In ! Out ! Shake it all about ! The Conservative approach to the West Midlands Local Authority.
Forty-three years ago Michael Heseltine steered a bill through Parliament setting up the West Midlands County Council. Thirty-two years ago he fought a general election on the basis that it should be scrapped. He won and it was. Now reincarnated as Baron Heseltine of Thenford he is back arguing for the recreation of a West Midlands super-authority bigger and "more ambitious" than ever before.
Baron Heseltine has not previously been regarded as a hero by the left. (If you are as old as I am you may remember that in 1985 he took part in a raid on a peace camp in Cambridgeshire dressed in an army surplus camouflage jacket). This time round Labour leaders across the region are queuing up to jump on board his idea. Baron Heseltine's current big idea is a new Combined West Midlands Authority - not one based on the boundaries of the old metropolitan county but this time stretching out to take in Warwickshire and even parts of Leicestershire.
Six of the region's Labour big wigs (and Tory luminary Bob Sleigh from Solihull) are backing this idea and have contributed to a "Launch Statement". They hope the new authority will get hold of some of the money the government currently allocates to the region and maybe even produce a Ken Livingstone like figure to be mayor of the West Midlands.
Coventry's Labour leader Ann Lucas says all this is being held up by the tories on Warwickshire County Council. Something denied by local authorities.
So what is in it for Rugby?
In their "Launch Statement" the Labour leaders say they want to set up three Commissions.
The first of these is the productivity commission. They say that people in the West Midlands are less likely to be in work than people elsewhere in the country. They say that only 74% of those aged 16-64 are in work in the West Midlands compared to 77% in the country as a whole. This may be true of the areas run by Labour in the West Midlands but it is not true of Rugby. Rugby people are more likely to be hard at work than people elsewhere in the UK. In Rugby 83% of those aged 16-64 are in employment [or self-employment] significantly better than the national average.
The second is the land commission. In previous attempts at developing a land strategy for the West Midlands labour leaders have been keen to grab green fields from surrounding local authorities whilst avoiding the hard work of developing their own derelict and brownfield sites - see http://rugby.lib.dm/a6Q2d .
Then we have the mental health Commission. Would mental health services in our region be better by putting them under the control of Birmingham or Coventry? (Last year Ofsted produced damning reports on both of these local authorities for their failure to run children's services properly).
Finally the "Launch Statement" shares its vision for the future of public transport in the West Midlands. Rugby is shown, not as fifty minutes away from London, not as at the junction of the M1 and the M6, not as the junction of the mainlines to Birmingham and Liverpool, but as small branch line tucked away to the south east. In their West Midlands vision Rugby occupies the same sort of position as poor old Greece does to the rest of the Eurozone. (You can see the map of the Labour leaders' mental view of the West Midlands on page 8 of the launch document.)
A personal view by a member of Rugby Liberal Democrats
Notes:
"Oh yes they are !"; "Oh no we are not!". To read the slanging match between the leader of Coventry City Council and the district councils in Warwickshire on whether or not they are keen to join the new combined West Midlands Local Authority - see http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/warwickshire-county-council-accused-holding-9674145 .
To read the "Launch Statement" of the Combined West Midlands Local Authority visit: http://www.westmidlandscombinedauthority.org.uk/assets/docs/WestMidlandsCombinedAuthorityLaunchStatement6JULY2015.pdf