Every area of England should take over key powers from Westminster, Keir Starmer will say as he and Angela Rayner declare an end to the “levelling up” agenda and look to kickstart a new era of devolution.
The prime minister and his deputy will meet every regional mayor in England on Tuesday on just their fifth day in office, as the party draws up a devolution bill to be launched as part of next week’s king’s speech.
Starmer and Rayner will use the meeting to underline their desire for a new wave of deals which could see local authorities take over everything from public transport to infrastructure to skills funding.
The prime minister has promised to make economic growth his government’s first priority, and believes that handing more powers to local authorities will help boost that.
Starmer said ahead of the meeting: “My fundamental belief is that those with skin in the game are the ones who know best what they need … [that’s] why I’ve made it a priority to meet with all metro mayors in my first week as prime minister.
“By resetting these crucial relationships and putting more power in the hands of local leaders, I’m determined to make sure they have the support they need to play their part in delivering economic growth in every part of the country.”
Rayner, the communities secretary, launched an attack on the previous government’s levelling up programme, as she prepared to rename her department to omit those words.
“For too long a Westminster government has tightly gripped control and held back opportunities and potential for towns, cities and villages across the UK,” she said.
“That’s meant misguided decisions devastating the lives of working people, while our elected local leaders are forced to beg for scraps at the whim of Whitehall.”
She added: “Work will now continue at pace to deliver on manifesto commitments to transfer power out of Whitehall, and into our communities, with upcoming devolution legislation to take back control.”
Starmer and his cabinet have spent much of their first few days in government fleshing out their growth plans.
Rachel Reeves on Monday announced the immediate end of the de facto onshore wind ban in England, as part of a broader plan to deregulate the planning system.
The chancellor also said she would re-impose mandatory population-based housing targets on local authorities as the party aims to oversee the building of 300,000 new homes a year for the first time since the late 1980s.
Meanwhile, Starmer spent the day touring the UK – meeting national leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, the PM promised to repeal the controversial Legacy Act that offers conditional amnesty to soldiers and paramilitaries involved in the Troubles, and to “reset” relations with the Irish government.
“One of the big problems of the last 14 years, but particularly the last six to eight years, has been instability, a lot of chopping and changing,” he said. “That all ends today.”
Labour officials say much of their work in their first few months in power will be spent tackling problems they say have been left behind by the outgoing Conservative government, from the prisons crisis to NHS waiting lists.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, spent Monday meeting the British Dental Association to discuss how to eliminate so-called “dental deserts” – large areas of the country where NHS dentists are not taking on any extra patients.
The BDA said afterwards Streeting had recognised that underfunding had fuelled the crisis, although the health secretary, who is also looking for a way to end the dispute with junior doctors, is unlikely to be given much extra money to spend.
Starmer is hoping that devolution will prove one way to boost growth without spending large amounts of money, and is planning to use his meeting with England’s mayors, including Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, to make that case.
Local authorities will be encouraged, but not compelled, to come forward with suggestions of which powers they would like to take over.
The prime minister has endured occasionally spiky relationships with some of the most high-profile Labour mayors, including the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and the London mayor Sadiq Khan. Labour officials say, however, that his chief of staff, Sue Gray, has helped smooth over those relationships since she took the post last September.
Starmer and Rayner have put tackling regional inequality high on their list of priorities, given the UK has a larger gap between its most and least economically productive areas than almost any other developed country.
Over the past five years the Conservatives have tried to reduce regional inequality by establishing several multibillion-pound funds from which local authorities could bid for money. Those programmes were beset by problems and delays from the start, however, with a recent report finding that only 10% of a total of £10bn had been spent.
Previous Labour and Conservative-led governments have had more success in agreeing deals to devolve powers to large parts of England, though many areas have so far been left out.
Starmer’s government is likely to concentrate at first on finalising deals with parts of the country with which they have already been agreed, including Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Lancashire and Surrey.
Experts say the government should then focus on urban parts of the country which do not have deals at all, including Brighton, Leicester, Portsmouth and Reading.
Akash Paun, programme director at the Institute for Government, a thinktank, said: “The government should commit to extending devolution to the rest of England.
“There has been good progress made over the last decade, and deals now cover about 50% of the country. If they get to 85% by the end of the parliament, that would be good progress.”
