Burnham and the devolved national governments

The Guardian has an interesting editorial on how Andy Burnham should approach Scotland and Wales in the context of his commitment to devolving more powers to England's mayoral authorities.

There are one or to missteps in the article, for example they are sceptical of Burnham's claim that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster”, when in fact many people in north Wales do feel equally remote from the Cardiff-based Welsh government, but they are right that the Prime Minister needs to sort out anomalies in the devolution settlement and get reluctant London-based civil servants on board.

The paper has also confused the supplementary budget that Plaid Cymru failed to pass a few weeks ago with an actual budget. Losing a vote on the latter is a far more serious affair than what transpired when Ministers couldn't get Labour to agree to the way they wanted to tweak the existing budget.

The paper is absolutely right when it says that Westminster should not claim the right to bypass the devolved administrations in empowering local authorities in Wales and Scotland, and also in saying that Burnham should ditch Keir Starmer's approach, best characterised as him warning ministers against being “overly deferential” to the Scottish and Welsh governments.

There is, though, a lot of work to do if the new Prime Minister is to deliver on the expectations he has created outside of Engkand:

Inevitably there will be frustrations, rows and disagreements, not least over calls for the Barnett formula funding arrangements to be updated. The Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin will all have a powerful motive for taking credit for what goes right, and blaming Mr Burnham’s government when things go wrong. Matters in Wales are further complicated by the minority status of the Plaid government, which Welsh Labour has refused to support and which has yet to succeed in passing a budget.

But Mr Burnham’s direction of travel can be the right one for the devolved nations as well as the English regions. A confidence-building early move would be to repeal contentious powers granted by the post-Brexit United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which allow London to distribute funds across the UK in a variety of policy areas. As the Institute for Government has suggested, Mr Burnham could instead fund the devolved governments to establish their own priorities.

Devolution, and the possibilities it could unleash, were at the heart of Mr Burnham’s rise to Britain’s highest political office. Entirely understandably, his first moves have reflected the regional backdrop to that ascent. He should also follow his instincts in the rest of the United Kingdom.

This is absolutely the right approach, and from a Welsh perspective, it should start with a new Government of Wales Act putting Welsh devolution on a par with that in Scotland. 

Will Burnham accept that case, and if he does, will he be able to convince his more sceptical Secretary of State (and his Welsh Labour MPs) to go along with it? We will have to see.