Devolution - what's it good for?
I make no apologies for choosing to harp on about transport in my column again this month. Regular readers will probably know it's one of my pet subjects - but then again it's probably yours too. If there is one issue above all that affects us in business (and which costs us a fair bit too) then it's transport.
The government's recent White Paper, "The Future of Transport, a Network for 2030", was a shocker. Full of contradictory messages and vague commitments to projects, it was also particularly shocking for the regions.
On the one hand the government said it was "now confident" that London's £310bn Crossrail project should proceed (even though it cannot be built before the 2012 Olympics and the government has no idea how it will be funded), while on the other hand it pulled the plug on the extension of light rail schemes costing a fraction of the cost across several British cities including Nottingham and Manchester, saying they were getting too expensive. Excuse me?
The regions could hardly have got a worse deal if they tried. At least somewhere like Birmingham hasn't even got its act together to ensure it has a major light rail network in the first place (you cannot even get from Snow Hill to New Street) so here the government is pulling the plug on nothing at all.
But what really gets me is that in the same breath the government talks about ever-greater devolution of decision-making to the regions. That's all very well, but you need money from central government to fund those decisions in the first place.
And where something controversial comes up, such as congestion charging, the government of course passes the buck by saying it is happy to create incentives for local authorities to introduce charging. Politicians in marginal seats at both a local and national level (and there are plenty of those across the Midlands) are hardly going to risk their necks on that one.
Meantime the national motorway network grinds to a halt as the government lacks the courage to push ahead with the blindingly obvious - that the whole network simply has to be tolled. Instead it says it isn't sure if the technology is quite there yet so we'll park that one for a while (while we all park in a jam).
Take another one - rail devolution. What does that mean? Does the government seriously expect Birmingham on its own to come up with the £3350m-plus needed to give New Street station merely a facelift? Please help us.
Sadly there are broader parallels here with the progress of the Lyons review, which called for a major relocation of civil service jobs out of the South East. Progress has so far been painfully slow. Midlands cities better not hold their breath waiting for major relocations as Sir Humphrey really isn't too keen on this devolution nonsense.
Seven years on, I am sick of Labour's spin on devolution. Although the formation of the regional development agencies has undoubtedly been a step in the right direction and gradual increases in their budgets are to be welcomed, the bottom line I'm afraid is that the economic gap between London and the regions just keeps on growing and there is no sign of it slowing.
Jim Pendrill, editor
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