Hello I'm Jeff Lloyd and between 2017 and 2024 Ed Miller Bandlai explored ideas to improve society on our podcast

Reasons to be Cheerful. We're left with an archive of hundreds of inspiring conversations with experts,

activists and thinkers. Ed has of course now departed for government, but I thought you might enjoy

ad hoc episodes delving into that back catalogue as and when ideas

we explored on reasons to be cheerful become part of the political or cultural discussion.

And so this is reasons revisited.

The new Labour government unveiled its plans for legislation over the next year in its first

King's speech last week, with Kieama's agenda promising to fix the foundations of

the country and take the breaks off Britain.

The speech outlined plans to pass powers away from Westminster to local leaders and authorities saying that greater devolution of

decision-making is at the heart of a modern dynamic economy and is a key driver of economic growth.

The main vehicle for this is the English Devolution

bill which will provide a framework for handing powers over including

planning, public transport and employment support and

and it will create a council of nations and regions where mayors have

combined authorities will sit alongside the Prime Minister and heads of

devolved governments. Now, Devolution was something that would frequently

come up in the conversations that Ed and I had on

reasons to be cheerful and it often seemed like the UK and specifically England is a bit of a basket

case in the way that power is hoarded centrally.

So we devoted a whole episode to this in October 2020.

And first up, here's Tony Travers from the London School of Economics

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