Politics

The House | Government Promises Devolution Reform But Mayors Say ‘Begging Bowl’ Culture Persists

Published

2 days ago

29 April 2026

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Government Promises Devolution Reform But Mayors Say 'Begging Bowl' Culture Persists

(Tracy Worrall)

9 min read13 min

MHCLG and the Treasury are promising more powers to the devolved regions through a series of reforms. But for all the progress, regional mayors remain frustrated at a ‘begging bowl’ culture forced on them by an untrusting Whitehall. Benedict Cooper reports

At times, delivering this year’s Mais Lecture, Rachel Reeves sounded more like a fierce critic of government devolution policy than someone involved in delivering it.

The Chancellor spoke of the “stifling Whitehall orthodoxies” that have held back the regions; the “local ambition frustrated by central government control”. She attacked the “fiction that a strong economy could be built on the success of just a few places”, and called for a “genuine break with the past” as the only true solution to all of the above.

The language of the lecture must have given some relief to the mayors and officials running England’s devolved authorities. It reflected precisely their frustrations at the slow and limited nature of change.

The lack of power to raise revenues locally and to truly decide, not merely preside over, the prescribed allocation of central Treasury funds, has been at the core of discontent about the way devolution has been delivered since the start.

For now, the details of how it might be solved are with the Chancellor’s Treasury officials. To understand what’s at stake, why frustrations persist and what should be done, we’ve gone straight to the regional mayors and devolution experts.

If a single statistic can tell the story, it must surely be the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) finding, released last year, as to how much autonomy the UK gives its regions compared to other nations.

Among the OECD countries in 2024, the average proportion of overall revenues generated by a central, national exchequer was 53.2 per cent, with the rest being raised, and spent, by regional or federal authorities. In the UK, that figure was 91.8 per cent; the highest by some distance.

The UK’s economy is as centralised as it gets. It makes the Chancellor’s plan to “liberate” the regions, by granting “control over long-term, self-sustaining capital”, extremely ambitious.

Alex Walker, senior researcher at think tank Re:State and former research assistant at the Bennett School of Public Policy, says that while the scale of the job is huge, the intention is right, and necessary to redressing a paradox of the system.

“It’s a very big development,” he says. “England is a big outlier in how fiscally centralised it is. At the moment, you’ve got this decentralisation of spending responsibilities, but not really much decentralisation of revenue raising power.”

Responsibility without power is surely a political leader’s nightmare. And, Walker says, it’s the cause of a democratic deficit at the core of English devolution.

Under the current model, he says, the money comes largely out of general taxation so the accountability is upwards to the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) and various Whitehall departments: “Once strategic authorities are more financially and fiscally independent from central government it should lead to the accountability being more towards their local electorate in terms of how they are spending that money that’s being raised and generated in the local area.”

There is the way money is raised, and there is the way it is distributed, or not, to the regional authorities.

England is a big outlier in how fiscally centralised it is

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Akash Paun, devolution programme director at the Institute for Government, says: “Mayors often speak of the unhelpful ‘begging bowl culture’ created by the funding system they operate within, in which combined authority budgets are a hodgepodge of grants from across Whitehall.

“This is a system that has limited the ability of mayors and local partners to develop joined-up and long-term strategies for their regions, as they have to account separately to numerous different government departments for their use of public money.”

A proposed solution to this surely unsustainable situation is the integrated settlement, an instrument introduced into the English Devolution White Paper of December 2024 as a means to grant authorities access to a “consolidated budget across housing, regeneration, local growth, local transport, skills, retrofit, and employment support”.

The idea is sound. And few would argue with communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh’s view, who tells The House it is based on the idea that “mayors know their areas better than Whitehall ever could”.

She adds: “That’s why we’re scrapping dozens of ring-fenced grants and giving seven city regions more control through integrated settlements – so they can spend on what their residents actually need.”

Far more contentious, and many mayors say deeply unhelpful, are the many qualifications and stipulations required to reach an integrated settlement in the first place. Namely, that only those authorities proven to have met eligibility criteria and thus elevated to the status of ‘established’ mayoral strategic authority (EMSA) may qualify for an integrated settlement.

At the moment, only seven combined authorities do: in Greater London, Greater Manchester, the North East, West and South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and the Liverpool City Region.

Seven authorities out of 16. That leaves nine working to meet the criteria to reach the status to receive the funding they need.

Those criteria are extensive. And include a contentious detail that an authority must “have been in existence, with a directly elected mayor in place, for at least 18 months” before it can even submit a request to become an established authority, let alone actually receive the integrated funding.

It has left many mayors in a state of frustration, eager to get on with the work of investing in their regions.

Not least Labour’s Claire Ward, East Midlands Combined County Authority mayor, which has hit its 18 months, applied for established status and subsequent integrated settlement, but still finds itself in ongoing talks with MHCLG about getting to the next step.Ward says: “I want it to move much faster. I want to be in a position where I’m not being held back from the things that we can do in this region because I don’t have the flexibility over the integrated settlements or I don’t have the powers that are going to come with the established status.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers the Mais lecture in March 2026 (PA Images/Alamy)

“As mayor I feel it’s my duty to be challenging government to explain why I can’t have those powers, why I can’t have additional funding, why I don’t have that flexibility that would allow me to do far more in terms of being able to create that growth of an opportunity in the region.

“I do not want this region to be held back any longer than it needs to be.”

This is precisely the sentiment of Paul Bristow, the Conservative mayor for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, a new mayor elected to a new role.

“We’re ready,” he says. “The authority had already done a lot of work, before I was elected last year.

“We’re following MHCLG’s guidance on when we can get established mayoral strategic authority status. The government has said it will only consider an integrated settlement for the next spending review, which is 2027.

“I want to progress that as quickly as possible, and perhaps get elements earlier, because the right time to get Cambridgeshire and Peterborough moving is now.”

The approach that’s been increasingly taken by government departments is them telling us how we should be spending the money

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The sense of being held back, it seems, isn’t confined to those authorities awaiting the crucial established status.

The South Yorkshire mayoral combined authority was granted EMSA status and promised an integrated settlement as early as the white paper in 2024. Yet still its Labour Co-op mayor, Oliver Coppard, feels deprived of the powers he was promised. Coppard isn’t holding back in his criticism of a devolution system he says is “founded on a lack of trust”.

“We’ve found the process to be not in the spirit of devolution,” he says. “The principle is not being adhered to by the government. The government wants to hold onto the reins.

“And we’ve had concerns about various departments and what we are being asked to achieve with the money we’re being given. It’s the wrong way around. The approach that’s been increasingly taken by government departments is them telling us how we should be spending the money.”

Precisely what devolution was meant to undo.

There have undoubtedly been big steps forward, and real legislative action. There is grand talk of liberating the regions. But clearly, too, there is residual resistance, bureaucratic or otherwise, to releasing the reins.

“That attitude is still there in central government,” says Walker, “where the local state can’t be trusted to deliver people’s priorities. And when something goes wrong the instinct is to take it back to central government control.

“We’ve been hamstrung by a model where central government micromanages things across all of government.”

The Chancellor has identified the problems and recognised the frustrations of the regions: the begging bowl culture needs to end, and the gross imbalance in mayors’ powers and responsibility needs to be redressed.

And she has drawn broad rhetorical strokes for a solution which could truly transform the devolution process for the better.

There are risks. Vividly voicing the frustrations of regional leaders is fine, if you then fix the problems. Fail to find the right formula – or, worse, do a U-turn – and the tensions between Westminster and Whitehall on the one side, and the hamstrung devolved authorities on the other, could escalate.

Labour could find itself overseeing yet another “exercise in local ambition frustrated by central government control”, and the great opportunity devolution offers the nation as much as the regions could be lost.

An MHCLG spokesperson said: “We have a proud record on devolution. We’ve already rolled out more integrated settlements and cut bureaucracy for mayors so they have more freedom to spend in ways that they think work best for their communities. We’re not stopping there, with our English Devolution Bill, fiscal devolution roadmap, and Right to Request process we’re going even further in moving power and money out of Whitehall and into the hands of those who know their areas best.”

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Politics

Fleur Butler: Why conservatives must sell resilience, not welfare

Published

20 minutes ago

1 May 2026

NewsAdmin

Fleur Butler OBE is Director of Development for Conservative Women’s Organisation

The row over the two-child benefit cap has become a predictable clash between left-wing moral outrage about “the poor” and right-wing arguments about cost, GDP and fairness to taxpayers. Conservatives rarely say they care; the Greens rarely say where the money will come from, beyond “the rich.” But the Conservative case on fiscal restraint simply does not land with younger voters. Their economic reality is different from their parents’, and their news comes through social media algorithms that reward emotion over economics. If we only speak the language of older voters, we have no future.

We also fail to explain that this debate is not just about welfare policy. It is about what kind of society we want, and whether capitalism can still offer young people, especially women with children, a safer, freer and more prosperous future. A basic economic truth is being ignored: partnership between two people is still the most effective form of wealth-sharing most people will ever experience, while the state will always be limited and often disappointing. Of the 1.5 million children in single-parent households, 41 per cent are in poverty, compared with 23 per cent in two-parent households. Stable partnerships reduce child poverty, women’s pension poverty, demand for social housing, loneliness, mental health strain and dependence on welfare. They reduce the tax burden on working families. On average, women and men get more financial support from a partnership than from the state.

Yet politicians are afraid to talk about this for fear of sounding moralistic. We should make the economic case instead. The state is increasingly being asked to take on functions once shared within families. But it is structurally incapable of providing emotional, practical and flexible support. It cannot read a bedtime story, collect a sick child from school, or share the daily load of care. It cannot even put the bins out badly. It can only redistribute money, inefficiently and at enormous cost. Attitudinal studies published this spring show young women in particular are increasingly distrustful of men and are delaying relationships and children. Yet no one points out that the state is an even worse partner: cold, bureaucratic and transactional. Even the most average man will often offer more support than the welfare system ever can. For those in abusive or broken relationships, the state must always be there. But it should never be sold as the first or better option, because it cannot be.

Polling from the 2024 election revealed a deeper divide. While attention focused on young men voting Reform, far less was said about the overwhelming number of young women voting Left or Green. There has been no Louis Theroux documentary on the femo-rage conspiracy theories on line, nor film of young women committing acts of violence against the police and state infrastructure. This invisible shift is not driven by understanding the details of welfare policy It reflects a broader belief that capitalism is failing them and that the state offers more security. This is where Conservatives are losing. We argue macroeconomics and statistics while the Left sells a vision.

Young women facing high rents, insecure work and a cost-of-living crisis do not feel “fiscal responsibility” in daily life. To them, the state feels safer than the market, safer than men and safer than family. But this misunderstands what the state can provide. Welfare can redistribute income, but it cannot create resilience, stability or shared resources in a household. It cannot insulate women from the economic realities of childbirth, caring responsibilities, healthcare needs and time out of the labour market. The state will always be a second-best partner. We need to make the case that capitalism is not just about growth, but about freedom, resilience and choice. It has done more than any welfare state to lift people out of poverty and has given women independence, opportunity and freedom. Yes, capitalism needs rules and reform to remain fair and resilient. But destroying it will not make young people safer, they need to work with us to make it function better for all. To join us, as we have the better vision for the future.

The two-child cap is a case study in this. Lifting it may help some families, but it also increases the burden on working people already struggling, many of them young themselves. Yet the debate is framed as compassion versus cruelty, rather than two competing visions of how society shares risk and responsibility. If Conservatives want to reach younger voters, we must stop speaking in abstract fiscal language and start speaking to everyday life. Explain how high taxes limit personal freedom. Explain that building a household, a business or a partnership is not a moral act, but a practical route to resilience when the state lets you down. Explain the limits of the state through lived experience, not ideology.

And yes, we must make the emotional case too. We need to challenge young women’s distrust of men while acknowledging it, and remind them that most men are not the online caricatures they see. Society works best through strong partnerships between men and women in the work place and in private lives, not dependence on bureaucracies. The message is not “get married.” The message is: don’t let the state be your only safety net, “build your own”. It is not an attack on single mothers or a call to dismantle welfare. Life goes wrong in ways the lucky often cannot imagine. The state should always be there for those who need it. But we must be honest about what it can and cannot do.

Young voters, both men and women, are not hearing this argument because we are not making it. Until we do, the generational divide will grow and the welfare state will keep being sold as the answer to every problem, expanding in ways that strain both public finances and the social fabric.

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Politics

Danny Beales: ‘The case for regulation of animal rehoming organisations’

Published

29 minutes ago

1 May 2026

NewsAdmin

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of sponsoring a Dogs Trust event in parliament highlighting an important and overlooked issue concerning animal rehoming organisations. It is frankly shocking that rehoming organisations, rescues and shelters across England, Wales and Northern Ireland remain unlicensed and not subject to inspections, even when they are registered charities. Whilst most organisations do vital work in protecting vulnerable animals, the absence of a comprehensive regulatory framework has sadly left ample room for abuse.

This was unfortunately brought into sharp focus in Billericay last year when an Essex Police raid on an animal rehoming organisation led to the discovery of 41 dead dogs in squalid conditions. While it is important to recognise that this incident is an outlier and not representative of most rehoming organisations, it does highlight the risks that can arise in the absence of oversight.

Despite this, public awareness of the status of animal rehoming organisations is remarkably low. Polling data from Dogs Trust outlined that 79% of the population wrongly believe that these organisations are already subject to licensing and inspection. However, once informed of the current situation, 89% support the introduction of regulation. Whilst significant efforts by animal welfare organisations in recent years have sought to raise awareness, the contrast between widespread misunderstanding and strong public support for reform highlights that much more still needs to be done.

For those that are aware of the situation, there is a clear concern and a demand for change. A petition that was established in the aftermath of the Billericay case, gathered over 109,000 signatures and was subsequently debated in parliament earlier this year. This demonstrated a strong and shared desire across the House with the public to seek action and protect animal welfare.

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