LSE Director Calls For English Assemblies With 'Serious' Tax Raising Powers

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

11 January 2002

In a new booklet entitled 'Where Now For New Labour?', close political ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Director of the London School of Economics, Professor Anthony Giddens, has called for devolved assemblies with 'serious' tax raising powers in the United Kingdom.

This follows news that despite devolution, the government has so far refused to allow the Scottish Parliament to invoke its tax varying powers, fearing that it would distance Britain and Scotland still further if different income tax rates were levied in the two countries.

In his booklet, Professor Giddens argues that permanent constitutional revolution is the only way of modernising the UK, and calls for 'wholesale regionalisation along Spanish lines', with elected regional governments.

'There are many models around of countries with much greater devolution than the United Kingdom- and these powers tend to keep these countries together,' he writes. 'The creation of the autonomous communities in Spain has played a part in the impressive economic progress the country has made over past decades.'

Professor Giddens cites the example of the Greater London Authority, currently wrestling with the costs and problems of modernising the London Underground, as a situation in which regional tax-raising powers would have been beneficial:

'More devolution there with tax-raising powers would have made solving the problem easier and got the government out of a hole,' he explained.

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