Communities and Local Government CommitteeCorrespondence from the Prime Minister

Thank you for your letter of 16 May in which you asked for an explanation of the rejection of the recommendation in Greg Clark’s decentralisation report to produce an annual report on decentralisation.

The Government remains committed to decentralisation. As I said to the Liaison Committee, Greg’s report is a very good report. Not only does it provide a frank assessment, but it shows the tremendous progress the Government has made to reverse decades of centralisation.

With a change in responsibilities and a new phase of Government we are seeing all departments drive decentralisation. Evidence for this can be seen through approaches being pioneered on City Deals, the next phase of supporting and enabling local public service reform by building on and spreading the learning from community budgets, and the next steps on the Heseltine report where the Government accepted the overwhelming majority of Lord Heseltine’s 89 recommendations. The approach on all these examples draws on the agenda shaped and defined in Greg’s report and all are cross-departmental.

In terms of reporting on progress, as Don Foster explained, the Open Public Services team under Oliver Letwin and David Laws are publishing annual reports on the Open Public Services White Paper, including what has been done on decentralisation. In addition to this, Departments will continue to update structural reform plans.

Departments’ business plans are being updated. Progress on implementation of all structural reform plan actions will continue to be reported on the No10 Transparency website.

The DCLG Select Committee therefore has a crucial role, as do the other departmental committees and the Liaison Committee, in scrutinising the Government’s achievements on decentralisation.

June 2013