellow authority members opted for the former (and current) MP Tony Lloyd. who served until Burnham’s election as mayor in 2017.
Smith was the chairman of Local Government Leadership and treasurer of the all-party Rugby League Group.
Peter Smith married Joy Booth in 1968. She survives him with their daughter, the artist Anna F C Smith.