|
Mr. Hammond: The Under-Secretary's comments about the comprehensive performance assessment results neatly draw the Committee's attention to the correlation between adequacy of funding and performance of councils. He might draw a lesson for his Department from that.
Mr. Leslie: That comment implies that the hon. Gentleman believes that the north-east should receive a lower grant through the local government settlement. I am unsure whether that should be the Conservative party's policy, if its members want to show their face in that region. I suspect that my hon. Friends who represent the region will take note of that comment and place it in their manifestos in future elections.
The evidence of previous structural changes shows that there are often property issues that cannot be resolved by successor authorities. In such circumstances, previous Governments as well as this one have found it necessary, pending the resolution of the problems, to appoint residuary bodies to take on certain property rights, liabilities and so forth, and generally to act as advisers on those issues. It would not make sense to prevent the Government from making similar arrangements in the case of forthcoming reviews, should the need arise. The provision for residuary bodies is sensible, and I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Mr. Hammond: The Under-Secretary has not addressed the issue, and he has not offered any relevant examples.
Mr. Leslie: It is my understanding that the last reorganisation involved the creation of the London residuary body, which took over certain property and other responsibilities from the Greater London council. That provides an example of how transitional arrangements can be necessary.
Mr. Hammond: I understand that, and I understand the logic in the context of London, where the devolution of power was to a large number of successor authorities. This reorganisation will involve relatively modest changes to authority boundaries—we are talking about district authorities being amalgamated into unitary authorities, or county authorities perhaps being broken down into unitary authorities. I had hoped that the Minister would address this matter, because it is not immediately obvious to me that the proposed reorganisation would involve the kind of issues that arose in London. I fully understand why the London residuary body was created.
I do not have chapter and verse on this matter so, in order not to delay the Committee, I beg to ask leave to
Column Number: 266
withdraw the amendment. I shall study the matter again in quieter moments.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Payments to Electoral Commission
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Hammond: I would like the Under-Secretary to tell the Committee something about his Department's budget. How much does he expect to pay to the Electoral Commission for the boundary committee's work? What estimates has he had? I presume that he has had meetings with the boundary committee and the Electoral Commission, and I presume that they have considered the work loads in the different regions. I certainly hope that they have. Ministers constantly refer to the implications for the boundary committee of undertaking more than one review simultaneously, which certainly implies that discussions have taken place. Figures must exist, so, before the Committee passes over clause 17, it would be most useful if the Under-Secretary gave us some numbers.
Mr. Leslie: I can certainly oblige with an indication of what costs may be incurred by the boundary committee in carrying out local government reviews. As we have said before, the boundary committee would be reimbursed by the Government. We estimate that the cost would be between £750,000 and £1 million per region for local government reviews. The money would come from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's supply estimates. Money would be paid directly to the Electoral Commission, which is responsible for funding the boundary committee's work. Sums received by the Electoral Commission will be treated as income received, as can be seen in subsection (2).
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I have missed what he said, but did he give different estimates for conducting boundary reviews in different regions? I thought that I heard only a single estimate.
Mr. Leslie: Estimates will range from between £750,000 and £1 million, depending on the region.
Mr. Hammond: Will the Under-Secretary explain how it can cost £750,000 in the smallest region, with a population of 1.6 million electors, and £1 million in the largest region, with a population of 6.5 million electors? To me, and I suspect to many other members of the Committee, that range is not intuitively obvious. How have those figures been arrived at?
Mr. Leslie: I will explain. The figures represent the particular cost of carrying out the local government reviews, not the electoral area reviews, which obviously would be more detailed. Certain fixed costs are involved in setting up an exercise such as a local government review. Those fixed costs represent a large proportion of the total sum, which is why there is not necessarily a sliding scale in which the costs are
Column Number: 267
proportional to the population. I hope that that is clear.
Mr. Hammond: I have to press the Under-Secretary further because, apart from the obvious discrepancy between sizes of regions, the actual amount surprises me. He tells us, in effect, that the marginal cost of conducting a review of local government boundaries in the south-east, the population of which is 6.5 million, as compared to the north-east is only £250,000. That draws my attention to the long-time scale—a year, give or take—that he suggested would be required for such a local government review.
11.45 am
How much resource is going into that effort? The sad fact in these times is that we cannot get a lot of resource for £250,000. Why will the Under-Secretary allow the review process to take a year when the Minister for Local Government and the Regions suggested that the availability of resources to the boundary committee was a restriction that had to be taken into account? He said that that was not necessarily a reference to money, but a reference to physical resources. Are we talking about so few people being available that £250,000 of incremental salaries represents the maximum resource that could be deployed in a boundary committee review in, say, the south-east region?
Mr. Leslie: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point, although the estimates are those of the boundary committee and are also present in the explanatory notes. The boundary committee is currently working on more detailed estimates, and we will make those available in due course.
Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby): Surely one factor has to be the existing arrangements for local government and how many unitary authorities are already in place. As a consequence, for the Yorkshire and Humberside area, for example, the situation would be relevant so far as it applied to my county, North Yorkshire. Therefore, the costs would be quite different.
Mr. Leslie: My hon. Friend points out one of several variables that could come into play when considering the costs involved. The boundary committee has been reasonable in its estimates, and has shown that it provides good value for money. It may not have done so in the world of expensive consultants employed by the Conservative party or those who normally come into contact with the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge. Unlike some such expensive advisers, the boundary committee is prudent and reasonable, and has provided healthy suggestions including a range of options for the cost in those regions. The income would be reimbursed by the Government as income received by the Electoral Commission, for the purpose of estimate arrangements.
Mr. Hammond: The intervention by the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Lawrie Quinn) clearly reinforced the point that I was trying to make. The work load that will be involved in conducting such a boundary review in the north-east region, compared to the work load involved in
Column Number: 268
conducting such a review in the south-east region where the authorities are predominantly two-tier, is not effectively represented by the Under-Secretary's £250,000 differential.
I will take no lectures from a Minister in this Government on the employment of expensive consultants. The sum of £250,000 would scarcely cover the Government's advertising and PR bill for the boundary committee review in any region. The truth is that no one has bothered to think what the cost of conducting a boundary committee review in the south-east or the east of England would be.
Mr. Leslie: As I explained, the estimates are those of the boundary committee. It is full of professional people who know the extent of work involved. There are reasons for the estimates that they have given, and they are working on more detailed estimates, which may not be the final ones but which will provide ball-park figures. Is the hon. Gentleman really suggesting that it is irresponsible of the boundary committee to provide such estimates?
Mr. Hammond: I am not privy to the question that the Under-Secretary put to the boundary committee, but the figures seem to represent a reasonable estimate of the range of costs of conducting reviews in Yorkshire and Humberside and north-west regions. The range of figures could not credibly be applied to reviews in the north-east or south-east regions. The Under-Secretary says that the figures come from the boundary committee, so I shall pursue the matter with that committee.
I am a little surprised by the figures that the Under-Secretary has given me, including the relatively low cost of the boundary committee review—[Interruption.] The Minister for Local Government and the Regions is waving the explanatory notes at me. I hope that he will forgive me, but from my experience in Standing Committees, I have come to regard explanatory notes as little more reliable than the rest of Government spin. The explanatory notes tell us what the Government want us to believe about a Bill and invite the indolent to take the Government's expression of good intentions at face value. Our job, however, is to probe what powers the Bill actually gives the Government and, at the risk of being accused by Ministers of paranoia, to explore all the possibilities for misdeeds and malevolent interpretation.
| 
