West Midlands NO! Campaign

Yesterday saw the first day of the new unitary authority in Shropshire following the abolition of the county’s five districts.

This experiment in regionalisation went ahead after referenda were held in three of the five districts, all of which resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the plans.  Shropshire County Council sent their proposal on the day the results of the referenda were announced.

The two-tier district/county system of local government has served our country well for centuries and will continue to serve our country perfectly well if we can stop the regionalists from destroying local democracy.

There is an election coming up in Shropshire soon and we will be reminding Salopians which councillors voted for regionalisation in Shropshire.

In February Telford & Wrekin left the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country.

At the time Andrew Eade, the leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, said that he had made the decision because it was in the best interests of the borough.  The Birmingham Post revealed the real reason why Telford & Wrekin “left” - the rest of the city region asked Telford to leave because it was stopping them from getting new powers.

The Birmingham Post actually quotes the unelected Dictator Director of the city region quango, Simon Murphy, saying that civil servants had insisted Telford & Wrekin leave the city region if they wanted all these lovely extra powers.  So why is the city region’s website telling a different story?

The Borough of Telford and Wrekin has announced that is has left the City Region partnership. Telford Councillor Eric Carter informed a special City Region Board meeting on 23rd February of the decision stating that it followed comments made by David Cameron at the launch of the Conservative Party Green Paper on Local government in Coventry on 18th February. The decision is also related to the City Region’s submission for the devolution of economic development powers.

When a quango has no democratic mandate they have to spin like mad to try and present themselves positively.  When a quango isn’t accountable to the electorate they can get away with blatantly lying, like they have on their website.

Yes, we’ve heard similar pledges before from the Tories but this one is quite unequivical - the Tory Shadow Cabinet member for Communities and Local Government has pledged that all regional quangos will be abolished should they win the next election.

On his blog, John Redwood says that Spelman has made the following pledges:

• Unelected Regional assemblies – abolish
• Select Committees for the English regions – abolish
• Regional housing quangos – abolish
• Regional planning quangos – abolish
• Regional spatial strategies and housing targets – abolish
• Targets and surveillance of Councils by Whitehall and regional government – abolish
• Many of the specific grants – abolish – to be replaced by general grant
• Council Tax capping - abolish

This is good news and we must all make sure that they go through with these pledges.  Some of them won’t be easy though - the EU only hands out funding through regional quangos so they will have to be told to accept the fact that England isn’t being balkanised or we will have to leave.

Not everone is on message though - Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for the Wrekin, is calling for the unelected Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands, to do more to help local businesses to cancel out the unfair advantage Welsh businesses are getting from extra state aid.

There is an EU election looming with four main contenders, two of which - the Tories and UKIP - are pledging to abolish regional quangos and the other two - Labour and the Lib Dems - are committed to expanding it.

The Birmingham Post reveals the real reason why Telford & Wrekin Council left the city region. and it was nothing to do with changing statutory requirements for membership causing them to reconsider.

Telford was forced out because the city region wants its independence and statutory powers and it can’t have them if Telford is a member because it’s not physically joined to the rest of the city region.  Commenting on the decision to squeeze Telford out so he could build his empire, the Chief Executive of the city region quango, Dr Simon Murphy, said:

It was a very difficult decision, but taken in the wider interests of the West Midlands

Good old Simon Murphy, working for the common good of the West Midlands with barely a second thought about how he would be elevated from the boss of an unelected, toothless quango to the head of a powerful, unelected quango with a multi-million pound budget and legal powers to set policy for elected councils with a hugely inflated salary to go with his new power and responsibility.  What a guy.

If the bid is successful, the city region will be able to designate areas of towns and cities where it can keep business rates for the next 25 years.  It will also be able to take out loans to pay for “economic development” and will have the statutory responsibility for setting training skills and employment policy for the elected local authorities that are still part of it.

How can the local authorities who are part of the city region possibly think that handing over powers and responsibilities to an unelected, undemocratic quango that is unanswerable to the electorate is in the best interests of the people that they are supposed to represent?

The rest of the city region should sit up and take notice of what has happened to Telford.  It stood in the way of Simon Murphy’s empire building and obstructed his dream of a Greater Birmingham so it was cut loose “for the common good”.  Telford got out before too much money had changed hands and before the city region got the power to force policy on it or appropriate its business rates but the rest might not be so lucky.  The city region’s application to make its declaration of independence has already been sent, time is running out.

The Birmingham Post finishes by saying:

Telford’s departure was welcomed by the West Midlands No group, which campaigns against regionalisation

It certainly is welcomed and we will continue to press the rest of the city region members to wind up this undemocratic and expensive quango before it’s too late.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall in Simon Murphy’s office today when he got the call from Telford & Wrekin Council announcing that they were leaving his city region quango with immediate effect.

A week ago to this day I wrote an email to the leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, Andrew Eade, after writing about the city region’s plans for independence:

Andrew,

Re: http://www.westmidlandsno.org.uk/2009/02/16/city-region-wants-independence/

You either don’t know what the city region’s plans are or you do know and either don’t understand or don’t care.  Whichever it is, we should not be a part of this.

You have plenty of soothing words about how you don’t like it but you want to make sure we don’t lose out if we leave and how the city region doesn’t have any real powers.  But soothing words are worth nothing because the city region will have statutory status, it will have a legal personality, it will be allowed to apply for its own money, it will be allowed to enter into legal contracts and it will be able to make statutory policy that Telford will have to abide by.

This is nothing like the benign organisation that you and others have told us the city region is.  So what’s the truth Andrew?  You don’t understand the city region or you’ve been lying about it?

Stuart

Councillor Eade told the Shropshire Star “I’ve always said we would stay in the City Region to try and maximise any benefits to our community”.  He hasn’t always said that - prior to the last local election he said that he would pull Telford out of the city region if the Tories won.  It’s taken close to two years and a lot of back-tracking for him to put his words into action.

Maybe the timing is a co-incidence, maybe the email I sent played a part in the decision to leave.  Either way, it’s a big victory and further proof that Greater Birmingham the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country really isn’t going to turn the West Midlands into the land of milk and honey.

When the City Region was established the taxpayer was told it was a benign organisation, a simple collaboration between local auhorities.

West Midlands NO! pointed out that the architects of the City Region harboured ambitions for tax raising powers but we were told that this wasn’t the case.  We said that it would take decision making out of the hands of our elected local authorities and handed over to this unelected quango but we were told this wasn’t the case.

We were lied to.

The British government’s latest policies for the balkanisation and abolition of England revolve around city regions and in November they announced proposals to strengthen the powers of city regions by putting them on a statutory footing, turning city regions into legal entities able to apply for funding and enter into legal contracts in their own right instead of the local authorities doing so.  In short, it will take the city regions out of the control of the local authorities and promote the quangocrats working for the city regions to a status at least as important as councillors but without the accountability to the electorate.

How did your MP vote in Parliament on this change?  They didn’t because they couldn’t - it was wrapped up into the Pre-Budget Report where it would be lost amongst the recession and multi-billion pound bailouts of banks.  Talk about burying bad news.

Last month, Mike Whitby, the Leader of Birmingham City Council and unelected leader of the City Region quango, wrote to James Purnell MP who has responsibility for the unelected Regional Development Agencies, Regional Assemblies and City Regions, asking for permission to set up a Multi-Area Agreement (MAA).  The MAA is the vehicle for giving the city region a statutory footing, to remove it from the control of our elected councillors, to allow it to enter into contracts and run up bills on behalf of the taxpayer and to take statutory powers from the British government that will allow it to make legally binding policy on housing, transport and others which our local authorities must abide by.

The city region is funded not on a pro-rata basis but on each authority paying equal shares so the relatively tiny authorities of Telford and Solihull pay the same amount as Birmingham which accounts for about half the population of the city region area yet Birmingham sees most of the “benefit” of the city region’s activities as the lead authority and dominant partner.  This Birmingham-centricity is a mirror of what happens with the rest of the unelected quangocracy in the West Midlands - the Regional Assembly, Advantage West Midlands, Government Office of the West Midlands, etc.

We have said this right from the beginning - all of these regional quangos and in particular the city region - exist for the benefit of Birmingham and treat the rest of us as a suburb of Greater Birmingham.  We pay a disproportionately high amount of the cost and receive little in return.  The city region, along witht he other regional quangos, seeks to take yet more powers and responsibilities away from our democratically elected and accountable local councils.  This does nothing to improve democracy or accountability and to call it “devolution” is an insult.  The councillors that are supporting and encouraging this diabolical transfer of power are failing themselves and the people they were elected to represent.

The city region quango has finally decided on its new name after West Midlands NO! took the ridiculous Birmingham, Coventry & Black Country City Region name off them.

They’re now called … wait for it … City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country.  Perhaps Simon Murphy is a Monty Python fan?

Pop over to their “new” website - cityregion.org.uk - and see their grand vision for 2020 and other ways they’re wasting our taxes.  At a time of serious global economic difficulties we should be culling these expensive quangos, not allowing them to proliferate and spend more money.  And remember, the city region is funded by dividing the costs equally between the local authorities involved, not pro-rated according to population so unless you live in Birmingham or Coventry it’s costing you more than it should.

This was in yesterday’s Birmingham Post:

Could councils do the job of RDAs in the West Midlands?

We don’t hear much about the north-south divide any more.

Which is odd, because it’s just as wide as ever.

In fact, by some measurements the wealth gap between the rich south east and the rest of the country has become worse than it used to be.

Of course, the name is a little misleading. For the purposes of this debate, Cornwall isn’t part of the south and Birmingham has become part of the north.

What we are really referring to is the gap between Greater London and its satellite towns, and the rest of the country.

Regional development agencies were part of a concerted government effort to close this gap. As it appears to have grown larger, they could be seen as failures.

But think-tank The Centre for Cities challenges this view, arguing that government should focus simply on helping economies grow as quickly as possible – not on comparing one region with another. In other words, Advantage West Midlands, the agency responsible for supporting industry in our region, may be most successful if it concentrates on creating jobs and helping start-ups in the West Midlands, not on worrying about what London is doing.

It would follow that its performance should also be judged on how successful it has been in helping local economies to thrive.

For most of the nine years since regional development agencies were created, the economy in our region has grown. The situation has, of course, changed recently, but one might still conclude that Advantage West Midlands has been a success.

The problem, though, is that nobody can quite be sure whether this economic growth would have taken place even if the agency hadn’t existed.

Indeed, some Conservatives seem to think there is no evidence that regional development agencies are needed, and want to scrap them or reform them into something entirely different.

The Centre for Cities goes a different route. Like the Conservatives, it believes in devolving power down to a local level. But it also believes the West and East Midlands should share one giant development agency, in order to promote economic growth.

It’s unclear how such a body could be held accountable to anyone when even the existing quangos are seen as distant and lacking in any democratic mandate.

But it is true that cities such as Leicester and Coventry have close links – but are currently separated by an artificial boundary.

Perhaps the real answer is to devolve power and funding down to local authorities, and allow them to work together as appropriate.

Yes, yes, yes. This is what West Midlands NO! has been saying all along - there is nothing that Advantage West Midlands does that cannot be done better, cheaper, more efficiently and with better accountability by local authorities working by themselves or co-operating with each other on individual issues.

The examples that Advantage West Midlands gave for the advert report on their performance by the BBC Politics Show were all projects that were confined to one local authority area and nothing that couldn’t have been done by the relevant local authority if they were getting the investment funding that they used to get before Advantage West Midlands took it off them.

What exactly have Advantage West Midlands done that affect the whole West Midlands euroregion? What have they done that spans local authorities? What have they done that couldn’t be done by local authorities working together on individual issues? Nothing. I haven’t seen a single thing that Advantage West Midlands have done that needed a regional quango to make it happen other than for the reason that there is no local funding because Advantage West Midlands have been given it all.

The example of Coventry and Leicester being unable to work together despite their strong links because they’re in a different euroregion is another example of why regionalisation doesn’t work and yet another failing that West Midlands NO! has been pointing out for a long time. None of the euroregions in England are natural - they are all artifical creations with arbitrary boundaries that are meaningless. People in Coventry have no affiliation with people in Stafford below the national level.  Bordering local authorities are competing against each other because they’re in rival euroregions instead of working together like neighbours should.

In 2007, the West Midlands NO! Campaign received a tip-off that the powers that be were intending to legitimise their city region quango by registering it as a limited company.

To try and force the people behind this secretive, undemocratic quango to be more open about what they were doing we registered Birmingham, Coventry & Black Country City Region at Companies House and said that we would hand the name over if they came clean about what they were doing.  But rather than go public with their plans and explain how much it was costing taxpayers and how much local accountability was going to be lost to yet another regional quango, they retired to their council chambers to lick their wounds and maintained the veil of secrecy.

The city region quango has now launched a website - cityregion.org - and is still calling itself Birmingham, Coventry & Black Country City Region despite that name no longer being available to them.  Their website informs us that their budget is over £370,000 for the 2008/09 financial year and funded by equal contributions from each local authority involved - a bargain for the 2m residents of Birmingham, not so good for the 160k residents of Telford who will be paying 8 times as much per head of population for the privilege of being told what to do by a quango that is duplicating the work of any number of existing quangos.

The majority of people in the West Midlands and England as a whole do not want regionalisation and they do not want an ever increasing percentage of their taxes wasted on unelected, undemocratic quangos that take decision making further away from the people they elected and bring nothing new or of value to their lives.

It is high time our elected representatives were reminded that they were elected not to build empires and feather their own nests at the taxpayers expense, but to serve the people who elected them.  The directors of the Birmingham, Coventry & Black Country City Region will therefore be taking advice on how to best protect the name that belongs to our company and would like to remind the following directors of the illegitimate city region quango that the directors of an unincorporated organisation are jointly and severally responsible for the actions of their organisation:

• Councillor Mike Whitby, Birmingham City Council
• Councillor Ken Taylor, Coventry City Council
• Councillor David Caun, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council
• Councillor Bill Thomas, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
• Councillor Ken Meeson, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
• Councillor Andrew Eade, Telford & Wrekin Borough Council
• Councillor John O’Hare, Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council
• Councillor Neville Patten, Wolverhampton City Council
• Mike Beasley, Learning & Skills Council
• Nick Paul, Advantage West Midlands
• Councillor David Smith, West Midlands Regional Assembly
• Glyn Pitchford