DCLG

Keeping the devolution dream alive

People are starting to ask whether devolution is dead, writes Bob Neill, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

You have probably read more than enough about the EU Referendum by now, but I do make this passing reference: there may have been many reasons for how people voted, but I suggest that one of them was a sense of alienation and distance.

Let's not deceive ourselves. This was a cry of frustration aimed not just at Brussels but also at us in Westminster. People want accessible, accountable government where decisions are taken as close to the ground as possible – a repatriation of powers not to Whitehall but to regions and cities around the country, and even, where governance models allow, to individual local authorities. Subsidiarity in the truest sense of the word.

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