A Liberal Democrat MP has called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to go further with his devolution plans and give Yorkshire its own parliament. Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Tom Gordon said too much power was currently in the hands of elected mayors and a Yorkshire parliament would better reflect the region. Burnham has recently set out plans to give elected mayors more power over planning and tackling fly-tipping and said he would give them a share of income tax and business rates.
But Gordon told BBC Politics North he believed that giving more money and powers to four separate Yorkshire mayoralties actually deepened divides in the county and a Yorkshire parliament would be "a good thing". Yorkshire currently has three Labour mayors - Oliver Coppard for South Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin for West Yorkshire and David Skaith for York and North Yorkshire - as well as Luke Campbell, the Reform UK mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. Gordon said Yorkshire had a population larger than Scotland and an economy larger than Wales, and, as such, it should have a parliament with a broader spectrum of views represented, rather than so much power resting with the four elected mayors.
The Lib Dem said that while people had been told the recent local government reorganisation in North Yorkshire would "simplify" the situation, he believed that was not the case. "We've ended up with a new North Yorkshire Council at a higher tier and a Harrogate town council below it, so we've ended up with two tiers. In fact, there's a third tier when you throw in the regional mayor," he said.
"So we've ended up with more tiers, but those powers have been moved upwards rather than down to people. "I think we owe it to have everyone have a seat at that table, not just all that power put in one person's hands." Gordon said he believed a Yorkshire parliament was the way forward "if it's good enough for Scotland, if it's good enough for Wales, if it's good enough for London". "We should have a model where we have broader people elected to it who can feed in all those issues into a Yorkshire-wide parliament.
That, to me, is only a good thing," he said. The idea of a Yorkshire parliament has previously been advocated by the Yorkshire Party. Since 2014, the party has argued that it would create a more "engaged, democratic society".
Meanwhile, when devolution deals were first being discussed, a proposal was put forward for one mayor for all of Yorkshire. The so-called "One Yorkshire" plan was backed by 18 of the region's 20 local councils, while Sheffield and Rotherham opted for a separate South Yorkshire solution. However, the then Conservative Communities Secretary James Brokenshire rejected the proposal and said the plan did "not meet our criteria".
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