Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 196C. For me, this is a really interesting group because it is quite wide: part of it is to do with wanting to enable local revenue raising and part of it says, “Hang on. Hold on a minute, we need a bit more accountability here. Should we not put up some guardrails?” I am somewhere in the middle of that argument, I guess. My amendment would allow mayors to levy a business rates supplement to fund local priorities. The first question is: why do that? These mayoral authorities are going to be quite large—perhaps not on the scale of Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands and so on, but they will be large geographic entities. One would think that they will want primarily to drive projects that relate to bits of infrastructure kit and transport, such as buses, trains and trams, and to ensure that they have adequate local funding to do so. It is welcome that the Government are consulting on a tourism levy but, even following the Bill, established mayoral authorities will still require considerable central funding and approval for major projects. I do not quite buy the argument that the Bill is about decentralisation, not devolution; I think it is a mixture of the two. It is good that we are looking to decentralise more because that will eventually underpin a greater level of devolution. My amendment would change who can levy the supplement and under what circumstances. It would allow established mayoral areas to levy a business rates supplement without a referendum, as was the case for Crossrail. I am sure that most colleagues will remember that the Crossrail funding was a mix of central funding and local funding. The Crossrail business levy was an important element of that; it also meant that businesses across the capital had to think about what they were going to get out of Crossrail and make their voices well known. Currently, the relevant legislation says that only the Greater London Authority, county and district councils can do this in England, subject to a referendum of businesses in those areas. My amendment would change this so that only established mayoral areas would be able to do so, but without the requirement for a referendum. This would align the economic growth policies of the mayoral tier with the fiscal incentives from a business rates supplement, as is the case in London. It would mean that the referendum requirement, which was put into the Localism Act 2011, would be withdrawn or would not apply. Crossrail has been a major success—everybody can see that. It has major benefits. I am sure that mayoral authorities, combined mayoral authorities and so on will want to see the sorts of improvement that have been gained from Crossrail spread more widely across the country. I argue that we should lift those restrictions so that mayors can get on with delivering for their areas. This cuts to the point on central funding that the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, talked about. Most local government services are, in the majority, centrally funded, but that was not always the case. I think back to my time as a borough councillor in the early 1980s, when much more of the revenue was raised locally through business rates and rates on properties. That gave us more autonomy and more freedom, and it meant that local people could see that their local authority was spending their money. That increased the level of interest in local elections, which I believe is a very positive thing. I therefore hope that this will get some favour from the Minister, and that colleagues will find this an interesting solution to local financial support for combined mayoral authorities.