‘The country’s bust’ – Heseltine remains frustrated at sluggishness of devolution

The former ‘Minister for Merseyside’ is seen as one of the founding fathers of English devolution but the 92-year-old lacks confidence that a more decentralised society is around the corner, declaring today that the country remains “very badly run”.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Novel, a group set up by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and University of Liverpool to provide support and training for businesses, Lord Michael Heseltine spoke for a little over half an hour about his role in reversing Liverpool’s urban decline and the obstacles he encountered along the way.

Much of his frustration around the time of the Toxteth riots in 1981 came about through a lack of local leaders with the “power or the ability or the wish” to make the changes Liverpool needed around.

It was Heseltine, MP for Henley in Oxfordshire, who saved the Royal Albert Dock from demolition and set up the Merseyside Development Corporation to regenerate the city.

His One Nation vision is for the UK to be a country where interventions can be made locally, rather than having to rely on a Whitehall minister.

While great strides have been made to give city regions like Liverpool more devolved powers since Heseltine’s time in Liverpool, a lack of local power still irks him almost 50 years on.

Heseltine said Mayor Steve Rotheram has “very little power” despite Liverpool being “pretty well at the forefront of progress” with regards to devolution.

“[England is] unlike any other advanced economy of which I have knowledge, where to one stage or another, local priorities are assessed and met,” he said.

The Labour government is seeking to address this by embarking on what it is calling the biggest change to local governance in a generation. This involves reducing the number of councils in places like Lancashire and Staffordshire and introducing combined authorities run by elected mayors who will have the power to make decisions locally.

However, the path towards devolution is seldom simple. Take Lancashire. The county is currently made up of 15 authorities who have so far failed to come to an agreement on how to divide themselves, with five different options put forward.

The county has, though, warmed to the idea of a mayor, having initially said it was against it, but the Reform-led and soon-to-be-abolished county council remains opposed.

This kind of wrangling and feet dragging – which is by no means exclusive to Lancashire – comes as no surprise to Heseltine, who has seen it all before.

“Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas,” he said in reference to the reticence of politicians and civil servants from across the political spectrum to the idea of a more decentralised system of governance.

“If someone says I’m going to take your power away, or I’m going to make someone more important than you, your whole instinct is to say, like the turkey, ‘not on my nelly’.”

Heseltine did not comment specifically about Labour’s efforts to shake-up local politics but his career suggests he would be in favour of them, at least in principle.

The same cannot be said of the current government’s fiscal policy, which he described as “massively disastrous”, especially for small businesses.

“The country’s bust,” he said. “Any of you got any fancy ideas about borrowing more money? Forget it.”

Heseltine said that £10bn that the government currently spends on things like housing, education, and transport should be made available for regional mayors to bid for every year, a process that would drive innovation and increase competitiveness.

“That is £10bn a year, hypothecated in the public expenditure programs for the next 10 years. Money that should be orientated towards a local concept, as opposed to top down. And it doesn’t happen.”

Integrated settlements for the West Midlands, £389m for 2025/26, and Greater Manchester, £650m, announced last year are a significant step towards the kind of fiscal devolution Heseltine is hoping for. Liverpool is in line to get its own this year, averaging out at £375m a year over four years.

Aside from more money, Heseltine said mayors should be given additional powers to intervene when institutions like schools are underperforming.

“There is too much acceptance of inadequate standards in schools,” he said.

“There should be the power for the local mayor and his team to pinpoint those schools and say, ‘you’ve got six months to improve the standard, or we’re going to do it for you’.”

He conceded this idea might not be universally popular – “naturally, I will now be accused of all sorts of villainy for attacking teachers” – but that it backs up his view that an institution is only as good as the person leading it.

“You need patience, you need energy, you need excellence,” he said.

“And it’s a very simple story. Show me the problem. Show me the person in charge.”