Morphet, Janice; (2022) Deals and Devolution: how the UK Government is using local deals to undermine devolved decision making. In: Proceedings of the PSA Annual Conference 2022. Political Studies Association: York, UK.

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Abstract

The introduction of the devolved administrations in the UK in 1999 was based on specific legal powers for this new scale of governance which included control of national and local priorities for expenditure within devolved matters. At the same time, the Greater London Authority was created as a new local authority. The legal powers conferred on these administrations included freedoms to determine expenditure within budgets which, in the case of the Devolved Administrations (DAs), included specific allocations linked to the Barnett Formula ensuring proportional allocations of UK state expenditure in a range of policy areas. In London, the directly elected mayor was given direct powers over the use of funding which is controlled by government agencies elsewhere in England. In both London and later in the DAs, powers were provided to allow direct access to borrowing and raising funding through a range of means. In the period 1999-2014, the powers of the DAs and the GLA were gradually increased, with Scotland in the lead in the DAs, followed by Wales and then Northern Ireland. The powers of the Mayor of London were also increased. However, since 2014, the UK Central Government has been using the provision of local and sub-regional ‘deal’ funding models, controlled by Whitehall, to gradually erode and undermine this decision making through the use of devolved powers and associated funding. Politically is it difficult for the governments of the DAs to refuse UK central government funding to their local authorities, despite this removing their ability to control project approval in line with their own objectives. In England, these deal structures have been used to both control the powers of the mayors of the Combined Authorities which are established through Statutory Instruments, are sui generis and have no fund raising powers and for local authorities in return for delivering central government priorities or to reward political supporters. This means that the Mayor of London, through the GLA remains the only institution that retains the degree of devolved control as first implemented in 1999, although this has been under attack by the UK Government during the pandemic in areas such as housing and transport. In England, the role of deals in increasing central control of local and combined authorities has been much discussed in the literature but this is less the case in the DAs. This paper examines the role of local deals in the DAs and the ways in which they are being used to undermine the devolved settlement as part of a widening strategy to reinstate the centralised power of the UK state.

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