No Westminster stitch-up on power devolution

This post is written by Alison McGovern MP and Stephen Twigg MP

The most powerful argument in the Scottish referendum campaign came from Labour’s Gordon Brown: “We don’t want freedom from England. We want freedom from poverty.”

And the power of this argument rests on the fact that it’s true for all of us. Not just in Scotland, but in each and every town and city in the UK. It’s not the tyranny of Westminster that’s the problem. It’s the tyranny of not having enough money to pay for the basic necessities of life.

The kind of politics that ends poverty relies on having a national government that is prepared to set a decent minimum wage, end exploitation at work, and pay proper pensions.

But that cannot be the end of our efforts. The root causes of poverty, worklessness, deprivation  and economic decline, cluster together, not evenly distributed. The reason for poverty is often geographical. Whether it’s industrial decline, inner city poverty, or rural deprivation, England’s towns and cities need to own their own solutions, and are best placed to identity them.

The persistence of deprivation, adding to falling living standards under the Tories, has surely contributed to the political discontent with SW1. So tackling poverty must be part of the answer.

Too often, national initiatives dictated from Westminster don’t work. And the level of cuts that have hit local government has made answering deprivation ten times harder than it was before.

Of course the Tories will want to play catch up on the devolution debate.  They have been worse than irrelevant to maintaining our union. They have spent the past four years licking their wounds, having seen David Cameron lose an election and enter number 10 through a back door deal with the Lib Dems. Now they want to focus the debate post-referendum on votes in Westminster, rather than the powers that towns and cities in England require.

In reality we need to address both challenges which is why Ed Miliband’s call for a citizen-led Constitutional Convention is so welcome.

As Merseyside MPs, we know that most Scousers feel as disconnected to Westminster as many Scots. We cannot turn this discussion into a collection of the usual talking heads pontificating about Westminster.

The voices of communities in all parts of the UK need to be heard.

It needs to be about the powers our cities have to end poverty. Whether that’s devolving skills, back to work programmes, or investment choices, we need the attention of us all to be on the process for getting the right powers to England’s towns and cities.

The worst thing that politicos can do is turn inwards and rearrange their own committees. Now is the time to look out, and give our towns, cities and rural & coastal areas the powers they need.

Alison McGovern is the MP for Wirral South and Stephen Twigg is the MP for Liverpool West Derby.