Richard Caborn was the Labour MP for Sheffield Central, 1983–2010, and Minister for Sport, 2001–2007. He served as a junior minister in the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions and Department of Trade and Industry.
This interview was conducted on 11 March 2022.
Q: By way of introduction, could you tell us about your role in regional policy over the past few decades?
A: My role probably starts pre-1979 at the Yorkshire Labour Party conferences when devolution, as it was in those days always a topical agenda, particularly in Yorkshire and Humber Region. I remember Stan Crowther, MP for Rotherham always had it on his political agenda. So in the northern regions, it was always a topic of political discussion and trying to get the National Labour Party to acknowledge importance of it. In 1979, I was elected to the first directly elected European Parliament for Sheffield, North East Derbyshire, and Chesterfield. I took overthe roles that John Prescott did, John was there in the unelected European Parliament I was one of the first directly elected European Members of Parliament MEP He and I were big friends politically, and socially. We worked together through the Yorkshire Labour Party as well. It was in 1979 as a MEP I represented the Socialist Group in the EP on its Economic Monetary Committee with Jacques Delors another Socialist who was its chair.The Socialist groups was made up of countries who had some form of regional devolution or government. I sat with my German colleagues who represented a country which had a strong regional government and I learnt a lot from them, France was also moving very much in that direction. Of the major european economies, there was only the UK, particularly England, that wasn’t debating devolution and regional policies.
Then, in the early eighties, I came into Westminster and again, working with John Prescott, we produced a number of discussion documents and organised a number of regional conferences around regional policy. Into the eighties and nineties, we worked with our colleagues in Europe. One of the commissioners that were incredibly helpful was the British Commissioner Bruce Millan. Roll the clock forward, we set up the Millan commission on regional policy. This was prior to the Labour government of 1997. We were planning how we could introduce regional policy on the return of a Labour government. We had mapped that out very clearly in a number of policy documents. The Millan commission, I think, was the most serious piece of work that we had done. It also informed the debate and legislation of the 1997 Labour Government.
One of the main structural weakness of the British economy was the underutilisation of the North and the over heating of the south this was a poor economic model. Many of the the new Labour MPs came from the Midlands and the North which is where John Prescott, myself came from and represented. One of the case studies was to consider the Landes structure in Germany, but we considerd the developing devolution in France and other European countries. It was evident that there were more efficient economic models which delivered sustainable growth. Clearly, that was not the case in the UK and in England in particular. This poor economic model produced in part the poor productivity, competitiveness of the wealth creating base. All these structural weaknesses are ingrained and reinforced by the centralist government that was prevalent in the UK. That drove our agenda, particularly the Millan Commission to institute the first move towards devolution.
Q: Can you tell us about establishing the RDAs?
We came into power in 1997 and the Deputy Prime Minister, combined two departments – Transport and Environment and Local Authorities .The English Regions was also coverd by the new department and for the first time the word Regions was in the Department title which made a political statement that the English Regions were being taken seriously Before that it was just not recognised in Whitehall, it’s probably semantics but nevertheless, I think it’s indicative of Whitehall thinking. We had wide consultations both within the political party, the Labour Party, the trade union movement and with CBI, and also the Chamber of Commerce. There was a clear appetite for addressing the underlying structural weaknesses of the British economy and also the whole question of competitiveness and productivity, particularly in the wealth creating sectors of the industry.
So we had to battle Whitehall on the question of taking power away from the centre. I always remember talking to Michael Heseltine about this because Michael was a devolutionist but only a partial devolutionist. He wrote an article in the Financial Times and when I asked Michael about his views on devolution and about this article he said he was in favour of devolution but with some central controls and that was summed up in his statement “Whilst I have a pot of gold at the side of my desk, they will always beat a path to my door”. It was absolutely true. In reality, whenever the Treasury controlled the levers of spending, they controlled the levers of power.
Our first political move was to take power away from the centre and locate it in the regions. The Labour government had given devolution to Wales and Scotland but had only given the partial devolution to English regions. We had insisted that we were addressing the economic deficit through the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). The democratic deficit was beginning to be addressed through the regional councils that we set up, but they weren’t democratically elected. We had started with partial democratisation of the region through the RDAs.
What was crucial was the argument that we had about this being non-departmental public bodies as against being an executive arm of Whitehall. That created a major political argument in Whitehall and particularly the Tresuary. John Prescott was Deputy Prime Minister and from this very strong ministerial position faced down Whitehall. The civil service fought us very hard to make sure that kept it as an executive body. The accounting officer went through the department of state rather than being devolved and then being responsible directly back to Parliament. So that was the first big political argument.
The second one was to make sure we had people appointed who would take forward the agenda of devolution. I was strongly advised by the civil servants that it would not be appropriate to be involved in the appointment of the chairs. I promptly told them that I did not agree with that, and if they wanted to stop me they would have to go see the Deputy Prime Minister. They didn’t choose to see John Prescott and not only did I chair those meetings to appoint the new RDA chairs I invited ministers from other departments to join me in the interviews
The white paper to set up the RDAs, had at its centre the powers and resources to drive the competitiveness and wealth creation of the English regions. There were five different headings that were laid down. We gave as many freedoms and flexibility as possible to reflect the local regional conditions. We did not allow anybody to be on those boards, which had 12 to 15 people, unless they lived in the region. This gave an ownership of the decision making.
The third area was the finance and the Treasury. The usual Treasury approach was power. I remember very distinctly a discussion in the department with some of the officials where I said that we need a single pot of money. This would give the financial flexibility to invest in the priorities of the individual regions which varied region to region. We put the financial commitments for the various policy areas we had transferred to the RDAs which was around £300 million. I think when we left government through the growth of importance of the RDAs it was just under or around three billion pounds. The argument was about using that money to deliver the agenda they set. The importance of the single money pot was significant both in delivering the RDAs policies but also its power and influence in the Region. I remember in making the argument for the single pot “what are the models that you can look at?” We look at Scotland and the Scottish Development Agency at that time they had a budget with five spending headings, they could vie 10% between each of those entities, which gave flexibility.
I remember coming out of a meeting at the OECD in Paris and got into a taxi. My telephone rang and on the end was the political advisor to the Chancellor Ed Balls he asked: ‘Richard, why have you put three spending expenditure headings I said, ‘well it is between naught and five: if I put down nought it was unlikely it would be accepted, with Scotland having five’. It was a purely pragmatic approach.
To keep the English Regions together and present an agreed front in Whitehall the RDA chairs meet before the regular meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister or Chancellor. This was important and unusual that a collective voice without civil service influence was delivered direct to Ministers. The civil service hated this because it was operating as a major unit outside the normal decision making of the civil service.
It was at one of these meetings with the Chancellor Gordon Brown that he announced he was accepting the request of the RDA chairs for a single expenditure pot of money They understood, as business people, how this could operate effectively in delivering their own policies but also influence the policies and expenditure of other regional partners in both the public and private sectors. This devolution of public expenditure coupled with the political devolution of making the RDAs non-Departmental Public Bodies was a significant move to delivering the Labour Governments election pledge on devolution.
I’ve spoken to you and I’ve spoken to Joe Irvin, who said to Gordon ‘if we’re going to do this why don’t we do this properly.’ He wanted to give the RDAs the best chance. We wanted to put pressure on the departments to influence it rather than telling them what to do. Everyone was quite surprised.
The White Paper had a clear direction of increasing the international competitiveness of the Regions. Gordon Brown agreed with this objective and financially empower them unfortunately some of the other Government departments did not devolve their functions that would have best delivered at the Regional level and would have contributed effectively to the increase in competitiveness of the Region. Skills was an example of this.
Q: Meetings with John Prescott and Gordon Brown, they were helpful, weren’t they? It meant they had to work together to work out a strategic plan
The RDA chairmen meet Gordon probably twice a year for breakfast. Gordon I used to say, to the RDA Chairs for every minute it goes over nine o’clock, that’s your measurement of success when you meet the Chancellor whose time is absolutely at a premium. It used to be between eight and nine o’clock. I can honestly say we never went under the time.
We also measured our success with the Secretaries of State like that. We met them so they knew what the regions were saying and why. They put us under interrogation and vice versa. That’s the way the policy should evolve effectively. Regional policy was very successful under that Department of Environment Transport and the Regions. Regions moved from DETR into DTI, when Peter Mandelson came back from Europe. Peter Mandelson being a northern MP was fairly supportive of the regional agenda. It was evident that, bit by bit the RDAs were becoming very influential not only the industrial and economic agenda but on the wider regional agenda like transport, spatial planning, etc. It was starting to address the underperformance of industry and productivity. They were starting to address those structural weaknesses in a very systematic way.
Q: Why didn’t we manage to make the RDAs permanent?
First, the Treasury and certain departments of state believed they had lost control of certain elements of the policy. They wanted to get that back. The formation of the non-departmental public bodies and those working together at an English level, was a threat. It was a way of taking power away from the centre, and they wanted to move it back to Whitehall.
There is no doubt when the coalition government came into power, one of the first actions was to disband the RDAs Budgets had gone up significantly to the RDAs. They were getting real powers, political powers and also financial; they were up to about two billion. They were influencing way beyond that level as well. It was something Whitehall wanted to arrest. They didn’t want to continue to see that type of devolution taking place. The civil servants won under instruction from their political masters the budgets to the English regions was reduced by over a £ billion, removed the NDPB status and the Government gesture to the English Regions was to set up ineffective Local Enterprise Partnerships .
If I’m being honest about that, I think that’s because of the lack of enthusiasm within Number 10. Number 10 had never been really a great supporter of regionalisation. We had to fight hard to get the RDAs set up. We had to stand behind devolution to Scotland. Devolution to Wales which took place first and then the RDAs came second. There was never political enthusiasm from Number 10. That became manifestly obvious at the campaign around the democratic devolution and the referendum which took place in the Northeast, if that had been successful it would have been much harder for any incoming government to disband the RDAs John Prescott was left out to dry on that. To some extent that gave a signal to Whitehall and the mandarins that they could arrest that power without a lot of opposition.
Q:The RDAs moved to thinking more about subregions and involving local government more as time went on. What did local government leaders think?
If we had taken a straw poll across them, I think that that would have been supportive. We put the North-East, the North-West, and Yorkshire together to look at this corridor on transportation, spatial planning and the like. That was starting to emerge when we got chopped. I put it back together with the Thames Gateway, where we brought again three RDAs together. That was to look in a more comprehensive way at big issues like transport, like spatial planning.
There was an acknowledgement from local government, sensible ones, including some of the Tories, who saw that a way to answer some of the big questions outside Whitehall. They were arguing for more resources and for the policy for that delivery to be rooted in the regions. When I look back now, the RDAs were very clearly public sector, private sector, academia and civil society. Those four sectors of society were represented on those RDAs which I think was very important. That was acknowledged as a strength of the RDAs in the end.
Q: A critique of the RDAs is that were asked to take on too many roles. What do you think?
There is some justification. It is quite interesting what Heseltine said to me afterwards, after the RDAs had been abandoned. He said: ‘Richard, big mistake, getting shut of the RDAs’. We should have refocused, rebadged them, and called them our own. He said ‘we’re gonna waste both time and resources now and we’re going to go through the cycle yet again.’
Q: How about quality of leadership?
Before that: one thing I did in discussions was to remind the chairs of the RDAs what they were there to do. It was about creating wealth within the region. It was about rebalancing the economy. It was about competitiveness. It was about increasing productivity. That was the focus of the RDAs. They lost it. They started getting involved in wider regional issues and if central government had problems they would use the RDAs. An example of this was when w foot and mouth disease hit the country, they spent more time on foot and mouth disease, sorting out the grants, than their main focus. That was the weakness.
But that’s the problem of leadership as well. With the weakening of that leadership and the lack of focus, that then allowed the opponents of our idea to say they were getting involved in everything. If you won the referendum and we got the democratic accountability in the format that we wanted, that would have led to the political leadership driving the economic leadership to actually deliver on that bigger agenda.
Q: Do you think they had enough money and powers around skills versus schools, education, further education?
It depends where you put skills in terms of the economy. At the time it was in education, at that time I can remember the discussions and the bloody big rows. I remember the meetings in the office where we were arguing that you’ve got to get skills out of education. You’ve got to bring it into the real world. What it is there for is to drive a massive element of the competitiveness and the development of our economies at all various levels. Skills are absolutely crucial. It’s like Blair’s ‘education, education, education’.
Q: But Number 10 would never support you on that.
No, not at all. What did we get? We had to concede it. It was late at night, I was talking to John Prescott and I said: ‘look how far are we taking this’. We’ve got say: ‘we’re gonna have to concede’. We conceded the position by accepting that we would look at the strategic approach to skills, that was in the bill. They kept their money, they kept the power to deliver the policy. They allowed us this so called ‘strategy of skills’ to fit into the industrial strategy and the whole competitive agenda but kept the real power. It was aided and abetted by, Number 10, lined up against us and to some extent, the Treasury was probably agnostic on it.
Q: How about efforts to get skills into the single pot?
The problem with the whole education world in the department was central. Number 10 didn’t want to. If you don’t get number 10 on your side, its hard. You need Number 10 and the Treasury together, and obviously John Prescott being involved…
Q: How about transport?
Transport always kept their own office, as you well know, they were from Barbara Castle’s day. I mean, somebody once said this to me: ‘they have always been a law unto themselves the bloody Department of Transport’. Even though John Prescott thought he’d got regions transport and the environment, the regions never brought transport over in any meaningful way. I think the one area where we did start to move it up was when we started to look at the Northern Way and the Thames Gateway. We started to look at transport in special planning terms as well. That was starting to emerge when I left the regions. But then again, because of the structure of Whitehall and the siloed approach to it, transport as it were just kept their own power, even though we tried to bring it in.
Q: What was your experience of DTI?
Well DTI was weak. I went from DTR to DTI as trade minister. That’s when Steven Byers said: ‘let’s bring over the regions’. John didn’t necessarily disagree. John just said ‘get on with it, Richard’. We were at one on it politically. Byers was supportive. But DTI did not have the clout, to be honest. He did not have the firepower. Once you get out of the big departments, like environment, regions and transport, you got some firepower around the cabinet table with Treasury. But DTI was weak. The leadership was weak and I don’t think they ever signed up to the regional devolution agenda and it was difficult to shift.
Q: Why in 1997 was London given the GLA, but the other big metro areas didn’t get the same?
What happened in 1997 was that the RDA in London was never a legal part of the bill. They were always outside because it came under the elected mayor’s office. So it was much more like Scotland and Wales than the English regions. They have now got a democratically accountable structure i.e. the mayor and the assembly and they wanted to control what effectively was the RDA.
Q: Why did London have that democratic accountability?
Because at the same time, on devolution, you’ve got Scotland. You’ve got Wales. You’ve got the Mayor of London, which were democratic. You had nothing in the English regions, no democratic accountability. You’ve got economic, but not political, or democratic accountability. The London model now is what the English Regions should have and if No 10 had been supportive of regional devolution we would have legislated without a referendum.
Q: There were 50 or odd small London boroughs, but none of them was powerful enough to stop us introducing the mayor. If you’d gone to Manchester or West Yorkshire and said ‘we’re going to put in place a metro county with the mayor across the local authority areas’ like in London, what would the reaction have been?
The politics of it was that that wasn’t going to be. There was a momentum with Scotland with Wales with the mayoral position in London. We debated this for hours. But we had not got Number 10 on board. In 1997 we believed we had an agreed agenda: that we’re going to go for economic accountability to start with and powers to the region. That would be followed by democratic accountability by the elected regions. That’s how we positioned it. I think you’re right to ask that question and I think it was to some extent, a weakness on our part, as we could have said at the start, let’s go for the political as well.
Q: Michael Heseltine really regrets the failure to grasp the opportunity where it was there in early 1970s to redo the regional map. We went for Scotland, Wales, London and the RDAs, but we didn’t do a big local government re-organisation. The model promoted now is voluntarist. You end up in a position now where in the old days, Blackburn and Burnley were under the northwest RDA, now they’re outside everything.
Yeah, and to be honest, the mayors are weak. There are no effective powers. It is still Whitehall, to a large extent, a contra unless you actually devolved powers.
Q: Should we have gone for more devolution to the regions? or should we have gone for a map of subregions?
We’ve seen what happened in Germany. We saw how you could balance the economy of a country, an industrialised country. That gave you a sense that we’re looking economies of scale of about five million people. You’re looking at the institutions like universities as well as local authorities. You have that economy of scale to work in. There is an optimum economy in regions to deliver on the economy, on social infrastructure, on education. You can join them together to do bigger things like special planning and transport. You can devolve it lower if you need to deliver other services. But you have got this optimal economy of scale of around the five million population seems to be the European regional average.
Q: Some people say Greater Manchester, that’s the model.
Well, it could well be now but what is certain no matter what model you use if it does not have the political power and the resource to deliver its policies it will not work. You can look at historical boundaries wherever they are but unless you get that economy of scale, the political power and the financial resources it will be difficult to deliver.
Q: How would you say views shifted within the Labour Party from exiting government in 1979, to taking up office again in 1997?
Well, there are a number of issues, one was globalisation. Technological change. Industry itself, irrespective of what’s happening in the government, was actually having to go to the global marketplace. Industry and commerce were actually leading that agenda, and the politicians were chasing it because the change was happening. We in England had a bad economic model, underutilization in the North and, overheating in the South, you’ve got countries like Germany and France moving down that regionalisation agenda as well during that period, 1979 to 1997, the structures there were moving as indeed in many other European countries. They were actually improving on their economic performance and we were declining.
That’s why to some extent where we are now still working to catch up. We still have major issues which are structural around competitiveness and productivity which is holding the economy back. It is because of the very centralised structures we’ve got in place. What we were trying to do was change the debate in the Labour Party. It was driven from the northern perspective: the decline of industries, steel, the miners strike, the steel strike. That and reaction to what was happening in the global marketplace we weren’t keeping apace with the competitiveness of our major competitors globally. Eventually, we had a debate around this question of regionalisation and the setting up of the RDAs with the trade union, local authorities, CBI. At least we were starting to answer some of the big questions there. Whether we got the complete answers too I think was obviously debatable at the time. Should we have gone further? You know, in retrospect, yes, we should have. I got to rerun that story again, I’d have a different approach to it. But I think the fundamentals that we were addressing we were addressing in the right way. We probably weren’t brave enough to go further and convince people.
Q: When you look back, what stands out to you as the one big success and what’s the main frustration?
The great successes are some policies through the RDAs, the development of things like the advanced manufacturing park in Sheffield or decisions about nuclear power development in the North-West. A lot of those are the remnants of what the RDAs put in place. People are reflecting and saying, ‘Christ, we wish we never got shot at the RDAs’. So there is still this question: ‘if you are going to address this weakness of the British economy, how do you do that?’
The lesson from setting up the RDAs, and probably also the referendum on devolution, is what it’s about “power”. It really is about power, the political power, the financial power. Unless you’re prepared to trust people to be able to deliver and give them that power, then you will continue to have the most centralised nation in the world.
Q: If you want power, it is very hard not to also have accountability.
Oh yeah absolutely. I think that’s what will give its political sustainability in years to come. You’re absolutely right, Ed. The reason the Coalition Government could, remove the RDAs was they were not fully understood and politically accountable. A lot of people will defend them from an economic point of view, from an industrial point of view. But sustainability comes with its political accountability. You won’t get shot of Wales. You won’t get shot of Scotland. You look at the Welsh devolution debate at that time. You look at that vote. You’re going to try and take that away now, but you wouldn’t do it in Scotland, Wales, or London. It is a high hurdle of political accountability, but once you’re over it, you’ll never go back. I think it is true for the English regions too. So the model that must be put in place is one which has political accountability; we were wrong in divorcing the political accountability from the economic accountability. The RDAs was only part of the regional project without political accountability we never delivered it.
ENDS