Comment: Devolution revolution… and Great British Railways

Does the government approve of arm’s-length bodies to run public services or not? And how close to government should that body be? How far away is arm’s length?

In mid-March, Labour announced it would be scrapping NHS England (said to be the largest quango in the world).

This arm’s-length body duplicated administrative and decision-making functions with the Department of Health and Social Care.

Government argued that it would devolve decision-making to local managers closer to the coalface, and bring control and responsibility back to elected government - responsibility that previous governments had preferred to leave to an arm’s-length body. Elected accountability, Labour argued, needs to be brought back to managing health.

Yet just as it is scrapping one arm’s-length body, the government will now be setting up another.

It’s been generally agreed that politicians are too close to operational rail decisions and that the Department for Transport should be more hands-off, leaving day-to-day management to an arm’s length body in the shape of Great British Railways . This arm’s-length GBR will rightly take politicians and Whitehall civil servants further away from running the rail service - even if that logic is reversed for NHS England.

What about the opportunity for greater local control? For the arm’s length body of GBR, that’s still to be clarified.

GBR’s establishment comes as the government is also widening devolution, both in the regions benefiting from devolution and in the extent of powers in those already devolved.

The English Devolution White Paper sets out ambitious shifts in power to new mayors. The rail consultation also takes that into account, recognising the success of Transport for London as a devolved transport authority. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham would like to follow a London-style public transport organisation for his city, with seamless ticketing across local services.

GBR is supposed to become the one directing mind for a national, nationalised railway. But will there have to be other guiding minds, too? Can they divide the work where it makes sense, and co-operate?

If the government is serious about devolution, it could give more regions more say over their rail infrastructure as well as operations, as Scotland already has. But that risks further managerial fragmentation at a time when the central government is trumpeting unification.

In the end, it should not be beyond the abilities of GBR and the devolved areas to work together to make local transport work for local people and a rail network that works for everyone. The open questions remain around who exactly will be expected to do what and where.

The consultation even sets out the potential different types of partnership that are possible between a central national body and devolved regions governing rail. Read about that and other thorny issues of devolution in our feature by Peter Plisner.

Meanwhile, Richard Wilcock analyses how the government is doing to meet the devolution point in RAIL’s Manifesto for Rail that we set out before last year’s election.

The answer, it would seem, depends on the service and who’s doing the distancing, why, and what for.