Guy Aitchison (London, OK):The territorial departments of state are set to be scrapped as part of Gordon Brown's autumn reshuffle according to Wales on Sunday. Under the plans the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland offices will be merged into one single Department for Nations, Regions and Local Government. The move is long over-due. The existence of individual territorial secretaries of state was always an anomaly once devolution was introduced. It has become even harder to justify now that the National Assembly and Scottish Parliament have become assertive and well-established bodies, demanding and - in the case of the Assembly - receiving ever-more powers from Westminster. The absence of any comparable English "voice" at Cabinet has also contributed to the perception that the other nations of the UK are receiving privileged treatment.
The Constitution Unit has been calling for this move for years. It has advised the Government that a single department with overall responsibility for the nations and regions would be in a much better position to develop a joined up and coherent policy on devolution. As it is government thinking on devolution has been a complete mess. (It's not hard to think of examples; think Prescott's lame plans for regional assemblies, the out-dated Barnett formula and Wendy's embarrassing call to "bring it on".)
Precious little thought was given to how the devolved bodies should relate to each other and to Westminster. There was no framework and no overall vision. This worked fine when Labour was in power in Scotland and Wales. Then, relations were largely conducted informally though party channels and there was little conflict between governments. But, in a metaphor now beloved by Tories talking about the economy, the Government didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining. They are now paying the price for this neglect. With nationalists in power in Wales and Scotland, Labour has been forced to take a reactive and defensive stance on devolution. The results of this can partly be seen in the SNP victory in Glasgow East, which was about much more than just the economy. Lack of coordination has also meant there has been no interest in the ways in which new asymmetries of power and representation would generate fresh grievances, not least in England.
If Wales on Sunday is right about the new devolution "super-department" then the Government will have gone some way to addressing these concerns. I just can't help thinking that they're several years too late.
Comments
Guy there is something about your thinking here which seems profoundly undemocratic. It is the justifying of governmental structures on the basis of political advantage.
How can the result of a bye-election be used to justify a change to government structures? Have you thought through the implication of what you are saying. It’s difficult to see what other interpretation one could put on your reference to the Glasgow East bye-election.
You seem to be equating the SNP with the BNP. Unlike Sinn Fein/IRA, the SNP has always been an enitrely democratic nationalist party, just like the SDLP in Northern Ireland. If a change to the structure of government were to be justified partly on the basis of a bye-election victory by the Conservatives it would be seen as highly improper.
The basis of your argument seems to be that devolution should be about stabilising the UK, even if this runs rough shod over the democratic aspirations of people in Scotland.
However, something tells me that English nationalists are not going to be pleased with a department for the nations and regions: are you counting England as one of the nations or as merely a collection of regions? Don't think that really redresses the asymmetry!
Guy,
Can I take it that this "Department for Nations, Regions and Local Government", will, in fact have the remit to represent English districts such as London with equal vigour?
It is pretty clear that folk that self identify as English are quite upset at the allegedly favoured status of the Celtic nations. Levelling that playing field might take the sting out of some of that whingeing.
I'd tend to agree, it is too little, too late. A Scottish perspective would probably see it as downgrading relative status. Which would be wrong, but it would be propoganda.
For clarity, I am Scottish, and I now intend to vote SNP until we free ourselves from Westminster. Simply because I think we'd be better off on our own, and it'd do the English good too, and we'd both grow up a bit.
Alex, I think you've seriously misunderstood what I have said.
Nowhere do I say that the proposed departmental re-structuring is justified by one by-election result. In fact I say that the new department should have been created years ago! My point about the Glasgow East by-election is that the SNP won, in part, because they offered a clear vision of Scotland's constitutional future which Labour, in their confusion, couldn't match. If the Government had taken a long-sighted and holistic approach to devolution policy (which a "devolution" department could have helped them with) then they might have come up with a convincing narrative and hence done better. My point is that Labour is now facing the electoral costs of having a poor and un-coordinated devolution policy (obviously I think a co-ordinated and democratic devolution policy has its own advantages)
And, Alex, where do you get the idea that I equate the BNP with the SNP? Ridiculious! I think the SNP are doing a great job and was more than happy to see them win. Personally I'd like to see some kind of federal relationship between the nations of the UK, but I doubt this will happen now. A devolution department could have explored these kind of possibilities.
Britology, I agree that with a name like that it will almost certainly be greeted with hostility by those opposed to the Government's regionalist agenda in England. My point is that this department, if it had been introduced earlier, could have provided an opportunity to approach devolution democratically and as a whole. I agree this is very unlikely now.
Douglas, I'm not sure what its relationship will be with London. That seems to me to be another weakness with Labour's devolution policy. The creation of the Mayor's office and the GLA has been a success in my view but it has been treated as a one off. There has been no sense of how it fits in to broader devolution policy, certainly not as part of a larger narrative of decentralisation.
Guy,
My point, which is not really that minor, is that having a 'Department for Nations, etc' ought to include the English. Otherwise it is simply divisive, I think. And would feed quite nicely into a SNP / PC narrative? Or that of English Nationalists? We need clarity here, I think.
(Can someone explain to me why there is a big chunk of black in the middle of the posting area?)
Doug, I'm not sure, haven't seen any detailed plans yet.
But if I was to guess. I'd say it won't. Remember Brown's Governance of Britain paper contained practically no mention of England and I haven't seen any evidence of a change in approach one year on.
Sorry about the brown band on the comment box. We'll look into that.
Under the Welsh devolution settlement between 1999-2006, if the Welsh Assembly wished to implement anything requiring primary legislation it would have to ask the Secretary of State for Wales to lobby Parliament on its behalf for parliamentary time. The Welsh Secretary would then take forward any legislation.
Under the settlement introduced by the 2006 Government of Wales Act, as an alternative to an Act of Parliament, the Assembly may request permission for powers to legislate in certain areas (Legal Competence Orders) which have to be submitted to the Welsh Secretary for approval. I think this ‘approval’ is supposed to be a technical matter to check that the powers requested are not ultra vires … but should a disagreement arise then the Secretary of State could be seen as having a ‘veto’ over the Welsh Assembly.
The post of Welsh Secretary plays a pivotal role under the devolved settlement.Asymmetric devolution is asymmetric on more than one way.
Apologies for a couple of typos – legislative competence orders I meant to say above.
I find the idea that Wales, Scotland (and Northern Ireland in particular) could have been ‘bundled together’ at a much earlier stage contrary to the whole devolution project. Anyway I thought the British Irish Council was supposed to “promote the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among the peoples of these islands”… Perhaps it should meet more often.
Guy, thanks for the clarification. As you say Labour is now facing the electoral costs of having a poor and un-coordinated devolution policy as instanced in the Glasgow East by-election result. My concern was that, in using this as part of an argument for why such a unified Department should have been instituted earlier, the impression given was that blocking the success of the SNP is a valid public policy objective. Hence my comment about equating the SNP with the BNP.
There are complex political reasons why the Scottish Office has been maintained for so long. One of these was to remind Scots of the importance of the continuing link with Westminster, so in that sense it was designed to check the development of nationalism. Another was to perpetuate the argument that Scotland has a voice at cabinet level, which was used against those who have argued that Scotland’s relatively poor economic performance shows that the union is not working to Scotland’s advantage. [It is a myth that Scotland has a strong economy. In recent years it has always lagged behind the UK as a whole].
This second argument has taken on new significance over the years as the calls for direct participation in EU decision making have increased. The basis of the UK Governments argument against this has implicitly been based on Scotland’s direct access to decision making in the UK government. With the removal of the Scottish Office goes the removal of the augment against direct access to decision making in the EU. The last Social Attitudes Survey showed that Scots do not identify with other national groups Britain. It found that the national group they identify most closely with are the Irish. Being able to emulate the Republic is a major driver in Scottish politics and it is difficult to see how the issue of direct representation in the EU will not now dominate political debate. This proposal could prove a gift to the SNP's European Elections Campaign
Keith McBurney
Sovereignty & Confederacy: the antidote to Unions’ Blues
Does this mean all the gauleiters will be gone, or will Whitehall’s underlings remain dispersed to guard us from themselves? I ask not least because their offices would make fine accommodation for our out of town representatives and visitors to Cardiff, Holyrood and Stormont - with attendant savings to the public purse and removal of the temptation to capitalise on the necessity at our expense - if a London PO Box No could be found to handle what I understand to be their miniscule mail. Then again, outsourcing what little is left might meet more with our approval too. I cannot wait to be asked.
Forgive me Douglas if I mistake your Westminster meaning - as Gerry Hassan’s in his excellent analysis "The Lessons of Glasgow East" at http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/ourkingdom-theme/the-lessons-of-glasgow-east. But is it neither the general W1 location nor the battlefield of Westminster that is the problem, but precisely the Whitehall which hides behind and abuses it and us by proxy, much as the deadly duelling duo of Conservative and Labour parties, their paymasters and fellow travellers hide behind our Union that they might be the ones to save it and so themselves in a win-win outcome beloved by the London City State we all service?
Could this be in Independence and Union to transform and replace the UK of GB & NI with a Union of the Isles (IU) and so re-unite our nations of families and friends and family of friendly nations in acknowledgement of the final end to Empire in bringing the colonial curtain down on this its last stage here at home?
The framework for such an outcome is already in place courtesy of the unforeseen millennial gift to the people in the 1998 Belfast Agreement. It is the intergovernmental Council of the Isles, aka British-Irish Council, a welcome comeback to a way of dealing with the mutual interests of our sovereign selves from a time before the UK of England writ large. As Hendre says, its stated aim is to “promote the harmonious and mutually beneficial development of the totality of relationships among the peoples of these islands”. Our political relationships would appear to qualify. Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Isles.
NB as well as all the Irish, all who are self-governing are represented. NB too that - as yet - the only people who are not directly represented are the English “because England does not have a devolved government“. Perhaps the Minister for the Department Regions and Local Government might do (see the article entitled “A super-quango is born” above) until England has its own government, devolved or not.
The UK of GB & NI is a union not unitary state. Britain is a place to know our place, not a country. Britishness is a state of mind the State is minded that you think best of and for it not a default setting for those who have minds of their own to make up. Chipped to show where they might have been, British citizens bear passports that tell them and others where they do not come from.
Imagine as citizens within but not of the IU - for this is no wannabe supra state as its Commission might wish the EU - its encompassing passport would tell you and others that you were English, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Channel or Manx islander and/or Gibraltarian etc if those folk in of the remaining overseas territories were so self-determined too.
This is what appears to be unfolding before us as the only recognisable way forward. Not federal under, which we de-facto are but can never de-jure be in Union that was never unitary however much devolved in ersatz decentralisation at the hollowed out exposed expense of tattered threadbare democracy now costumed by the incorporated citizenship in England outlined in “A super-quango is born” above. Not top down, but confederal and rebuilt from bottom up on solid foundations befitting public purpose and purse for these interdependent times in which independence as ever is the prerequisite that cash back for votes dependence never was if we would be rid of this nominee client state both at home and away. And it does answer the English Question of how to leave themselves, whilst leaving them to sort out their intermediate and local tiers of governance as they would in self-determination prefer.
Way to go? If so, there is not much further or longer now. Ready and willing to be party to the solution, or remain part and party to the parts and parties which are the problem? No need to ask whether able of those who can too, especially as it is for all our freedoms.
Goodbye to together, yet set apart, divided so that Conservatives and Labour parties might rule in perpetuity? Welcome to being apart as we all are, yet together as families, friends, communities and nations just and justly as we should be in our personal and social unions of shared liberty, equality and common humanity?
Goodnight UK. Methinks our real past and future is in Good Morning IU. Do you?
Aye Ours,
Keith, frae Fife and Yorkshire
Very interesting. And certainly if the 'nations' in question are Scotland, Wales and NI and the 'regions' are the various bits of England, it will be another great leap forward for English nationalism!
I do sometimes wonder whether someone from the Campaign for an English Parliament is working undercover for New Labour. Certainly the government's current approach to England is grist to their mill.
Look like just another way in which New Labour has totally lost the plot. I do wonder whether Blair, who was both less Scottish and allegedly more 'in touch' with public opinion than Broon, would have been so clumsy with English sentiment at this stage.
I’ve returned to this topic on a bit of a technical point. Under the 2006 Government of Wales Act
33 Consultation about UK Government’s legislative programme
(1) As soon as is reasonably practicable after the beginning of each session of Parliament, the Secretary of State for Wales must undertake with the Assembly such consultation about the UK Government’s legislative programme for the session as appears to the Secretary of State to be appropriate.
(2) The consultation in relation to the UK Government’s legislative programme for a session must include participating in proceedings of the Assembly relating to it on at least one occasion. …
While there’s nothing in the above to prevent the merger of the departments, could Gordon Brown abolish the Welsh secretary post as suggested in the WoS article without amending legislation? I assume that a Secretary of State for Nations, Regions and Local Government would (technically) have to be Secretary of State for Wales (and put in an appearance in the Assembly) until any such amending legislation. Or is there some way around this? I got the impression that Tony Blair’s plans to abolish the Welsh and Scottish posts in 2003 were scuppered by similar clauses.
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