English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
As I am sure all Members in this place do, I support the principle of devolution and empowerment—two of the words on the face of the Bill—but this Bill is about centralisation and disempowerment. For the Isle of Wight, it is about fusing our island with Hampshire under a combined mayoral authority, where 93% of the population live in Hampshire on the mainland and just 7% live on the island. There is no empowerment, because island people will not have a say. This plan was last crystalised under the previous Labour Government, who gave islanders a say through a local referendum. Islanders voted no, and the previous Labour Government respected that vote. This Government do not respect my constituents enough to ask them whether they are happy to be fused with a much, much larger county that sits across the water. It is centralising because my local authority, the Isle of Wight council, will lose some of its powers. It will lose powers over strategic planning, so a mayor who represents largely Hampshire voters will be able to allocate more housing on the island, and any mayor who is interested in getting re-elected will, of course, be responsive to the much larger voter cohort in Hampshire. There are three particularly offensive things about the Bill that the Government are imposing on my constituents. Our police authority is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Our health commissioning body is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Our fire and rescue service is called Hampshire and Isle of Wight. The vast majority of organisations that operate across our two counties are named after our two counties—Hampshire and Isle of Wight. This Government are going to call our mayoral combined authority Hampshire and Solent, potentially removing our name from all the organisations that the mayor will end up having power over—from our police, our fire and rescue service, our health commissioning body, and who knows what in the future. That will be done without anyone on the Isle of Wight having a say. The second offensive thing about this proposal for my constituency is the powers that it gives the mayor over local transport. The authority will have Solent in the title, yet the mayor will get no contingent powers over the biggest transport issue facing my residents: crossing the Solent on ferries. Solent is in the name of the combined authority, but the mayor will get no powers over ferries. Our ferries are the only unregulated, entirely privatised, foreign-owned, debt-laden key transport provider in the UK. The Government are prepared to nationalise railways, extend the arm of Government in buses and put more money into roads, but they are not prepared to do anything about my constituents being left at the mercy of foreign-owned, debt-laden companies. I will acknowledge that they have used some warm words, and the Minister has visited the island, but this is the opportunity to deliver on those words and put powers in the hands of the mayor to regulate cross-Solent transport. To make a really important point on ringfenced funding, because the Isle of Wight will be fused with Hampshire, the mayor will be able to spend money as they wish across a homogeneous single zone. There is no special provision in the Bill to ensure there is ringfenced funding for the Isle of Wight that cannot be raided for Hampshire. The local integrated care board is already raiding money from our hospice to spend on Hampshire hospices. In the mayoral deal, we need powers to stop that from happening. Finally, in the consultation of my constituents on the key issue of transport, the F-word—ferries—was not mentioned even once.