Summary: Social sciences, devolution and the Liverpool City Region

As part of the Campaign for Social Science’s series on devolution, we were delighted to host a panel session in Liverpool as part of the Social Policy Association’s annual conference in July 2026. Our panel offered reflections from their own work and research on Liverpool’s experience as a city region, and the discussion explored how Liverpool’s governance can continue to thrive, serve, and represent diverse communities, drawing on examples of good practice locally but also offering critical reflections and research-based insights.

The event was chaired by our Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Dr Ed Bridges, and featured contributions from Steve Rotheram, Sue Jarvis FAcSS, Amina Ismail and Dr Leon Moosavi. Below is a summary of their remarks.

The first contribution was from Steve Rotheram, the elected Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. He began by reflecting on the conference’s theme of hope and relating that to current political events, arguing that we needed hope not just as blind optimism, but to underpin a belief that policy can improve lives. Devolution, underpinned by trust, is integral to that, as we seek to transition from abstract notions of policy solutions, and to tailor these into real solutions for real problems, which bring real improvements to people’s lives. To reflect this, Steve explored the Liverpool City Region’s strong focus on social justice to underpin its approach – and he reflected on how social science, social policy and economics play a key role in informing it. He also spoke about community power and participation as a key aim of both social policy and of devolution.

Sue Jarvis FAcSS, who is Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice & Place, at the University of Liverpool, began by reminding the audience that the UK remains one of the most centralised countries in the world and also one of the most socially unequal. City regions, in her view, were well-placed to understand and reflect local priorities whilst also being big enough to make tangible change. But to do this effectively, she argued that successful devolution needs three things: meaningful powers, stable long-term funding and democratic accountability. With over half of England’s population now represented by an elected regional mayor, getting these factors right is critically important so that devolution can deliver. But as well as getting the tools of devolution right, Sue also urged the audience not to overlook the important role of an elected mayor’s soft power – with mayors acting as champions for their area, and having convening power of businesses, universities and public sector bodies. This, in Sue’s view, is just as important as the powers and funding attached to those roles. Sue ended by setting out three priorities for the development of England’s devolution model. Firstly, there needs to be proper fiscal devolution to provide regions with more certainty and incentives for growth. Secondly, our expectations of devolution need to move beyond economic development and into social challenges. And finally, it needs to be bold in thinking about democratic innovation to involve communities in shaping decisions. She ended by reminding the audience about the relevance of social science and evidence-informed policymaking.

Next up was Amina Ismail, who is Senior Community Mobiliser at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – working, as she put it, in an in-between space between academia and practice, connecting with communities to develop projects which address health challenges. This hyper-local work is data informed, and it shows us that communities have the knowledge, skills and expertise to respond to the problems which they face. In that light, we should see trust (which Steve had also talked about) as being an additional, and critical pillar, to good devolution. If trust is not treated as critical infrastructure of devolution, and intentionally built into the structures we create, we are hobbling devolution’s potential to deliver by not putting power in the hands of the people who could draw the greatest benefits. She ended by reflecting that her work indicates too often how well-designed policies fail in the final few steps of the journey, not adequately improving the lives of people in their homes. Devolution should be, and needs to be, the tool which allows us to ensure policy makes those few final steps.

Finally, we heard from Leon Moosavi, a Reader in Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology at the University of Liverpool. Whilst his background is sociology rather than social policy or devolution specifically, he reflected that much of the discussion had explored issues around power, which is central to much of sociology and to his own research. Work on decolonisation has been about how to redistribute power away from the imperial metropole, reversing domination from the outside to instead localise power, and there are obvious parallels to the underlying aspirations for devolution. In this sense, Leon argued that devolution has an important role to play in improving society, but not necessarily in terms of transfer of governance powers but more about ensuring better representation of different communities. Devolution narratives focus on empowering citizens in delineated geographic areas (“the north”, “Wales”, etc) but not necessarily on whether that empowerment happens equally across communities within those nations / regions (eg, the Muslim community). He ended on a note of caution by speculating that the earnest enthusiasm for devolution amongst the political class could be further fuel for political populism – because if devolution fails to improve people’s lives in tangible ways, it will be spun as another instance of academic and political elites speaking a different language from the rest of society.

Across four different speakers and standpoint, there was a remarkable degree of consensus, particularly on three distinct points:

• Trust is an inherent part of devolution – but we need more of it. Both from central government in trusting regional government to devise and deliver solutions for their area, but also from regional government to communities in shaping these in meaningful ways.
• We need to move beyond devolution’s constitutional and economic focus which has dominated the debate hitherto, and focus more and more on social / societal challenges so that people can see and feel the impact.
• Policymakers and academics need to be wary of treating the population of devolved areas as one homogenous community with a settled set of views and needs, and mechanisms need to be examined to ensure diverse views are better heard in devolution debates.

The Campaign for Social Science is grateful to all the panellists for their excellent contributions, and to the Social Policy Association for including the panel within their conference agenda.

The Campaign for Social Science Devolution Hub showcases research and evidence-led insights from leading social scientists, through written contributions and events, to shine a light on devolved and sub-national government in the UK, including how the different polities across the UK might learn from each other, and whether the inconsistencies of the UK’s devolution map are an inherent strength or a challenge for a harmonious union of regions and nations. Explore the hub for more.