David Simmonds
MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Secretary of State back to the Dispatch Box, and I thank her for early sight of her statement. I am not sure that this was the triumphant return to the subject of devolution that she had in mind, because our councillors and the communities that they represent are looking aghast at yet another shambolic U-turn from this Gover…”
“Given that the Government have been banking on millions of pounds in savings—we have challenged them on those savings repeatedly across the Dispatch Boxes—to mitigate costs, which include the massive rise in national insurance that has driven many councils to the verge of bankruptcy, what assessment have Treasury colleagues made, and what…”
“Given the promises made and that all our political parties have selected candidates who have been campaigning for mayoral elections and new unitary authorities that the Government promised were coming into being, with elections to take place next May, will she give a categorical assurance that those new authorities will be in place, or pr…”
“Can she tell the House from the Dispatch Box why she is not satisfied that it was lawful, and will she place all the non-privileged documentation and correspondence relating to this debacle in the public domain and in the Library?”
“Finally, I appreciate that the Secretary of State has returned to the role after others have been stewarding it, but will she apologise to all those councillors, all those local government officials, all those political candidates and activists and all those businesses who have engaged in good faith with the Government’s process?”
“Planning permissions for new homes, of which there are already around 1.5 million, are one thing, but getting those units built is another. With Savills reporting that two thirds of London boroughs have seen net zero new housing starts under the Mayor of London, what proposals do the Government have to ensure that units with permission ac…”
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“I ask the Minister to reflect that it used to be the practice of this House that any MP appointed as a Minister had to resign and fight a by-election, because they were undertaking a function different from that for which their constituents had originally elected them. That practice was abandoned because of the extent of the disruption it caused to the work of government and of the House, as well as the cost of those by-elections, so I ask the Government to reflect. We have learned from experience, cross-party, that having these types of requirements is not conducive to good democracy. Perhaps the Minister will undertake to reflect on that.”
“Local authorities have historically had council plans and forward plans that set out decision making, all of which are part of this arrangement. Although the points have been well made, the Opposition are therefore not convinced that what the amendment would add is sufficient to justify its inclusion in the Bill.”
“The Opposition have sympathy with the points the hon. Member made. We can rarely have too much transparency, but we are conscious that these new bodies and devolution arrangements will be subject to a degree of political oversight. There will be manifestos, on which the public will have a vote. There will be the element of scrutiny, which we have not heard enough about yet but which we would like to think will be built into the new arrangements for these authorities. There will also be a regular process of elections, which will determine who provides the necessary level of leadership. Layered over that, there will be both the political priorities of the devolved authority and those things that are more part of the administrative function.”
“Despite that answer, it is clear that things are getting worse. Our councils are battling with the cost of this Government’s border failures. The 22% rise in small boat arrivals, combined now with Chagossians arriving in rising numbers, throwing themselves at the mercy of our local authorities as they escape Starmer’s sell-out, is stretching council housing budgets to breaking point. The Government have refused to answer my written questions about what financial support they provide to councils housing asylum seekers and refugees who are granted asylum in their areas. Can the Minister tell the House how much of the proposed rise in council tax is for the cost of the Government’s asylum failures, and will he publish the full costs and support in the interests of transparency?”
“Do you have any views about decisions or tweaks that the Bill should make to those arrangements, based on the risk and assurance issues you have outlined? Bill Butler: Not from where I sit. It is a policy area that I would avoid, although I understand why you would ask the question. Gareth Davies: Yes, I am required to avoid it. The reason I am here today is to discuss public audits, essentially, rather than policy decisions on those kinds of financial matters. Clearly, there is a point at which the two things meet, which is really where we are talking now, but it is not for me to give a view on what should or should not be in a ringfence.”
“Q I have two questions that follow from that. On that last point, I know that CIPFA has argued that a much higher degree of consistency is needed in the way statutory balances are accounted for, and I am conscious that that can make millions of pounds of difference at an individual local authority level. I am interested in your views about how the new arrangement should or should not seek to constrain decision making in order to improve consistency. Secondly, in respect of specific funds, in debates around devolution, it is often argued that, for example, there should be freedom to spend the proceeds of the parking revenue account beyond the current constraints—that the revenue, for example, should be used to prop up social care, or whatever it may be, in a way that it simply cannot within the current legal framework.”
“Q What about the CIPFA guidance point? Can you address that? Bill Butler: There is a standard basis for it standardisation and simplification so that you can move between sets of accounts. It seems hugely sensible. Interestingly, I can remember having similar discussions in the early 1980s, when I first qualified, with the then Department of the Environment’s technical advisers. We have made some progress. Yes, the inconsistency is odd. As Gareth said, it causes problems for auditors as well, because they move between places. It does not help the underlying problem that we have been discussing.”
“How that is interpreted and what is important in those accounts is open to judgment. The emphasis from the LAO on whether it is more important for us to audit income or to audit property will make a difference to what local auditors do. I would always argue that it is more important to audit income. It is very difficult to standardise anything that we do, because local government is not standardised. I can take you from a district authority that spends £60 million, most of which is housing benefit, to an authority that spends £4 billion and has significant regeneration schemes and companies. The skillsets that you need and the ability to standardise is very difficult. You have to have the right skills to do the work.”
“Mark Stocks: Local government accounts are complex. These are highly complex sorts of businesses, if I can use that phrase, that deal with any number of services. What we see now are local finance teams who are stretched, to be candid. There has been a lack of investment in them over the years. Gareth talked about trainees going from the Audit Commission into local government, but that does not happen now. There is a bunch of people who are around 50, who may be disappearing in the short term, so we have to sort out the strength of local government finance teams. As I said, we also need to sort out the complexity of the accounts. In terms of the standards, all local government accounts are under international financial reporting standards, and that will not change. That is a Treasury requirement.”
“Q The previous panel addressed some of the complexities of the local government finance landscape, with the different accounts and so on. I am interested in your perspective as someone from the audit sector that receives many of these contracts, first on the challenges involved in skilling up the sector with the necessary knowledge and training. I am also interested in your perspective on the standardisation question. I think we all understand that audit is sometimes more of an art than a science—sometimes the other way round. How do you end up with something where everybody understands what is expected of them, in the context of a high degree of transparency that often is not really there in the commercial sector? How do decisions to deviate from that standard impact on the wider perception of the state of that organisation?”
“Especially when you speak to young people about why they do not engage with local politics, they say that meetings are at the wrong time and too far away, and if you do not have a car, you cannot get to them, especially in rural communities. So I think this could be a real opportunity to see how normal council business is done and improve on it. Finally, to build on the point about participatory methods, it is about making sure that unitaries are committed to properly engaging with their communities on the big questions they face, and not seeing it as distancing from communities.”
“However, town and parish councils still exist within the system, and we have previously done work that looks at what we call the hyper-local tier of governance. While they are imperfect bodies, there are improvements that can be built upon at that hyper-local level, in addition to having some sort of formal forum, as John says, to engage with communities. If the neighbourhood area committee proposal continues as planned, I would really urge that to be—the majority—taken up by community leaders and young people. There are other ways that we can help to counterbalance this through democratic innovations. There was talk, for instance, about remote meetings and remote voting, which are not currently available.”
“How is that power going to be used?” So building in that layer means the right sort of compromise between the desire of Governments to get on with things and the need to engage people at local level. That would be one way of dealing with it. You are inviting me to say we should keep all the district councils, but I am going to pass on that one, because that was not part of our proposals. Zo ë Billingham: Let me just build on that and the question of scale. As John says, the proposed 500,000 scale of the unitaries post-reorganisation is very large compared with European counterparts, and that poses some big questions, not least whether the projected efficiency savings will be realised.”
“If you are going to have really good local growth strategies, and if they are going to tie into a national industrial strategy, it could not be done, say, at the level of a city such as Southampton, where I was an MP for a long time. You need a bigger body. However you do it at the micro level, that strategic level must operate effectively. To tie my threads together, if you go to other European countries with a higher level of devolution, they have an intermediate forum between the strategic body and the national, where these issues are thrashed out, best practice is worked out and, in a sense, the Secretary of State does not exercise their direction powers without discussing it with the mayoral council first. You actually say, “How is that going to work then?”
“We proposed creating what would now be called strategic authorities from what we generally call upper-tier authorities—the unitaries and the counties. I am not saying that there would not have been a need down the line to do something about what will be a messy system, but in terms of getting growth plans and those things up and running—I just put that on the record, because I am not going to get too far into the issue. However, if you are where you are at the moment, I would commend the idea of community empowerment plans and a proper legal framework for devolution below those levels. What I would say, though, is that there is a level of devolved function that needs to operate at the level of strategic authorities.”
“And to come to the point that both of you have touched on, the Bill as drafted assumes power upwards to mayors, and it introduces a raft of powers—in chapter after chapter of the Bill—whereby the Secretary of State will direct the mayor and the authority, requiring them to produce various strategies. In a country that is already very centralised anyway, how do we develop and encourage local leaders to come forward in a context where there will be significantly fewer roles for them to fulfil, and where those roles will be significantly more constrained than they have been used to? Professor Denham: Let me break that down into a number of sections. First, on local government reorganisation and size, I will be straightforward: Sir David and I did not propose local government reorganisation.”
“Q I would like to ask you to enlarge on this subject. The point at which Professor Denham finished was a helpful starting place. I think we all share the desire to see that level of community empowerment. What is very striking, when we compare local government in all its forms in the UK with what is well established in other countries, is how little of it there is, relatively, and how few powers people in local authorities already have. One of the concerns we flagged is that the chosen footprint of half a million envisages, in shire England, the elimination of 90% of existing local councillors in one fell swoop. I am interested in how, in the context of a country that is already massively under-represented at local level, we can address that manifest democratic deficit in this process.”
“Can you tell us a little bit about how, perhaps in an ideal world or a more optimal world, that community voice could be secured behind the delivery of the types and number of homes that communities want, but in a way that best reflects the needs of those local communities and those areas?”
“Q To pick up on the point about a democratic deficit, one of the things that has been much debated is that the Government have embarked on two major pieces of legislation: the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. Both will have a huge impact on the policy area, particularly around housing. We know that housing delivery has collapsed, and part of the solution to that in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is to strip out a lot of the environmental protections, which you have referred to. Then the devo Bill comes along and removes much of the community voice as well—for example, by reducing the number of planning applications that may be considered by a local planning committee.”
“Many of us will have been pleased to hear you say earlier, Minister, that that was flexible, in your view—that it was not intended to be a strong guideline, but was something where you were looking at a much greater level of latitude. So that we can have assurances in relation to the relevant groupings later in the Committee process, will you commit to all those local leaders—in particular any who have submitted a bid on the understanding that it had to be around that 500,000—that there will be the opportunity to revisit that if it was not dictated by their local circumstances and preferences but, in their minds, something required by the Government?”
“Q I think we have established that the Department has not done an independent assessment of the financial impact of the reorganisation that has been described, so we do not know where we stand with that, but let me push for a little more clarity on the footprint. It is clear from the representations from local government leaders that the Government had previously given them the steer that unless their bid was for a footprint of around half a million, or had a very strong justification for why it was larger or smaller than that, the Government were unlikely to approve it. That was the evidence given to us by the previous Minister. Clearly, a number of those authority areas are in the process of finalising their bids, and in some areas there is dispute at different levels of local authority as to what the footprint should be.”
“If an authority comes forward with 100,000 or 200,000, we are likely to say that that probably does not cut the mustard, but we want to have that conversation, because fundamentally this has to be aligned and make sense on the ground. Otherwise, none of this will play out in the way that we want it to.”
“That is the question. Miatta Fahnbulleh: I come back to, “What is the purpose of this?” We are not doing reorganisation for the fun of it—it is not fun. We are doing it because we think it will help us to drive certain outcomes. Our assessment is that around 500,000 is the sort of scale that allows us to do certain functions. That has to be consistent and compliant with what makes sense locally. The whole purpose of localism is that you have that interaction between the two. We have therefore given a benchmark for what we think makes sense, but when we look at proposals we will, of course, take into account the specific circumstances.”
“Q May I put a point of clarification? If there is no independent financial assessment, on what basis do the Government have a view that 500,000 is the most efficient size? Miatta Fahnbulleh: I come back to the fact that it is not just about savings and efficiency, but about removing fragmentation and about what makes sense in terms of the types of services that we are asking local authorities to deliver—it is a whole set of things. That is our benchmark, but ultimately the basis of localism is to say to places, “Given these parameters, what do you think makes sense?” We will use that to make decisions.”
“As per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am a director of Localis think-tank, which has contributed evidence. I am also a parliamentary vice-president of the Local Government Association and for London Councils, which has also submitted evidence.”
“But there are a number of other areas that the Bill could be strengthening to support parish and town councils to do more for their areas, to work with mayors and strategic authorities, and definitely to support colleagues in principal authorities to deliver public services in what is a very challenging financial environment.”
“They provide some helpful recognition of the important role that parish and town councils play in their communities—as local leaders, with skin in the game, who know their places best, and providing a wide and growing range of hyper-local public services, such as using neighbourhood planning to plan for housing within their areas, tackling the cost of living crisis, stepping up to support communities during the covid pandemic and working with their communities on climate change. However, it is important that the Bill goes further and takes more steps to strengthen communities, and parish and town councils. It is helpful that there are measures in the Bill that seek to strengthen the relationship between strategic authorities, unitary authorities and parish councils. That could very much be strengthened.”
“If we are going to achieve what devolution should be, which is a bottom-up approach where local residents get to shape what their local communities look like, and the centre truly devolving, you need to make sure that those constituent councils—which are the housing authority and the planning authority, and are in control of economic growth—have a seat round that table to drive that agenda forward. Justin Griggs: At the National Association of Local Councils, we have long advocated for a shift of power out of Whitehall and into our communities, but it is important that that devolution goes beyond the regional, sub-regional and principal authority levels, and into communities themselves. That is why we welcome the ambitions, taken together, that the Government have set out in the White Paper and the Bill.”
“I think the threat and the concerns that we have so far with what is presented in the Bill is that district councils, which are responsible as the planning and housing authority, have no seat round the table of the new strategic authorities that are being established. If we want to work in partnership with this Government, delivering 1.5 million homes, you need those planning authorities around that table. Beyond that, many things are missing. If we look at what is being devolved from Whitehall and those Whitehall Departments, it is very short in its forthcomings. Some of those powers are just about recentralisation.”
“Q This is a question for both of our witnesses. The title of the Bill is the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. Both of you have very deep roots at community level in representing the voices of local people. Could you set out your views about how the measures in the Bill will impact on the ability of elected parish, district and borough councillors to exercise that power, control and voice on behalf of those residents and communities? Sam Chapman-Allen: To start off, at the DCN we are absolutely in favour of devolution as long as it is meaningful for our local community.”
“We need to make sure that the public have that ability—democratic accountability at a hyper-local level—driving forward not just housing but also wider place-shaping.”
“But it is about taking our communities with us, to understand where those houses need to be built, what the challenges are and how we overcome them together. When you begin to introduce strategic authorities at a large scale, which sometimes seem very distant, you have to have that piece in between it to allow people to have a local voice and representation. How can a mayor, sitting in a strategic position, be supposed to deliver on housing and planning, when the local authority, which is responsible for housing and planning, does not have a seat round that table? That is the challenge and the risk. This Government have a clear mandate of 1.5 million homes. To achieve that, they need all those councils round that table.”
“Q Thank you very much to both the witnesses. It has been a helpful start. Councillor Chapman-Allen, you referred to the role of your constituent authorities in the planning system. We know that a big focus of the Government is around an increase in housing. What impact will that have on the ability of the overall system to deliver the necessary number of planning permissions and the necessary strategic planning—undertaking this extensive reorganisation, which involves, essentially, the abolition of most of those planning authorities at the same time? Sam Chapman-Allen: The reason why my members are able to successfully deliver 45% of all new homes across the country is localism. It is being close to those communities and able to work across every mile within our villages, towns, cathedral cities and coastal communities.”
“The independent think-tank Localis has done some analysis of the current proposal for a 500,000 threshold. We could see 90% of councillors across shire areas removed overnight. That would be a democratic deficit and an absolute catastrophe. If we look back through the pandemic, as Justin has alluded to, community councillors were out every single day, just as you were as MPs, supporting the most vulnerable, making sure that communities could bounce back and, more importantly, giving support to local businesses to make sure that they could bounce back as well and grow from strength to strength. My concern is that if we begin to move ourselves to a distant model, there will be a democratic deficit and unaccountability, and the ability of a councillor to know that every resident, street, business and community leader will be lost.”
“When you begin to remove councillors, that casework does not disappear; it just becomes a bigger challenge for a single councillor. The risk is as we begin to get bigger those mega-councils, and we begin to think about how to ensure that those councillors can represent their communities. Does it become a full-time job? Does it then preclude other people from being able to stand to become community champions? The reason why local government and district councils work successfully, in the same way as London boroughs and Manchester metropolitan councils, is because they are hyper-local. There are circa 200,000 to 350,000 residents per council, and they have local councillors representing a couple of thousand people. As we move forward with mega-councils, the risk is that a single councillor will be representing some tens of thousands.”
“Q One of the issues that we aired in the debate when this subject first emerged on the Floor of the House was that at the Government’s chosen footprint of 500,000 minimum population, the Bill implies the abolition of 90% of the local elected representatives in each of those areas. I know the cross-party concerns about the risk of losing that community voice. With your experience at community, district and borough level, it would be helpful for you to spell out what you think is the impact of that potential democratic deficit, especially on contested issues such as planning. Sam Chapman-Allen: You will appreciate how busy your inboxes and mailsacks are, with the casework that you receive daily from your residents.”
“In the same way, we have scrutiny panels that could hold the mayor to account, which is important. Every action has a consequence, and every action should be challenged on behalf of the public. I absolutely believe there should be good scrutiny of mayors, and I think any mayor would welcome that good scrutiny. Matthew Hicks: I am Matthew Hicks, the leader of Suffolk county council and chair of the CCN since last Wednesday. Sorry I could not be with you today—diaries are still clashing a bit. I agree with my colleagues, as I think it is critical that we look at the mayoral commissioners and ensure they are subject to effective and proportionate scrutiny and accountability. Mayors can be voted out every four years, but genuine democratic accountability is really important.”
“My local authority and I are contributing to growing the economy, and Greater Manchester benefits when we work as one. Kevin Bentley: I am Kevin Bentley, the senior vice-chair of the LGA and leader of Essex county council. Also, Matthew is actually the leader of Suffolk county council, not Sussex county council. There is no such authority as Sussex county council, unless something dramatic has happened overnight that we are not aware of—that would be rapid devolution. I absolutely agree with what Bev has said, and we already have that form of scrutiny with police and crime commissioners, and it works well. That works on a model where constituent parts and people who are not necessarily in leadership roles actually have the ability to scrutinise.”
“That is perhaps a key difference from the London model, where deputy mayors appointed by the Mayor of London hold a portfolio. From experience, looking across the country, we think it is really important to bind organisations that have different competencies in different areas into the same shared goal in a place. Many of our members have raised with interest what will happen in the move to majority decision making, rather than consensual decision making. From the LGA’s perspective, we have been quite keen to keep that under review. As it currently stands in Greater Manchester, it is consensual decision making that leads us into a place. A model that binds in local authorities from the beginning is really important. Let’s be honest, in my place, we are the ones building homes.”
“In my spare time, I am also the Greater Manchester combined authority deputy mayor for economy, business and international issues. In response to your question, the first thing to say is that, across the Local Government Association, we have been calling for devolution from Whitehall to communities for quite some time. We have spent a lot of time thinking through what accountability looks like in that context. As we move from combined authorities to strategic authorities, it is important to make sure that the Bill reflects not only the competencies of local authorities within new strategic authorities but points of collaboration. For example, in the Greater Manchester system, each of the 10 local authority leaders holds a portfolio.”
“Q I have a question on accountability for all three panellists. With the proposals for the new mayoral roles and the reorganisation of local government, a key challenge will be ensuring that the mayor, on a large footprint, is accountable at a local level. There are different systems in place in London and Manchester, for example, which are probably the best-known mayoral authorities at the moment. I would be interested in your reflections on what you think works well, and on what challenges the Government might need to fix in this legislation to ensure the accountability is really effective. Bev Craig: Good morning, I am Councillor Bev Craig. I am a Local Government Association vice-chair and leader of the Labour group. I am also the leader of Manchester city council, a city of 630,000 people.”
“It is critical that we understand that debt, but also understand the impact if we were to have fewer unitaries. That debt would be transferred to those new unitaries. How would very small unitaries cope with that?”
“I would like to see more. Bev Craig: That is a fairly consistent point across Local Government Association members. A significant underfunding of local government has built up over the last 14 to 15 years. There is a big job in taking local authorities back from the brink, which is a conversation for another panel. It is one of the reasons why we will continue to make the point that a well-resourced, well-run local authority can transform and change communities, so they need to be resourced in a way that they can do so. Matthew Hicks: I echo that. From the CCN’s perspective, SEND is one of the biggest issues, and the growing DSG debt is a huge issue. The Government have said they are going to look at that imminently, and we would absolutely welcome positive changes. That debt is growing, and it is almost unspoken.”
“With the high needs block, you are talking about a system that needs to be changed rather than just an issue at the money end—that is perhaps another conversation for another panel. It needs to be addressed soon for the sake of society. The debt question is a live one. The LGA and constituent councils within the DPP are talking to the Government about debt. Of course, there is good debt and bad debt. Asset debt means that a council is doing things, which is very good, and there are other debts that are not good. We are aware of the councils in that situation. It is a constant conversation. My view has always been that we cannot allow any new authority to start with a major deficit that it cannot cover. We must have that serious conversation with the Government, and we are having those conversations. Has enough attention been given to it?”
“Q Councillor Hicks, your point about audit is probably a good entry point for my follow-up question. We are aware that a very large proportion, more than half, of education authorities have a council-killing debt associated with the high needs block in their dedicated schools grant. The Committee has received many representations about the indebtedness of some authorities in areas that are proposed to be part of these mayoral combined authorities. Do you feel that sufficient attention has been given, and that there is sufficient assurance in the system that those debts and deficits will not be a financial barrier to delivering the ambitions that you all share for the new authorities? If so, could you tell us a bit about that? If not, how could that be addressed? Kevin Bentley: It is a constant conversation.”
“They want to move to the new local government structure as soon as possible to make sure that the resources within the local government family remain. But, again, before 2010, for 40 years planning resources were done in two ways. The strategic level is where all the specialist skills sat, and then the planners and others were within the local authorities. They worked as two parts of the same team. We do not have the specialist skills in local authorities anymore; they have to pay to bring that back. A lot of specialist skills are rare anyway, so they are difficult to get. Having some teams and general support at the strategic scale will be invaluable to local authorities going forward.”
“For example, in the last few weeks, the Mayor of the North East combined authority announced a massive housing development in Newcastle on a site that has been derelict and unviable for many years. She has used her convening and financial powers to bring together Homes England, local authorities and others to bring forward development on that site. On the delivery side, the powers and funding that the mayors will have to make sure that spatial development strategies and local plans are implemented will be really important In terms of local government restructuring, it is fair to say, as everybody has already this morning, that resources are thin on the ground. They are getting thinner the longer this goes on. People want a resolution.”
“First, it is about the fact that fewer than 30% of local plans are up to date. That is partly because all the decisions and all the financial, technical and political risk sit with individual local planning authorities. It is right that there is a separation of decision making in the way that we had before 2010 for 40 years. If that decision making is now through the new strategic authorities, that is probably the right place for it in terms of the new spatial development strategy, which I know sits with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. However, there is no point in strategic authorities having the responsibility to prepare those strategies if they do not also have some responsibility to deliver them. The range of delivery mechanisms set out in the Bill will help that.”
“Having combined authorities with responsibility for planning, transport and place making, and strong convening powers, means that our members are able to invest with confidence, knowing the strategic aims for that area. We hope to see that replicated with strategic authorities. We can get into more detail—Cat is better placed to comment on the reorganisation and the impact on planning. We feel that the way that upward-only rent reviews were introduced into legislation without any meaningful consultation is not good policymaking. We feel that it will not do much to help the high street and it could have a negative impact on new investment and development. Catriona Riddell: Hello, I am Catriona Riddell, a strategic planning specialist. There are two components to this.”
“Q This question is to both witnesses. There are a number of different elements in the Bill on which you have relevant expertise, but can you give the Committee your view on the impact of the envisaged reorganisation on the planning system? What impact will the measures in the Bill about upward-only rent reviews have? Ion Fletcher: Good morning, everyone. My name is Ion Fletcher. I am the director of finance policy at the British Property Federation. Our members own, develop and invest in both commercial and residential property across the UK. In high-level terms, our members have had a good experience with devolution so far.”