The Wardman Wire

Former London Assembly Member Damian Hockney brings us the fifth installment in the Wardman Wire’s series on ‘Devolving England’. It follows on from pieces by Dave Cole, Garbo, Matt Wardman and the Thunderdragon. If you would like to contribute a piece, please blog AT davecole DOT org.

As a London Assembly Member for the last four years of the Ken Livingstone era, my experience showed that what is called devolution is a front for greater central control of law making, not less. It’s remarkable that there appears to be little understanding of the degree to which government makes a great show of pretending to devolve power at exactly the time when more power is being away from local communities, and it is a shame (but not surprising) that commentators are not more cynical.

We don’t have devolution

Devolution might work but we haven’t got it. And in our developing system of government, we can’t have it either – not real devolution of power. In fact, we have steadily moved in the opposite direction. What we have is devolution of responsibility for administering powers which are ever more tightly defined and owned by the centre. The confusion lies with emotive perceptions of Westminster as the ‘centre’ and its own clear loss of power. Ergo, ‘the devolved bodies have more powers’. Wrong. The powers have gone the other way. Upwards to a ’superior’ body, the EU. And the confusion also lies with the relentless public focus on personalities, as in the recent issue of the London Mayor and the Met chief. This gives an impression of power which is belied by the reality.

I sat on the London Assembly until May, and a defining four year summary for me was that a little influence is OK but is no substitute for even the tiniest power. And we had no power at all. Commentators incorrectly state that the Assembly can ‘throw out the Mayor’s Budget’. We could not. We could amend the bottom line of the individual elements of the Budget (police, fire, TfL, LDA and GLA) but could not affect the actual content. Which means you cannot throw out the Budget. In fact you dare not amend even the bottom line. Why?

Give you an example. My group wanted to scrap £70 million earmarked for initiating the Western Extension Zone of the C-Charge. Had we been successful in removing that £70 million from the Budget with a two thirds majority, the Mayor could simply ignore the specific…and cut the £70 million from something we might WANT him to spend it on. Indeed he made clear he would (which is what anyone would do if they were Mayor). That’s the power then – to shoot yourself in the foot and possibly have something cut that you want to be in the Budget…and then get blamed in Bateman cartoon style. “The man who cut £70 million from the kiddies’ pet’s home…”. It’s no power – it’s a booby trap.

All rules made by the EU

Increasingly, powers at every level are being transferred to supra national bodies – in particular the EU – down to the most micro level. And the supposedly devolved bodies simply have to function within those rules and laws and administer variations that are allowable (if any). On every committee I sat, I was struck by the total powerlessness of even the supposed ‘dictator’ Ken, other than in the administering of his big budgets. The micro-detail of the C-Charge had to be cleared with the EU (which indeed introduced the rules and encourages its adoption), our big row over GLA pensions (exciting stuff, hmmm) was totally dominated by the EU rules (even though no-one actually wanted to talk about them – because ‘the EU is nothing to do with London’) and of course the scrapping of the Routemaster (”only a ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster”, Ken Livingstone, a year before he had to scrap them). Now I might use that description of the EU, but I’m not sure it is what the former Mayor had in mind. But his officials simply had to obey. Every which way you turned, you would read commentators of every shade pontificating about “what Ken should do” or not do. “But, er, he can’t,” we would say, sending over to them the Directive which specifically banned it (usually on page 1 in big letters). Or “no he can’t scrap that, it’s against the EU rules”. The EU is the proverbial elephant in the room here.

Interestingly, had we had genuine devolution in the 70s when it was on offer, there would have been far fewer supranational barriers – a Scottish Assembly as offered would have provided far more opportunities for creative thinking and legislative adventure – even though it was theoretically less powerful.

Obviously politicians do not want to tell you that they have fewer powers for their increasing salaries and perks. In recent weeks, an impotent Metropolitan Police Authority, openly and shabbily being treated as an adjunct to the Mayor’s office, voted for itself a massive increase in members’ earnings…at the very time when proof of its powerlessness was spread out for all the world to see. We can but hope that its new money will lead to a greater push for oversight and power – we will hope in vain. And a shame because these are good people, as indeed were the members who have recently left.

Assemblies barred from access to info

The London Assembly is supposed to hold the Mayor to account. But how can it do such a job when it is barred from having access to the important papers that would enable it to do it? The case of Bob Kiley and TfL was a demonstration of just how absurd this is. My group on the London Assembly wanted to ask what he was doing for his fee of several thousand pounds a day for a fixed number of days. A reasonable stand for a scrutiny body. We wanted to ask, based upon the contracts. But we were not allowed to. We were not allowed to bring up the question of his contract, we were not allowed a copy, we were not even allowed to refer to it in the meeting…So of course when the contract appeared spread all over the pages of the Standard on the morning of the meeting, the Assembly’s own pathetic lack of power were also spread out all over the floor of the grand Chamber.

All dressed up and nowhere to go was the polite version of what my group said. So, not even the right to be consulted. Then of course next time it was brought up we were permitted to talk about it – because it had “been in the papers”. So that’s where we are then – the Assembly can comment on things because they’ve “been in the papers”.

And that is a common occurrence. All the cards are held in the hands of ‘government’, and apologists for this fraudulent version of devolution clutch at straws in the wind to pretend that somehow these impotent bodies are building their powers, and coming of age. But they are not. What happened recently, opposed alone by my colleague and I on the Assembly, was a review of Greater London Authority (GLA) powers which took powers away from local communities (local authorities) and gave them to a centralising Mayor…a Mayor who is dependent upon Government for his cash and has no real check on his power apart from government. And what did the Assembly get? The right to have hearings about things. The right to receive a letter from the mayor. Cor. This new structure is functioning as a barrier to true local democracy and is cleverly designed to do so. You lose local authorities with long standing (if already eroded) rights to do something and then get an Assembly whose power is to “receive a letter” about it and comment. As we made clear in our submissions, holding to account has been left to central government, with the Assembly a meaningless and expensive sideshow.

And now they’re talking about reviving the dead corpse of parishes in the capital. What a wheeze. And their powers? For people to act as “champions” for things. Whatever that means.

La Suisse – douze points

When Switzerland’s politicians tried (yet again) to persuade their people to go into the EU, for three months they collectively refused to answer questions about the effect of membership on the role of the canton and referenda. In case anyone needs reminding, these administrative divisions have the strongest and most enshrined devolved powers in the western world, powers which they jealously defend. But then an extraordinary and funny interchange on Swiss tv landed all the old parties on their backs as one after the other of the recent referenda were described as “unlawful” by a stony faced EU official unaware that he was being set up. The best piece of all was when the poor sap said: ‘this will of course be barred on accession because it is not right that Switzerland should exercise these powers let alone a small and insignificant part of it”. You cannot hand a superior lawmaking body sole competence in whole areas of the legislative process then pretend you are devolving powers in those areas to lower levels.

And of course this highlights where our devolved bodies are. Why should we be any different? And we are not. Small and insignificant in powers, large and highly important in their costs and charges. Well dressed, in half a billion pound buildings, big glass testicles by the Thames, posh names and posh frocks, but where can they go? Certainly not to the heart of real power. The pretence at this heart is painful, when you listen to those involved talking about themselves as “London’s government”. Slap wrist. You are not. The EU is London’s government for 70% of the laws (and growing), Westminster the rest (and declining).

Wrapping up – let’s get real

But just in case you should wonder, at the end of this diatribe: yes, I had a great time, I enjoyed working with some of the brightest and most enjoyable colleagues (both in my own party and in other parties, and in the staff at every level in City Hall)…I just think they all deserve better. Better from the system, better from government…and we need to stop pretending. The politicians above all have to take this lead and expose the fraud. They fear that doing so will erode their own positions, minimal though they are. But starting the process of acknowledging the enormous limitations will pave the way for understanding what might have to be done to achieve more real power at local level, more accountability and more participation. Privately they often acknowledge such things, in a rather guarded way, and the justification is “that’s how things are”. But just because something currently is the case, that doesn’t mean to say that is how it should be forever and ever amen. And we need to have a strategy for dealing with Jumbo.

Damian Hockney is a magazine publisher who was elected to the London Assembly for UKIP in 2004. He and his colleague set up a free market anti-regulation group, One London, on the Assembly and were never afraid to fight completely alone on issues. Hockney was the first politician to call for Sir Ian Blair to go, at a time when the Tories were supporting the Commissioner, and proudly highlights his statement to the Assembly in spring 2005 that the London Olympic bid would be called the “£10 billion Olympics”…to universal ridicule from all parties who appeared to buy the £2 billion argument.