In a webinar arranged by the Cooperative Party for their party members, Mr Jim McMahon MP spoke about the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill currently going through Parliament. Peter Sagar reviews the webinar for us.
People feel disempowered and there is a lack of community spirit
It has been noted many times recently that people in England feel disempowered in their community, and indeed the recent report Shattered Britain published by More in Common, highlighted the fact that many people in the country ‘feel a great loss of agency and that they have less power over their own lives.’
As a response to this, the government is currently pushing the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. According to the government’s own website: ‘The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will deliver on the government’s commitment to widen and deepen devolution across England, providing Mayors with unprecedented powers to deliver growth.
‘The Bill will support the government’s plan to rebuild and reform local government, as the foundation for devolution, and give communities stronger tools to shape their local areas.’
Jim McMahon about the proposed bill
Jim McMahon MP, who is MP for Labour and the Co-operative Party, Co-operative Party Chair, and Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, has been speaking about the Bill on a recent webinar.
It was noted during the introduction of Jim McMahon, that the legislation for the new bill was presented to Parliament two weeks ago, after a lot of hard work from McMahon; and it was said this had been a longstanding area of priority for the Co-operative Party going back nearly 20 years.
Jim McMahon began by mentioning that there was a lot of interest around both devolution and community organisation.
He then went on to describe the key elements of the bill.
McMahon explained that it had been a commitment in the Labour Manifesto of 2024, to address the power imbalance. Far too much power is trapped in Westminster and Whitehall he said, which leaves people feeling disempowered and that the system is stacked up against them. He then emphasised that there is no magic lever in Westminster and Whitehall that can be pulled to change the country for the better.
Consequently, there is a need for real change from the ground up, and that is what this bill is about.
McMahon said that he wanted to see devolution deepened with far more powers for elected mayors and stronger local government.
Labour inherited a shocking situation after 14 years austerity
Labour was said to have had a shocking inheritance in the area of local government, including 900 sets of accounts not handed in, meaning that millions of pounds were not accounted for. It was also argued that structural problems in local government went way beyond anything seen before, with a huge need for the system to be simplified and moving to a legal cabinet model and strong scrutiny functions.
It was reflected that 14 years of austerity had hit hard at neighbourhood budgets and people see disrepair around them, including litter, potholes and parks in a mess and so on. ‘We need to rebuild neighbourhood services and rebuild the status and power of what it is to be a ward councillor.’
One argument was that ward councillors can become ward convenors and cooperate with people living in the ward through working together with them, while it is important to mainstream localism in every local authority.
Practical solutions are needed, not more bureaucracy
It was stated that it wouldn’t be useful to develop a new level of bureaucracy that doesn’t cooperate with communities they are supposed to be serving. That would not be harnessing the potential of communities. Rather, we can readdress what it means to be a local councillor, helping them to perform an important convening role with communities.
Most of the last decade has been spent campaigning about things being lost – apart from foodbanks and a few other things – such as banks, libraries, banks, youth centres etc. So much has been lost.
It is vitally important to establish a foundation for councils in the public they serve, and remember that the local high street is a barometer of how things are going.
Community empowerment and community right to buy
Retail and pub industries are often now under great strain, with banks closing or moving away, while landlords are often happy to sit on property. Instead there should be change with the introduction of genuine community right to buy, giving communities a 12-month window to get finance together.
Communities have economic and cultural assets and there should be automatic registration for community assets, and their ancillary facilities should be protected (such as car parks, club houses etcetera). There should be real interaction between neighbourhoods and councillors as convenors, to make a list of community assets. Owners will be required to tell the public if and when asset is available and notify the community if they are planning on selling, thus triggering the 12-month notice.
Moving away from Covid relief there is a need to think about property tax fairly, especially regarding tax rates for key anchors in the high street. The aim will be empowering communities and neighbourhoods so that they have agency over investment. This must include people and put them in charge of investment – taking back control, being meaningful – and thus rebuilding faith in politics.
On 2 September there will be the second reading of the bill, and then an evidence session, followed by 6 or 7 committee stages for amendments; and it was stressed that if good ideas come around then they will be taken under consideration.
First bill with ‘community’ in the name for over a decade
It was mentioned by the facilitator Ms Caitlin Prowle that this was the first bill to have ‘community’ in the bill’s name for over a decade, and she asked McMahon, why was there this focus on the community part of the Labour agenda?
McMahon replied that the previous government had established a bidding war culture. This put you up against your neighbour and that meant that people were encouraged to be negative about their place, instead of talking about social capital and communities having the basis to build something stronger.
It is important to break up the present structure where you have to go to the secretary of state for everything – including even the elected mayors having to do so. Our country has been centralised by legislation, and that culture leads to the secretary of state having to give permission for small regional things.
McMahon also emphasised that if all the government does is to just create more empowered mayors and councillors then they will have failed the test. There is a need to challenge the fatalism people have and show that things can be done in a different way, with a meaningful strategy for devolution and decentralism and in so doing, root the agenda in community based politics.
Neighbourhood cooperatives worked well in the past
Regarding the community right to buy, it was asked, what if we can give communities more not less, and what it is about community assets and the need for more of them that is so important?
McMahon replied that there was something important about going back to the early days of cooperation in the second half of the 19th century and what that built, what came from local neighbourhood cooperatives, when people wanted a better deal and they got on with it and built something better for themselves. In so doing they built a movement, not just a shop, they built economic power and then social power, for example buying ambulances, building libraries and such.
It was not just about saving existing things, they were creating things that hadn’t existed before and it was argued that we underestimate our abilities to organise and create something new.
The bill will provide a foundation to build capacity in communities which have been so badly damaged by austerity, where so much has been lost and there is the need to rebuild. We were given the example of a local social and sports club in the Oldham area, helping people which showed that communities can build but in this example, it was done despite the government, not with their help. Consequently, we need to think differently about support for communities and give community builders a proper path forward.
This sounds like a good way forward
This seems to be a useful way forward for us as a society and especially for communities which have been badly neglected in the last 15 years. We need to return to the spirit of the Rochdale Pioneers, who kickstarted a movement which has spread around the whole world, and similarly we need to rebuild our public realm and assets in the way that cooperators built a new society in the 19th century. This can be done by giving local people the power and the agency that they need, along with skills and self-confidence. In that way we can both rebuild the community and faith in the political process and democracy itself.
