Mark Sandford argues that devolution within England offers a means of improving policy outcomes with minimal additional cost, but notes that the detailed practicalities of it will have as much effect on its outcome as declarations regarding new powers. He therefore suggests that changes in governance practice should be a core focus of future research initiatives.
Alongside debates on Scotland and Wales, English devolution was described by Christopher Harvie in 1991 as ‘the dog that never barked’. At the end of 2023, it has very rapidly become everyone’s pet. Both Labour and the Conservatives favour more devolution to local areas in England. Think tank reports extolling its likely economic benefits abound. Hardly any voices can be found making the case for pausing or reversing the government’s drive towards devolving power.
Far less attention has been devoted to examining the practicalities of achieving this end. It is easy to assume that ‘more devolution’ can be legislated into existence, with legal powers regarded as the lodestone of ‘real change’. This post suggests that devolution – expanding the scope of local decision-making within England – depends less on legislative changes and more on a transformation of the machinery of government at a local level. In this regard, developments in 2023 give unexpected grounds for optimism (see a summary of developments in 2023 on the House of Commons Library website). New ideas and practices of government are beginning to percolate into the English devolution agenda – and these can erode tacit assumptions that underlie the centralising tendencies within the British state.
This blog highlights the makings of new machinery of government practices in two aspects of English devolution: central-local relations and the role and scope of devolved institutions. Encouraging alternative governing practices has long been amongst the core rationales for devolving power: not just localised government, but better government. However, this blog also highlights a third dimension of English devolution acknowledged by government publications: accountability and scrutiny, where more enduring conceptual obstacles have yet to be tackled.
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