A Liberal Democrat MP has called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to go further with his devolution plans and give Yorkshire its own parliament. Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Tom Gordon said too much power was currently in the hands of elected mayors and a Yorkshire parliament would better reflect the region. Burnham has recently set out plans to give elected mayors more power over planning and tackling fly-tipping and said he would give them a share of income tax and business rates. But Gordon told BBC Politics North he believed that giving more money and powers to four separate Yorkshire mayoralties actually deepened divides in the county and a Yorkshire parliament would be “a good thing”.
Yorkshire currently has three Labour mayors – Oliver Coppard for South Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin for West Yorkshire and David Skaith for York and North Yorkshire – as well as Luke Campbell, the Reform UK mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. Gordon said Yorkshire had a population larger than Scotland and an economy larger than Wales, and, as such, it should have a parliament with a broader spectrum of views represented, rather than so much power resting with the four elected mayors. The Lib Dem said that while people had been told the recent local government reorganisation in North Yorkshire would “simplify” the situation, he believed that was not the case. “We’ve ended up with a new North Yorkshire Council at a higher tier and a Harrogate town council below it, so we’ve ended up with two tiers.
In fact, there’s a third tier when you throw in the regional mayor,” he said. “So we’ve ended up with more tiers, but those powers have been moved upwards rather than down to people. “I think we owe it to have everyone have a seat at that table, not just all that power put in one person’s hands.” Gordon said he believed a Yorkshire parliament was the way forward “if it’s good enough for Scotland, if it’s good enough for Wales, if it’s good enough for London”. “We should have a model where we have broader people elected to it who can feed in all those issues into a Yorkshire-wide parliament.
That, to me, is only a good thing,” he said. The idea of a Yorkshire parliament has previously been advocated by the Yorkshire Party. Since 2014, the party has argued that it would create a more “engaged, democratic society”. Meanwhile, when devolution deals were first being discussed, a proposal was put forward for one mayor for all of Yorkshire.
The so-called “One Yorkshire” plan was backed by 18 of the region’s 20 local councils, while Sheffield and Rotherham opted for a separate South Yorkshire solution. However, the then Conservative Communities Secretary James Brokenshire rejected the proposal and said the plan did “not meet our criteria”. Deals were later done for the four counties within Yorkshire In a speech earlier this year, Burnham said decision-making needed to be “pushed to regions and local communities”, adding that it would see “good growth in every postcode”. Responding to Gordon’s comments, Skaith said the Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, which has had devolved powers for longer, had worked “really well”.
But Skaith also said he believed that all views were represented within the current system. “It’s not just four mayors who sit in Yorkshire, all our combined authorities are made up of those local authorities as well,” he said. “So, I’m not making decisions sat in York and North Yorkshire on my own. It’s in partnership with the two local authorities.” Skaith pointed to the so-called “White Rose Agreement”, signed by himself and the mayors of South and West Yorkshire, pledging to work closer on things like transport. “Rail is a classic case – Northern Powerhouse Rail – where we got particularly the working around York station and the wider area of North Yorkshire,” he said.
“We have got that collective buy-in as to what we want for Yorkshire for rail. “That’s why we’ve got so far with government, because we work collectively as mayors, because we know our transport is so interconnected.” When he was prime minister, David Cameron, together with Chancellor George Osborne, previously introduced “devolution deals”. Successive Conservative governments have extended those deals and powers for regional mayors. However, York Conservative councillor Chris Steward warned that a parliament for Yorkshire would be “an absurd, costly and bureaucratic nonsense”.
“I am a proud Yorkshireman, having lived here all my life,” he said. “But while it is a county for so much – from the scenery to county cricket to all the things making it famous – as we saw in the discussions about devolution, it is not a functional economic geography and politics viewed across the region would not work. “People do not want yet another layer of politicians and the related expenses.” Reform UK has been approached for comment. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Andy Burnham to give regional mayors share of income tax Mayors welcome new powers from Burnham Can Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’ work in Yorkshire? Where has Yorkshire’s decade of devolution left us? Politics North (Yorkshire and Lincolnshire)
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