Yorkshire loses chance of more powers in the wake of the elected Mayor impasse.
The government announced some delegated powers for the York and West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) yesterday but did not go as far as has been offered to Manchester. The government (rightly) says that the decision takers in Leeds – a gang of Labour Council Leaders – are not directly democratically accountable.
Given the appalling mess that some single party dominated Councils (Doncaster, Rotherham etc) have got into, the elected Mayor model is little better, substituting an elected dictator for what should be wide ranging debate and democracy.
The solution is to have a small directly elected Executive for the WYCA. To avoid dominance by one party (unless electors wanted that) seats should be allocated in proportion to the votes cast for each party.
Electors should have a say on which individual candidates they prefer (to avoid the party list monopoly -which is the major failure of the European election system). Costs could be contained by gradually reducing – by around 10% – the number of Councillors elected to other authorities. There should be a power of recall.
There is an opportunity to have a genuinely open system with social media having already shown how increasing numbers of residents can participate in debates about issues.
Mean while locally, the Liberal Democrat Group on City of York Council are calling for a radical overhaul of the way the council takes decisions with a return to a committee system.
Under the council’s current ‘leader and cabinet’ model, decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of just six cabinet members. Under a committee system, the cabinet would be scrapped and policy would instead be made by various cross-party committees with all political groups represented.
A Lib Dem motion on the issue will be debated at next Thursday’s full council meeting. The motion argues that the current system is “not-fit-for-purpose” and a more “open and collaborative” approach is needed.
The potential change was made possible through the Coalition Government’s 2011 Localism Act. Following this, a number of councils including Sutton and Brighton & Hove have moved to a committee-style system.