Yesterday I attended a West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Scrutiny Workshop, which focused on the WMCA draft budget for 2019/2020.

What is becoming increasingly clear with every meeting I attend, and this meeting was even more eye-opening, is how shambolic the Tories’ handling of devolution has been. Huge sums of money are being devolved to the Combined Authority, but the only democratic accountability we have for how this is spent is a vote for the Mayor once every four years.

The latest news members of the WMCA scrutiny body received yesterday is that the Adult Education Budget is being devolved – some 84.2 million in the coming year followed by some 126 million from then onwards. So we have the figures, but there is no clear plan as to how this money should be spent. And when a sharp-eyed councillor observed that what was being funded was the status quo only, it begged the question as to how change could be brought about to improve the adult education provision within the West Midlands?

When you consider that the Tories are also going to get rid of the elected Police and Crime Commissioner – someone who has a full-time job looking at police and crime issues – and hand all his powers over to the Metro Mayor, I start to get a bit worried.
How can one person be held accountable for everything that happens in terms of crime, education, transport, housing, health and the environment within the West Midlands?
And how can all this public money be scrutinised effectively, when currently it is being done by councillors who are busy dealing with their own councils’ and constituents’ issues?

Everyone involved with the Combined Authority – apart from the current Metro Mayor from what he has said on the subject – is fast coming to the conclusion that the job of dealing effectively with all these regional issues is too big a job for those who are expected to do it. Public money is being spent without proper scrutiny or democratic accountability – something needs to change.

Devolution has been done on the cheap and it is not working as it should to improve people’s lives within the West Midlands.
Scotland and Wales have democratically elected assemblies consisting of people who’s full-time job it is to scrutinise regional issues and expenditure, and the West Midlands Combined Authority is responsible for a bigger population than in either of those two regions.
We deserve something similar, not just a token politician who try as he might can’t keep his eye on every ball.

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