Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has used Yorkshire Day to call on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to go further than this week’s devolution announcement and give Yorkshire its own parliament – with real powers over education, transport and health.
The call follows the Prime Minister’s announcement on Thursday that mayors in England will be handed a share of locally generated income tax and business rates, alongside greater control over housing, transport, skills and employment support, with ministers now required to justify why powers should stay in Whitehall.
Mr Gordon said the announcement was a step forward, but that pushing more money and powers through four separate Yorkshire mayoralties deepens the divides holding the county back.
He has previously proposed an amendment in Westminster to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill that would have allowed the Secretary of State to establish regional governance bodies – including a Yorkshire Parliament- with locally determined names and structures and powers over education and skills, transport, health and social care, and housing and planning.
Tom Gordon MP said:
Happy Yorkshire Day. Now let’s have a Yorkshire that can actually run itself.
A divided Yorkshire is a weakened Yorkshire. We are carved into four mayoral areas, each negotiating separately with Whitehall, each fighting for a slightly bigger slice of a pot that London still controls. That is not devolution. That is a queue.
Yorkshire has the population of Scotland and an economy the size of Wales. We have a cultural identity, a history and a geography stronger than most nations in Europe – and yet we have less say over our own schools, hospitals and railways than people in Cardiff or Edinburgh have over theirs.
The Prime Minister has spent a decade arguing that power should flow out of Westminster. He is right. But if he means it, he cannot stop at handing mayors a bigger allowance. Yorkshire needs a parliament of its own, with control over education, transport and health – the three things that decide whether our young people can get to college, get to work, and live as long as people in the South East.
My amendment would have opened that door. Westminster didn’t even take it to a vote. I’ll keep pressing until it does.
Yorkshire folk have never needed telling what Yorkshire needs. We just need the power to do something about it.
