Seven questions on the Council of the Nations and Regions

For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, politically and constitutionally, this is potentially important all round.

Are we going to see much better, serious cooperation between the devolved governments and the UK/England’s prime minister? How will the mayors of England’s combined authorities fit in? Or is the mayors’ presence, politically, a clear downgrading of the three devolved nations and parliaments?

Media attention may be more on whether Sue Gray, recently demoted from her chief of staff job, turns up in her new, undefined, bizarre-sounding, potentially condescending role of ‘envoy to the nations and regions’.

But there are bigger questions than that – for Scotland and for Wales and Northern Ireland.

All one team now?

In his pre-Council briefing, Starmer said he wants all present to “work as one team to maximise opportunities ahead of the Investment Summit”. In one way, this looks fairly anodyne. Why wouldn’t different parts of the UK state coordinate over international investment efforts after all.

But the first meeting of a supposedly high level new Council of the nations and regions being set-up as a pre-meeting to a business summit is not exactly symbolic of a high-level new politics of respect within the UK.

Some sharp political questions need asking about this new Council. Existing and previous devolved structures for dialogue between the UK prime minister and the three nations’ devolved leaders have often been seen as low-key, low-impact – a political sop in effect. Such structures did not stop the several previous Tory governments ignoring Scotland’s views on Brexit nor regularly ignoring the Sewell convention that should mean Westminster will not legislate on devolved areas.

And, of course, the devolved nations and England are not always one team. Diversity and difference are the whole point of devolution. So, we will see how centre-devolved relations work out over time under the new UK government – and this Council will give some first indications.

What’s it for?

It’s worth asking of this inaugural meeting whether there will be any discussion of what it’s actually for? Did the devolved leaders plus mayors get any say on the agenda or did Number Ten just announce it?  Will there be any focus on how, constitutionally, the different parts of the UK work together now and the changes that are needed? For sure, there won’t be any agenda item to pick up the need for the UK to be a voluntary union. But presumably Scotland’s First Minister will still make this point. After all, a Council of nations and regions that doesn’t allow discussion of constitutional issues would be rather an oxymoron.

Starmer’s plan may be for this to be a positive, cooperative and effectively technocratic forum to discuss ‘safe’ issues such as business and investment. But that is unlikely to mesh well with current political and constitutional differences and challenges.

Nor is growth per se a political consensus or a safe issue as the climate and biodiversity crises intensify.

There’s also the question of whether the ‘nations and regions’ idea is a way to downgrade Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, putting them on a par with England’s mayors. This is, so far, unclear (see this short briefing). The pre-existing intergovernmental relations (IGR) Council, set up in 2022, still exists. In the IGR Council, the UK prime minister meets with the leaders of the three nations (without the regions). How the two Councils will relate is quite unclear and a possible recipe for confusion.

         First Minister John Swinney  with the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham and the Mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram 

So, on Friday, will it all be sweetness and light as devolved leaders and mayors all show they are, of course, ready and keen to work with the UK’s new, and strangely embattled, prime minister? Quite possibly so.

But there are many tough questions and challenges around Keir Starmer’s growth strategy – to the extent, it’s clear. And hopefully Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney will raise some of these.

Scotland’s Interests: Seven Questions

Starmer’s big international investment summit next Monday is sponsored, amongst others, by three big banks – Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds. Number ten hopes up to 300 business leaders will attend. But the Council of nations and regions discussion needs to be much broader than simply a pre-meeting on how to attract international investment.

Scotland’s First Minister could raise at least seven big points at the Council.

1) The constitutional questions

The Council should have or schedule a discussion of how relations and cooperation across the three nations currently work and could be improved. That should include the need for the union to be voluntary but also further devolution, better consultation, respect for devolution and more. This would seem appropriate at the beginning of this new body’s work.

2) Unions and NGOs

There’s no mention of inviting trade unions to Monday’s big international investment summit nor NGOs. Yet if green growth is the order of the day, plus with Starmer’s insistence he focuses on working people, then surely unions and NGOs should be there. John Swinney could usefully make this point. ‘One team’ cannot only mean government and business.

3) Climate, biodiversity and green growth

Core questions must be raised on how to ensure growth is green and sustainable, tackling the twin climate and biodiversity crises together – and rejecting the Labour government’s preferred, more slippery, ‘clean growth’ phrasing. The Scottish government has also done a lot of work on well-being as a goal not just growth – this needs raising.

The Scottish government, having rashly put too much emphasis on carbon capture technology, is not in a good position to critique last week’s announcement of £22 billion over 25 years for carbon capture, though it should.

But there are other key questions, including about the role of Great British Energy – now to be headquartered in Aberdeen. The Scottish government should have its own suggestions on how this new ‘green’ company should operate, within its unhelpfully small budget (or with a larger budget as Labour originally planned), and what would bring the greatest benefits to Scotland.

Challenges of a just transition exist across the UK (not least at a moment when big fossil fuel companies are reneging on plans to cut oil output) are also key to the discussion.

4) Benefits from international investment

More broadly, there are serious questions to be asked across the UK on how to ensure any international investment creates benefits for local communities and economies, not just repatriating profits abroad nor relying on trickle-down economics. Any growth strategy has to have a clear focus on tackling poverty and inequality and promoting well-being.

There are big questions, too, being rightly asked around domestic and foreign ownership of Scotland’s land including for ‘green’ carbon credits. These debates need raising.

5) Cuts and self-Imposed fiscal rules

The wider UK macro-economic context is crucial for Scotland. The Council is meeting before Rachel Reeves’ budget. But the threat from the new UK government of gloomy prospects, the £22 billion Tory black hole, and the cut to the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, are not inspiring the sort of confidence and ‘one team’ outlook the UK may need both to grow and to attract international investors.

The unnecessary, damaging fiscal rules the UK government has imposed on itself needs raising. As does the key point that ‘current’ spending on schools and health is also an investment in our future and should not be something subject to a cap around current tax receipts, while the government refuses to increase income taxes on the wealthy.

6) Brexit and the EU: impact on the UK’s growth

Brexit will be the biggest elephant in the room. Scotland’s First Minister will surely raise this. Last week, just like its Conservative predecessors, the Labour government delayed yet again implementation of a set of safety and security  border controls for EU imports. Brexit is not working.

The Council of nations and regions should be briefed, and then asked to input, on the EU-UK talks to improve the Brexit deal (albeit at the margins), announced after Starmer met Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week. This is clearly something where devolved leaders, and doubtless mayors, will have a view. But is this on the agenda – or not allowed as foreign policy?

An EU-UK youth mobility deal is strongly in Scotland’s interests but how much may the UK government water it down or will it not do a deal at all?

The Scottish government also needs to be clear on what sort of climate cooperation it would like to see between the EU and UK, including on emission trading schemes and aligning climate border taxes if possible.

Northern Ireland, of course, has different interests and a different context for EU-UK relations. It remains in the EU’s single market for goods and is effectively in the EU customs union. Its interests are not the same as Scotland’s or Wales on all these issues. So ‘one team’ is not always going to work well.

More broadly, and inevitably, when talking about international investment, there will be competition between different parts of the UK. Managing the different contexts and competition raises another set of issues.

7) Migration as a plus

Next week, the EU’s leaders look like pushing to clamp down even harder on migration and asylum flows into the bloc. This is an area where Starmer’s government wants to look for EU-UK cooperation with a similar restrictive perspective. But both the UK, Scotland and the EU all need migration, need more workers across public and private sectors. More and smoother legal migration routes are needed. So, this is another issue to bring up at Starmer’s growth Council on Friday.

Scotland’s agenda

The new UK government, and a new, additional constitutional structure – the Council of nations and regions – gives the Scottish government an opportunity to present its policy agenda and what it wants to see at UK level that will benefit Scotland (and other parts of the UK).

From genuine green growth and a just transition to Brexit and re-joining the EU, from migration to fiscal rules and control of international investment, there is a substantial set of points that Scotland’s First Minister can and should bring to this meeting.

The politics of the meeting will lie in how much overlap or conflict there is between the views of the three nations, and of England’s regional mayors, and of the UK prime minister. The wider politics also lies in who controls the agenda and where the discussion is allowed to go.

Of course, the Council meeting may prove a damp squib – joint assertions of common interests in ‘clean’ growth, investment, jobs, innovation and skills. But it could and should be much more.

It will, at least, provide a pointer for how Starmer sees the UK’s constitutional set up and how he politically wants to engage with that – and how, in turn, the three nations (and England’s devolved mayors) see it. If it’s a genuine discussion it may not look too much like ‘one team’ UK.

First published on the author’s Europe & Scotland newsletter by Substack