Labour, devolution and the union By Jim Gallagher

Labour can fairly claim to be the party of devolution. It was Labour which nurtured the idea of a Scottish Parliament in the 1990s, before creating it. It was a skilful Labour First Minister who made the Welsh comfortable with their Assembly. Devolution is much more than a political tactic to see off Nationalist competition. (If it was, as it hasn't been a roaring success.) It's a way of expressing, in modern political terms, the reality that the UK has always been a multi national state. But it's a fair criticism that in the enthusiasm of creating new devolved institutions, not enough attention was paid to what was left behind: devolution implies a union, which also needs to be explained and justified; and devolution affects only 15% of the U.K.'s population, touching England not at all. When devolution is challenged by separatist ambitions in Scotland, explaining the union is all the more important. Labour should see it in three guises economic, social, and political. Economics is what drove the creation of the Anglo-Scottish union 300 years agocreating a single market, now the UK domestic market, in which trade benefits everyone, made much easier by having a single currency. This isn't just about company profits, but about people and jobs. The fact that the UK is a single labour market provides opportunities for all of its people: Scots taking the high road to London, or urbanites looking for a different life. The Bank of England is the sort of institution which underpins a single market, and even separatists want to keep that. The social union is Labours most significant contribution to this argument. We all belong in a network of family, social and professional

relationships across these islands. Which of us doesn't have family members elsewhere in the UK? And which of us doesn't share the common UK cultural, very explicitly expressed in the institution of the BBC? But the social union is more than that. This sense of belonging is backed up by sharing - we share risks and we share resources, because we belong together. Nowhere is that more important than in the welfare state. That's why we have a common social security systema pensioner, or a person in difficulty, is as entitled to benefit as much on Clydeside as in Cardiff or Colchester. This form of welfare is part of the glue that binds the nation together. And of course that's why separatists want to break it up. The battered flagship expressing this is the DWP. Of course the UK is a political union. Here shared institutions abound: the monarchy, Parliament, the Armed Forces are only the most obvious. It's easy to take for granted that a primary purpose of the state is defence against external threats, and it is blindingly obvious that banding together for this purpose makes us all safer. Even if some ventures are unsuccessful or unpopular, it's better for everyone to be part of a nation which can robustly defend its interests and take an active role in a changing and uncertain world. This conception of union has implications for devolution. No one who has the interests of the people of our country at heart wants to break up the economic unioneven though many would love to reform it and distribute its benefits better. Still less would anyone who believed in social justice want to break up the social union, so that less well off parts of the country wouldn't benefit from the redistribution of resources from wealthy areas. Could we tweak devolution in these areas? Yes. Maybe some more economic decentralization, given the failure of our regional policy over many years, maybe some flexibility in some aspects of Social Security, when it interacts very closely with devolved services, for example in looking after the elderly or maybe in relation to training and employment. But these are adjustments: we remain a single economy, and the people who belong in it need to share resources with one another.

The political union needs more adjustment. Not to reduce the UK's voice in the world, nor to weaken its security. But instead to make the accommodations needed to reflect the fact of devolutiongrafted onto a constitutional system centralist to the coreand to meet people's aspirations for more control nearer to them. So what needs to be done? The UK now has four legislatures - in London, Edinburgh Cardiff and Belfast. But Parliament in London hasn't changed much to recognise this reality. It steps aside from legislating on devolved matters - but only because that is the policy of governments. That convention needs to be embedded in the rules of the institution. More difficult for Labour, we have to recognise the untidiness that Westminster is England's Parliament as well as the UK's. English legislation deserves some special recognition: English opinion should have more say on it. The party which recognised the need for Scottish and Welsh devolution can't deny the English some voice too. Of course this is not straightforwardan English Parliament would, as the Royal Commission on the Constitution recognised 40 years ago, spell the end of the union. Plans for some sort of English parliamentary procedure are coming out now. Labour should not be fearful of them. Indeed it would be better if Labour were to take ownership of the change, because of the risk that conservatives will be seen as partisan in this area. The political facts dispel the myths. Labour only creates stable UK government when it wins in England - as it did in the 3 elections from 1979. But Westminster procedures are not enough. If devolution and decentralisation are good for Scotland and Wales, then they are good for England too. Attempts to make this a reality, however, have been poorly conceived. The Napoleonic notion of dividing England into standard regions" and decentralising to them fell at the first hurdle in the northeast. Decentralisation can't be imposed on people: that's an internally inconsistent proposition. Nor need it cover the whole country, and be the same everywhere. Surely one of the lessons of the UK is that it's possible to be an asymmetric, untidy union. The model of governance

that works is organic, or biological, rather than mathematical and mechanical. The lessons of devolution to Scotland and Wales tell us decentralisation will work , if three conditions are met. First, there must be a demand. Second, there must be a functioning administrative structures to which democratic oversight can be added. These might be city regions, or they might be substantial counties. Third, there must be the opportunity for high-profile political leadership to engage people's imaginations. One doesn't have to be a supporter of Alex Salmond, or Boris Johnson, to realise the impact they have made. Will the result be messy? Yes, but don't worry about it. Devolution has already created an asymmetric structure with loose ends and anomalies. The sky hasn't fallenand devolution works, and it's popular. We could do with more institutions that work and are popular. Why dont we create some? Jim Gallagher is a Research Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford. He was guest speaker at a Policy Review event in January on The Labour Party and the future of the union. Political notes are published by One Nation Register. They are a monthly contribution to the debates shaping Labours political renewal. The articles published do not represent Labours policy positions. To contact political notes, email onenationregister@gmail.com