SUSSEX should have its own tax-raising parliament as part of a “Commonwealth of Britain”, says an MP.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle would like to see regions across England granted their own parliaments with powers similar to Wales as a way of keeping the union together.

The Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown said: “Rather than Scotland constantly feeling like it’s out-ruled by England, what you would have is Scotland and London and Sussex and the nation of Yorkshire coming to a parliament in London.

“That to me would be a Britain that would be more functional, but also would have a true power at a level people need it, and you can then organise things according to how local people want it.”

In an interview with the BBC, he said a Sussex parliament should have similar powers to the Welsh Senedd, including over education, economic development, environment, tourism, transport, agriculture and healthcare as well as some powers to raise its own money through taxes.

Mr Russell-Moyle said: “Sussex seems to be a kind of level that would work.

“It would be over a million people – you can organise good size things there, whole states are able to be organised at that level.”

Under his plans, each regional parliament would have a population of roughly one million people.

“Cornwall is about half a million but it’s still bigger than Malta, and that functions as a perfectly stable independent country within the European Union,” he said.

For such an idea to work, he said there would need to be a “media landscape” that covers the same regions and for the boundaries to be based on regions that make sense to residents.

He said: “I’m not a Luddite that wants to draw the lines just on how the initial ancient counties were drawn.

“I’m happy for Gatwick to remain in Sussex, I don’t think it should be ceded back to Surrey.

“I think if you build them on culture and identity, then people suddenly start to have a view that this is an area they’re building towards - it’s not being ruled upon, it’s them ruling and deciding the rules themselves.”

Mr Russell-Moyle said regional devolution would allow national issues, such as the housing crisis, to be tackled in a way that caters to local concerns and needs, instead of assigned quotas from Westminster.

Criticising the approach of the government to HS2, he said: “If you’d given that resource to the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire, they would not have spent it on a faster line down to London.

“They would have spent it on building an actual line across Yorkshire and Lancashire, creating a real hub of cities, like Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, and then up to York and Newcastle.

“You would have a revival of the North, but because it was centrally driven, people in London – I’m afraid – just do not understand the rest of the country.”

Plans for a series of elected regional assemblies were introduced in 2002, but with limited powers.

The proposals were abandoned after voters in the North East of England rejected the idea in a referendum in 2004.

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