The Government's English Devolution White Paper has set out a radical rewiring of public services, complete with beefed up combined authorities with single budgets, reorganisation and a new audit regime.

Aimed at ‘giving local leaders and communities the tools they need to deliver growth' and raise living standards, as the deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said in her foreword to the White Paper, it claims to shift power away from central government and back out to combined authorities. It moves to devolution by default, taking power out of the hands of ministers and building it into the constitution.