Angela Rayner urges local leaders in England to sign devolution deals

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Angela Rayner has called on all local leaders in England without a devolution agreement to “step up” and take up new powers to kick-start a “new revolution” in decentralising decision-making.

In a letter to council leaders on Tuesday, the UK deputy prime minister said she wanted so-called devolution deserts to ask central government for new powers in a range of policy areas.

Labour has promised to introduce a “Take Back Control Act”, expected in the King’s Speech on Wednesday, which would put the presumption of devolution into local communities. It would give mayors responsibility for transport, skills, adult education, employment support, energy and planning.

As of January, around 40 per cent of England had no devolution agreement with central government. This was despite an increase in agreements between the last Conservative government and areas such as the East Midlands, the North East, York and North Yorkshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cornwall, Lancashire, Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire.

Rayner said Greater Manchester’s strong economic growth over the past 20 years was partly due to the long-standing devolution of various powers within that region.

“For too long, the Westminster government has tightened its grip on power and stifled the opportunities and potential for towns, cities and villages across the country,” writes Rayner.

“I want to work with more places to help them use these enhanced powers… for any areas that are considering it, now is the time to act,” she added, describing Labour’s plans for a “new devolution revolution”.

The King’s Speech, the first under the new Labour government, was set includes at least 35 new bills — a larger-than-usual legislative agenda as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer seeks to capitalise on the political momentum from his historic general election victory.

One of the highlights of the package will be a new “labour rights bill”, which will implement some of the party’s “New Deal for Workers”, recently renamed the “Labour Plan to Turn Jobs into Wages”.

The bill is expected to create a single enforcement agency for labour rights and remove the lower earnings limit for statutory sick pay.

Several other parts of the New Economic Policy will be consulted on in the future, including the move to a unitary employment regime and a review of parental leave.

Other bills would give more powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the financial watchdog, create a new state-owned company GB Energy and reform the House of Lords.

Plans to give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote and strengthen the powers of water regulator Ofwat to punish companies that fail to tackle sewage spills will also be announced on Wednesday.

A crime and police bill would ban the possession of zombie-style knives and machetes, criminalise taking and sending intimate images without consent and create “respect orders” to punish adults who engage in persistent antisocial behaviour.

A senior Whitehall official said the planning bill would take the power to issue compulsory purchase orders, introduced by the previous Conservative government, “to a higher level” in a bid to boost house building in the current parliament.

The aim is to extend powers, introduced by former housing minister Michael Gove, that would allow councils to buy land without paying “hope value” — the increased value based on the prospect of future development.

The border security bill would establish a Border Security Command, with counter-terrorism-style powers to target criminal gangs, and a “growth and skills levy” would likely replace the current apprenticeship levy in the skills bill.

A separate transport bill would create Great British Railways, responsible for the entire rail network. A handful of laws prepared by the previous government would also be restored, including a tenant reform bill to abolish “no fault” evictions.