Eric Pickles served as Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar from 1992 to 2017. He served as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015, and as shadow Secretary for the same portfolio in 2002, 2003-05, and 2007-09. He became a life peer in 2018.
This interview was conducted on 28 September 2021.
Q: What was your role in, and overall assessment of, growth and regional policy over the past few decades?
I was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government between 2010-2015. The cornerstone of the growth agenda was the Localism Act, which was the largest Act passed by the government in that period. It was a twofold approach: first, localism itself, trying to devolve power down so that people would and could make decisions; second, as part of that process and to deliver growth, setting up the Local Enterprise Partnerships (‘LEPs’).
The big thing that worries all ministers, maybe less civil servants, is that when you pass power down, the person receiving the power says to you, ‘What does success look like?’ Britain is an over-governed, over-administered community, so people have got used to the centre taking all the decisions and taking all the responsibilities. Sometimes it was difficult to get them to address some of the problems.
We also took the view that we wouldn’t use the old regional boundaries to determine the boundaries of the LEPs. We would let the LEPs themselves determine it. The idea behind that was to get local authorities and local businesses to coalesce around a natural area, but also get used to sharing sovereignty, sharing power: being able to dole out resources without it being a kind of competition, recognising that something over the boundary of a joining authority would also have a big impact on jobs, prosperity elsewhere.
There was a third element, which was the move towards metropolitan mayors. We saw a number of those mayors being set up. I confess I’m a late convert to this because my view is that the problem that we have in the UK is that we sometimes see structure as a substitute for policy. If we want to do a particular policy, we’ll spend absolutely eons working out the structure rather than actually working out the policy. I tried to make the LEPs policy led. Monty Python had this wonderful sketch where an explorer is at a cocktail party and is going to Mozambique and someone said, ‘how are you going to get there?’. He replies elaborately about going down this way, turning left at the traffic lights, and said then you get to Calais and turn left and then you’re in Africa. I think there’s an element of that about the way we address growth. We really are hung up on structures.
I accepted the LEP structures as a price worth paying to get the devolution. In a way, in my cynical reluctance to endorse this, I didn’t quite appreciate how those powers and influence would grow. The prime example would be Andy Burnham during COVID-19, or the ability for Scotland and Wales to control their borders with the powers devolved on health. I don’t think it was ever the intention that they’d be able to do what they did. It’s unfashionable to quote Richard Nixon, but he had a saying that once you squeeze the toothpaste you can’t get it back into the tube. I think the government, to their chagrin, found that to be the case.
Q: You mentioned, as part of the Localism Act, a desire to encourage responsibility and agency on the part of local government and LEPs to solve problems. What did the government think those problems were? What did you have in mind?
I had in mind a fundamental shift away from Whitehall to the cities and to the councils. That’s what I was wanting to achieve. It was a curate’s egg: some of it succeeded, some of it didn’t. It goes to the nature of what central and local government is capable of doing. Central government always thinks it’s much more important than it actually is. The biggest difference central government could make to regional growth is to move out from Whitehall to the regions and to take power with it. I started out in Bradford and I was very conscious of the big difference that the movement of the headquarters of the Health Service to Leeds made in terms of prosperity, job opportunities and training.
The other thing is that we tend to fall in love with grand projects, that really turns us on. And we also like special purpose vehicles. We like to set something up. We like to revisit Heseltine. By and large the system is sufficiently flexible to be able to deliver that. But to deliver that, you’ve got to persuade a number of people that see themselves as rivals to be able to work together. That was what the LEPs were about.
Q: Recent decades have seen a significant pulling away of London compared to other regions in terms of job creation, productivity and influence. Would you have expected that and are you concerned?
London is not a region. London is a separate country. It’s a massive pull. Yorkshire can’t compete, Essex can’t compete with London. That’s why it’s important to move the power, the decision makers out of London. Recently I was asked to compare Sadiq Khan with Andy Burnham and a couple of other mayors. I said, ‘That’s just ridiculous. You can’t in any way. Because London is another country’.
I did expect London’s pulling away to continue, because I think there’s a limit to what government can do to control these things. I was hoping that we might be able to get a marginal shift. That was my thinking.
In a peculiar way, with some of the long-term effects of COVID, we are understanding that geography is not necessarily tied up with productivity. That has implications beyond this country because that also means in terms of international cooperation and international competition.
Q: When you became Secretary of State, you inherited local government reforms in London that had started in the late 1990s and led to several powerful mayors. How did that shape your view of the reforms that you then initiated in the rest of the country?
The Local Government Chronicle joked that I’d said I would keep a pearl-handled revolver in the top drawer, and I would shoot the first person that said ‘local government reorganisation’. Well, I’m a man of peace, but there is some truth in that. I was in a rush. I thought we needed to do a lot of things if localism was going to be bedded in. If we went and did a reorganisation, if we just imposed unitaries right across the map – and I used to lead the fourth largest Unitary in the country, I’m a big fan of them – then effectively I’d be taking three years out, in which local government would do nothing else but fight among itself as to who was going to become top dog. I decided that we would not get involve in local reorganisation.
I also had discussions with the Treasury. We were of the view – it remains my view – that the business rates system was on life support. I made a number of marginal adjustments just to keep it going. Not to turn it off, but long term we had to find an alternative. The reason is that essentially the business rate finances local government and you need to have a decent resource reallocation pool to be able to do that. I did quite a lot in resource equalisation, which irritated a number of my Conservative colleagues, because I wanted to move things more towards metropolitan authorities and their social needs, rather than to rural areas.
Q: You mentioned the Treasury. Did you find support for localism across Whitehall departments? Did Whitehall speak with one voice or were there divisions that stand out?
Talking to the Treasury was a bit like addressing the Spanish Inquisition: show a little leniency towards Methodists. They are by their very nature the Death Star. They want to control everything. And in the way that London is a separate country, the Treasury is a separate government. I did share the same aims as George Osborne. But I think our methods differed a little.
Q: Did that shift over time? By 2014-15, there was more Treasury backing for devolution?
Yes, I think that might be true. But it would be tonal rather than reality. Right next to the Bluewater Shopping mall is an enormous amount of land which we were developing and is now starting to develop. They were still tied up with a special purpose vehicle to do it – very much like Heseltine did to the docks. We had a bit of a row because I thought they had sufficient powers to be able to do it reasonably well. But I gave into the special purpose vehicle. I think it probably added 18 months to the process. Nevertheless, you can see the results on the ground there now.
Q: On economic regeneration, were there tensions within Whitehall around funding powers and decentralisation to the LEPs?
It’s a lack of trust. Will they deliver? This is public money. We are accountable. The Birmingham LEP is a good example. They managed to attract high-powered businesses and regional figures. They absolutely exploded enormously well. Where they were less well organised, perhaps in the West Country, they were a bit slow. They were successful where there was an understanding about the role of the various components in terms of innovation. What local government offered to the LEP process was its ability to put sites together in a way that wasn’t possible for LEPs, because of the powers that they already had, and their ability to try to mesh in with further education and training. Where there was commitment, it jumped on itself. Where it was all about, ‘it’s not fair, why haven’t we got this, why aren’t we doing that?’, then it never works. I thought it was worth doing to try to get the process going.
Q: How do you look back now on the abolition of Regional Development Agencies? Are there lessons that we can learn?
It was a political decision by my party that I was asked to implement. It’s not entirely unconnected to the growth of Euroscepticism within the party. There was great distrust of regional government and the connection with the European Union and European Commission. I’m not saying that was entirely justified, but it was a political decision that my party took.
It was also about the move to localism. There was a strong move towards localism inside the party. I felt strongly about it. David Cameron felt very strongly about it. Oliver Letwin felt very strongly about it. We wanted to devolve as much power as we could lower down. Not just to LEPs, but also to councils, to district councils, to parish councils, hence the move towards neighbourhood planning. In many ways, regional power was the very antithesis of what we wanted to do. Largely, I think, on a symbolic basis.
Q: What is your assessment of the capacity of local government to make the most of the powers you devolved?
There is an element of Stockholm Syndrome in a lot of local authorities. They take great comfort in the various controls. They are ground down. The ones that really wanted to make a difference did do so. It was against a background of public expenditure being cut. I spent an enormous amount of time understanding how far you could go. There were a couple of local authorities that I felt were cutting too deep and we did give them informal warnings that they were being potentially negligent with regard to their financial responsibilities. And accordingly they took some measures. It’s never easy to bring in a revolution at a time of diminishing financial resources.
Q: Would it be fair to say that you were performing a balancing act between devolving power, equalising resources, and maintaining fiduciary responsibility?
I felt like one of those guys that you sometimes see spinning a plate on a stick. I had six or seven plates spinning simultaneously. It was just a question of trying to keep a degree of balance between them.
Q: You mentioned some of the political drivers behind the move towards localism. Were there particular examples in other countries, from British history, or theorists who shaped your views?
Tony Gibson’s People Power: Community and Work Groups in Action had a big effect on my thinking. I remember vividly, long before I became an MP, attending a meeting somewhere near Liverpool where in redesigning an estate, rather than a load of architects coming in, they had a public meeting at which people could talk about how things were going to operate. That had a big effect on my thinking. It was a Pelican book about post-war planning written in the 1940s at a time when I don’t think there was any certainty whether there would be a future of planning other than through the Third Reich. What really struck me about that, and the way in which the planning process has been bastardised over the years, was that it envisaged planning on a human scale. It was the very antithesis of Soviet planning – great estates and the like. It was about creating an environment to bring up kids and to be able to work in harmony. I thought that was quite powerful.
Q: Did the Localism Act realise some of that vision?
I take the view of Zhou Enlai when asked about the effects of the French Revolution: it’s too soon to say. There’s a difference between the Localism Act and most Acts. Everything in secondary legislation has been implemented. It would require positive acts to pull back on various things. People of imagination within regions should be able to take it and run with the ball, in the way in which Andy Burnham has run with the ball, the way in which Andy Street has run with the ball. The natural instinct of Whitehall is to pull things back, for the minister to make the decision, for the officials to be important. It’s always said, ’Well, you can talk about devolution, but the reality is when things go wrong, Minister, you’ll be the one that will be answering at the dispatch box’.
Q: One way of reading the Andy Burnham story is the success of localism. Another reading it is that it’s created fragmentation across the country, which can be politically and materially damaging. Is that a price worth paying for localism?
It’s the leakiest of all buckets. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the pattern of putting the Health Service within mayoral control in Greater Manchester, with proper local control, has been anything other than beneficial. The joining together of different mayors of different political parties right across that region is a success. It’s interesting in the game of chicken that was played between the government and Andy Burnham that Burnham won. It wasn’t that he’s a particularly good politician. He has his moments, but he is an opportunist. What really happened is that the parade had gone by: the powers had been moved. It would have been difficult to pull them back. The point that I made earlier about Wales and Scotland being able to control their borders… I don’t think for a moment that was envisaged when the health function, and the public health function more particularly, was transferred. Once it goes, it’s very difficult to pull it back.
Q: How do you make sure, when focusing on core cities, that other places don’t get lost? If you’re focusing on Greater Manchester, what do you do about Burnley?
I’m glad you talk about Burnley. It’s a place I know very well. If you look at those authorities along what might best be described as the M62 corridor, they’ve got a lot in common. I did spend a fair bit of time trying to encourage them to work together because they’ve got the same social problems. Many of them are part of the same ethnic mix, and have the same level in terms of education.
If you forgive me, another question would be not necessarily the Burnleys but what about the Settles? And what about those places in Kent? I talked about resource equalisation. One of the projects that was interesting was looking at poverty. We did a study in which we looked at a number of Kent rural communities and their levels of deprivation were just as bad as you would see in Bradford or in Burnley. The big difference was there wasn’t the critical mass in order to be able to put the resources in to deal with that. I think the big challenge is these new County Deals that are going to be coming out is that it got off to the worst possible start by the decision that it wasn’t possible to do a Yorkshire Deal where they metropolitan and the rural areas would be able to work together. I speak as a Yorkshireman. Yorkshire does have an identity. People up in Sedbergh have the same identity as they do in Sheffield. The compromise of having a West Yorkshire mayor is sort of okay-ish…
Q: The advantage of the West Yorkshire deal is that the big urban centres of Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield are forced to find ways to work together. The nature of the Greater Manchester deal means that towns like Burnley or Blackpool or Preston are on the outside, even though they are quite connected to the big Manchester conurbation. Is the logic of what you just said about Yorkshire that that it would be better to have a deal covering the North West or Lancashire, including Greater Manchester – is that the answer to the Burnley question?
If you look in terms of travel to work areas, quite a lot of people in my old part of Yorkshire, Keighley, would look towards Burnley. People tend to support Burnley. There’s a lot of nightlife there. Those old mill towns stretching from Preston right the way across almost near to Hull, have a lot in common. That’s the reason why I wanted LEPs, I wanted them to be able to work together collectively given they’ve got the same problems, they would be able to have quite a bit of clout. They will have an experience of joint boards in the past: the West Yorkshire deal is a replication of the various joint boards that existed in the 1980s. Speaking as the leader of the only Conservative authority in that era, I never had any problem. In terms of wanting to see your area do well, it is possible to work together. I do think it was politics that killed the Yorkshire deal. A concern that a Labour south would govern a Conservative north.
Q: But you couldn’t make Burnley part of the Yorkshire deal. It’s on the other side of the border. Would a Burnley LEP ever be able to compete with something as big as Yorkshire or something as big as Greater Manchester?
I would say put Burnley and Blackburn together. Then you start to get something where a Yorkshire organisation would be quite interested. Manchester might be very interested.
Q: Do you think it’s possible to have a map in England which gets everybody included in a sensible way?
Yes, I do. It might be a map that owes quite a lot to venn diagrams. It goes back to what I was saying originally. We should be policy driven, not structurally driven. We ignore interlocking interests at our peril and we’ve tended to play one off against the other. You know, Conservative-Labour. We just love putting up competitions, bidding for funds and the like. You put Burnley and Blackburn almost at each others’ throats in competition. Bradford and Leeds. I nearly moved Yorkshire Cricket to Bradford. It would have been good, enormously good for the city. It would have been a lot of fun to have one over on Leeds.
Q: We’ve focused on the post-2010 reforms. From the 1980s onwards, are there any policies that you think have really hit succeeded over that period?
That’s hard because it’s not happening in a vacuum. What followed with Labour couldn’t have been achieved without what Thatcher did.
I think the Metro mayors have probably come as close to hitting a sweet spot as you can imagine. But I think it was accidental. That sweet spot came from various regional players grabbing the powers and not letting it go. It’s an accidental sweet spot.
Q: You’ve emphasised coalition building, power, and identity. If you looked at policy documents around LEPs in particular, the emphasis was always more narrowly on the economy and Functional Economic Zones. Did they have the right powers?
I can’t tell you how disappointed I was, because for me it’s all about place, identity. In a way they did exactly the opposite of what I wanted them to do. I’m just trying to think where I read it, it might have been the West Midlands in 2013 or 2014 … I thought they’d really got it. There was something in it about pride of place. Yes, it’s fair to say that’s one aspect that disappointed me enormously.
Q: So this is a matter of how local government responded to the offer of powers, absent Whitehall direction, rather than Whitehall urging them to be cautious?
Oh absolutely. But they’d never do it. You always need someone who’s got some experience of government to lead. Andy Street’s done pretty well. People need to call Whitehall’s bluff. It’s not like dealing with Derek Hatton and the like. It’s an entirely different focus now. Government has to justify what it’s done. There are more checks on government than there were in the past. There’s more independent scrutiny than there was in the past. Whips in parliament don’t have a tenth of the power that they had when I first arrived: people need to call their bluff. Where they did, where they did start to talk about place and identity, then people support them. Economic growth is not all about figures. It’s about commitment. It’s about a sense of doing this to be together.
Q: What is your evaluation of how regional and local economic policy and power have evolved within the UK over the past 30-40 years?
It’s a work in progress. We’re not arriving at nirvana. But I think there are a number of threads that are happening that show a degree of hope. It’s the devolution that’s the important thing. Not necessarily the structures.
Q: What’s the important takeaway for the government today for how you nourish that sentiment and devolution?
If you love it, let it go. You can’t achieve economic momentum within the regions from Whitehall. You’ve got to give away the power, the resources, and you’ve got to devolve it in a way that you can’t take it back. I think we’ve seen some examples of that. The additional political pressure of the ex-Red Wall seats is an ingredient that means that devolution has a better chance. It can either go into a pork-barrel politics where people just get an extra bit of money; but I think I see from the Tory backbenches a desire to grow a little bit of this and to ensure their fate is not determined from Westminster.
Q: When you talk about devolution, you’re talking about powers. Am I right in thinking you don’t prioritise these mechanisms of accountability, which use scrutiny to force people to work together?
Structure should always follow reality. Say you want to set up a regional, Greater Manchester authority. There would be such a fight between the different authorities in terms of taking away local independence that it would jettison it. But if you give power, I think structure will naturally follow. People need to see the benefits.
Go back to Scotland. Who would have believed that a Scottish First Minister could control the borders? Who would have really believed that different rules would be applied to whether you can wear a mask or not? Who would have believed that there would be different views in terms of when lockdown happened? It has been extraordinary in demonstrating that there is something different.
It’s like the old saying: I don’t vote in local elections because no matter who is elected, the council always gets in. This is exactly the counter of that. I think we are at the foothills of an enormous constitutional change. I’ve always been of the view: change the reality and let structure catch up.
If you think about the way in which the big municipal authorities were affected by two big events: in the 1890s the recovery from Russian flu; and the big changes that were put in straight after the Spanish flu in the 1910s. It was deliberate in terms of the machinery of government. All the departments were largely based on the India Office, which explains some of the wilder things I was asked to do when I was Secretary of State. There’s been a moving around of the deck chairs, changing the hymn of a department, but essentially, it’s the same structure that was there in the 1920s. The reality of the way things are delivered hasn’t significantly changed. There has been a bit of window dressing. There’s been a bit of lip service. I do now think we are at the foothills of some quite fundamental change.
ENDS