‘Devolution is fine, but letting go is harder’

Andy Burnham’s early months as Prime Minister have revealed a tension that goes beyond the usual arguments about devolution. Beneath the rhetoric of economic renewal and “good growth in every postcode” lies a deeper contest about who holds power and where it should sit.

Recent interventions in the Welsh political debate expose the fault lines in our uneven  constitutional settlement, and highlight a political class struggling to decide whether it truly believes in devolution and is finally prepared to let go.

The first fault line is familiar. For more than two decades, successive Welsh governments have sought incremental strengthening of the settlement. Yet a significant bloc of Welsh Labour MPs at Westminster has consistently resisted further transfers of power, arguing that devolved institutions should make better use of existing powers before acquiring new ones. The opposition has not been driven primarily by evidence or administrative practicality. Rather, it reflects an enduring instinct that some powers belong in Westminster and should remain there.

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The difficulty with that position is that it collides with the evidence. The Commission on Justice in Wales, chaired by former Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, concluded that the split between devolved public services and reserved justice has created “pointless complexity, confusion and incoherence in justice and policing in Wales“. Health, housing, education and social services are devolved to Wales. Policing and the courts are not. The expert commission’s conclusion was straightforward: Wales should have powers comparable to Scotland and Northern Ireland (where powers over policing and justice are already devolved).

Experts may agree but the Prime Minister is hesitating in the face of navigating the politics. He wants to present himself as a champion of decentralisation but understandably wants to avoid a rebellion from Welsh MPs who remain deeply sceptical about transferring additional authority to the Senedd (obdurately given that May’s Senedd election saw 40% of Labour’s 2021 voters switch directly to Plaid Cymru as Labour lost ownership of the “standing up for Wales” narrative).

The second debate, over economic growth, exposes a different but related contradiction.

Burnham’s vision of devolving power to stimulate prosperity has been shaped by his experience in Greater Manchester. It is an approach built around strong regional institutions, strategic economic planning and an accountable tier holding powers over transport, skills and investment. But the Welsh Government already controls these.

Burnham’s ‘Rewiring the State’ agenda promises to level up England’s city-regions institutionally. Yet the Welsh experience shows the limits of devolution as an economic strategy in itself. After a generation of Labour rule, Welsh governments have failed to reverse economic decline which suggests that devolution by itself is not going to unleash growth. After all, the Manchester model of devolution is presented as the economic success story that all regions should aspire to, but as critics have pointed out the gains have been concentrated in the city centre rather than shared evenly across the wider city-region.

Even after devolution the centre of government still has a strategic role for the whole of the UK. Yet Whitehall has shown a tendence to ‘devolve and forget; of transferring powers but failing to adapt its approach to governing a devolved state. Unless that changes the latest fashion for devolution will again disappoint.

A further tension in Burnham’s approach is that while in England he wants strategic power at the economically meaningful City region level, in Wales he says it should go “deeper down”? But why create regional heft in England only to seek to fragment it in Wales by pushing it down to local clusters or local councils?

Become a friend of LabourList and join our community. Our friends support our vital non-factional work and get access to exclusive content and events. The answer may lie in the reality that the centre will only devolve power if it is used in a way it approves of. Poor performance of the Welsh NHS, and the worsening school performance revealed again by the latest PISA results, reinforce the view of many in Westminster that the Senedd cannot be trusted with the powers they have, let alone any more (this argument ignores areas where Wales has outperformed the rest of the UK, for example world-leading levels of recycling or reducing road deaths from speeding).

Welsh GDP has not risen over the devolution period either. That is largely a function of Macro economic conditions outside the reach of the Welsh Government, but their failure to rationalise the local economic development architecture is undeniable. Whereas in England Metro Mayors increasingly agree there should be coordination at city-region level, local leaders in Wales have proven fiercely protective of their independence (even though operationally many lack the capacity to deliver what is expected of them).

This is where the two debates intersect. The Welsh Government cannot indefinitely argue for more powers from Westminster while avoiding difficult questions about how power is organised and exercised within Wales itself. Meanwhile Burnham must clarify whether his idea of devolution means empowering nations like Wales or merely creating new layers of much smaller regional administration beneath them.

The danger for both sides is that they continue talking past one another. Westminster remains reluctant to surrender power. Cardiff Bay remains reluctant to reform itself. 

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