Economic Affairs Committee
23 June 2026
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Economic Affairs Committee House of Lords
00:04 - 01:35
Speaker 4
Welcome to the third, I think, evidence session of our Lords Economic Affairs Committee inquiry into fiscal devolution. And we're delighted to have with us three expert witnesses from academia. We have Susan Jarvis, Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. Professor Iain McLean online from Oxford, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, Nuffield College. And Professor Tony Travers, Professor in Practice and Associate Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy.
This is being broadcast live on Parliament Live TV and we'll be taking a transcript and sharing it with you shortly after so you can make any corrections of factual remarks. Can I start with a general question, perhaps starting with Tony and then moving on to Susan and Iain. What do you think the strongest case is for fiscal devolution? What problems is fiscal devolution likely to solve, likely to address? And are there specific things that fiscal devolution would help solve that suggest that centralization has been a problem in areas of public policy delivery?
Tony, over to you first.
01:35 - 02:25
Speaker 14
First, thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence today. I think that the question of what is the fiscal, what would fiscal devolution be, what's the problem that it's the solution to? I think there's two or three ways of approaching that, answering that question. First is, as you implied in the question, England within the UK, but it's true to some extent for the local government funding systems in Wales and Scotland, is very, very, very centralized. And that leads to a relationship between local government and the center under parties of all parties of government that is dependent and to some extent infantilizes local government.
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