Lord Liddle (Lab)

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt on his excellent introduction to this debate. I first met our new Prime Minister when he was a special adviser in the first term of the Blair Government. He was a great friend of the man with whom I shared an office in No. 10, James Purnell, who is now his chief of staff. It is a very nice thought that, 28 years later, they are working together to try to run the country. I have always liked Andy Burnham. I have always thought he was a man with social Catholic values—if I wanted to describe it simply. I am not from that background, but I appreciate the people who are. I want to make just one or two points—which no one else has mentioned, really—about the political reforms that Andy Burnham seems to have in mind. I am a passionate supporter of devolution. I think it will have a growth dividend, not in the immediate term but in 10 years or so. The Government should be bold on this subject. They should try to devolve real financial powers to mayoralties, and they should enable the big mayors to borrow money to finance financial projects they think are worth while. As someone who in my political life has spent 20 years on local authorities, I would also like to see a great emphasis on reviving local government, probably with some reform of council tax—again, a long-term project, but Burnham has talked about land value taxation—and getting rid of capping, which restrains what local authorities can do and has basically destroyed the independence of local government. I also believe that the Prime Minister is right to say that our politics needs reform. I believe in politicians working together. We cannot address long-term issues that we face, such as social care and climate change, unless we establish some degree of political consensus. Electoral reform is one way of doing this. Thirdly, the Prime Minister is a strong pro-European. One thing I admired about him was that he came out and said that Brexit has been a disaster—and it has been a disaster. The starting point for putting that right is to be honest with the public about what the losses have been. That is the crucial thing that Burnham is doing in his approach to Europe, and while it is right that he sticks to Labour’s manifesto pledges that were made for this Parliament, at some point we should be bold about what the objective we are seeking on Europe is, and I hope he will have the courage to do that.