Appendix 1: Local government devolution orders
Letter from Rt Hon. Lord Trefgarne, Chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, to Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, at the Department for Local Communities and Government
Debate on draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017
At the Committee’s meeting on 25 April, we noted that this draft Order was considered in a debate in this House on 24 April.
We published information about the draft Order in our 31st Report of the current Session. The full text of our commentary on the order is as follows:
“4. We have brought a number of Orders relating to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) to the special attention of the House. Most recently, in our 17th Report of the current Session, we commented on the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2016, noting that, while the GMCA had made efforts to seek views on the proposals for devolution of functions, the response from the public had been limited, and suggested little popular enthusiasm for the devolution process.
“5. This Order, laid by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), confers further powers on the GMCA relating to mayoral development corporations (“MDC”: DCLG says that this is a first step, and that a further Order would be needed to create an MDC), grants, waste disposal authority functions, and the ability to share data. In the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum (EM), DCLG says that the GMCA has undertaken two consultations, which between them included proposals on all matters within this Order. It says that the outcomes of consultations were generally favourable, and itemises the levels of support for the different proposals now being taken forward. As we noted in our 17th Report, however, consultation responses on the proposal for the Mayor’s duties showed more opposition than support, and we asked DCLG to explain why this finding was not mentioned in the latest EM. We are publishing the Department’s response as Appendix 3.”
We noted that, in the debate on 24 April, you said that “the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which looked at this draft order, was content that every effort had been made in relation to consultation”. As the extract from our Report quoted above shows, we did not express this opinion, and indeed we flagged up the fact that the Explanatory Memorandum laid by your Department gave an account of the consultation processes which made no mention of opposition to the proposal for the Mayor’s duties.
We see it as unfortunate that the Committee’s views were misrepresented in the House’s debate, and we trust that you will agree that it would be appropriate if you would write to members who took part in that debate to make the position clear.
26 April 2017
Response from Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth to Rt Hon. Lord Trefgarne
Thank you for your letter of 26 April 2017. As I hope you will appreciate, I do recognise the importance of your Committee’s reports, and seek to take care not to misrepresent your Committee’s views.
As to my comments in Monday’s debate, I am afraid I do not share your view that these misrepresent the Committee’s reports. As your 31st Report recognises, Greater Manchester Combined Authority has undertaken two consultations which relate to the provisions in the Order that we were considering, and your 17th Report considered in some depth the first consultation process. That Report concluded that the “Authority [ie the Greater Manchester Combined Authority] has made considerable efforts to seek views”, but that “the response from the public appears to have been very limited”. In your 31st Report you refer to this conclusion and make no further comment about the efficacy of that consultation or the second consultation which was carried out in a similar manner by Greater Manchester.
Accordingly, I believe my statements in the debate were a fair description of your Committee’s findings in relation to the consultations carried out by Greater Manchester. I really do not see a material difference between “considerable efforts” and “every effort”–I hope you will agree.
27 April 2017