Member

As Gordon Brown’s commission report and many others have declared, the UK is a flawed and weak democracy. Among other things, it suffers from overcentralisation compared with any other liberal democracy. This has led to a widening gap between London and the English regions, as well as often tense relations between the devolved nations and our English-dominated Government. We are now condemned to move to a model of local government led by elected mayors, who will become the main interlocutors with Whitehall and Whitehall Ministers on English regional and local matters. So we need to entrench their collective position in the mayoral council and future-proof it for their negotiations with Secretaries of State and their advisers. That is why I regard this amendment as crucial.