Standing Committee A
Thursday 19 December 2002
[Mr. John Butterfill in the Chair]
Clause 26
Regions
8.55 am
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge): I beg to move amendment No. 89, in
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take the following:
Amendment No. 90, in
clause 26, page 13, line 5, at end insert—
'( ) The Secretary of State may by order vary the regional boundaries set out in the Regional Development Agencies Act (1998).
( ) It is immaterial whether more or fewer regions are created as a result.'.
New clause 3—Regional boundaries—
'(1) Before making any order under Parts 1, 2 or 3 the Secretary of State shall—
(a) invite all local authorities in England to submit to him proposals for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act; and
(b) invite such other persons and bodies as appear to him to represent relevant interests throughout England to submit to him proposals for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act; and
(c) upon receipt of submissions in response to paragraphs (a) and (b) invite the Electoral Commission to comment on the submissions and to make proposals to the Secretary of State for the creation of regions for the purposes of this Act having regard to—
(i) the desirability of all regions being of approximately equal size; and
(ii) the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities; and
(d) publish the proposals made to him by the Electoral Commission under paragraph (c); and
(e) make an order creating regions for the purposes of this Act, having regard to the proposals published under paragraph (d).
(2) For the purposes of this section ''relevant interests'' means professional bodies, trades unions, voluntary organisations, faith groups, political parties, business organisations and community organisations.'.
Mr. Hammond: It is a pleasure to be back in these surroundings after the somewhat unfamiliar experience of debating the Bill on the Floor of the House yesterday. I am glad that we have reached clause 26 and amendment No. 89. It is a paving amendment for new clause 3, which goes to the heart of the question of the regional boundaries.
The Minister for Local Government and the Regions has made his position clear: he is not prepared to engage in any discussion about the wisdom or otherwise of the boundaries that have
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been chosen for these purposes: the boundaries of the regional development agencies. He resorts, rather scurrilously, to the accusation that the previous Conservative Government put those boundaries in place and he then retreats behind his reinforced concrete wall as if that makes them unchallengeable. However, those boundaries were put in place for a completely different purpose.
One conclusion that we can draw from the debates on the Floor of the House last night is that many colleagues on both sides of the House are greatly interested in what the appropriate boundaries for regions should be for elected assembly purposes. The size of regions and the need to create an identity in a region that makes it a real entity for the people who live in it were discussed.
The Minister tried to make great play of the conflict between the two criteria laid down in new clause 3(1)(c)—the desirability of regions being of approximately equal size and the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities—as if that were a fatal flaw in the structure of the new clause. However, it is no different from the requirements in clause 13, on the local government review, to have regard to certain matters.
Under new clause 3, the Electoral Commission would be required to have regard to the desirability of approximate equivalence of size and the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities. Clearly, it would not be possible to meet both requirements all the time, but in dealing with one of the two criteria, the commission would be constrained by the need to have regard to the other. I hope that out of that tension for an expert and independent body such as the Electoral Commission would come a sensible compromise.
The Minister for Local Government and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford): How long does the hon. Gentleman believe that that process is likely to take?
Mr. Hammond: I see no particular reason why the process should take much longer than the time scale already envisaged by the Minister. It would take a year for a boundary committee to do its work in one or two regions, if the Secretary of State were minded to call a referendum. I see no reason why restructuring the regional boundaries should take much longer. The Government's pragmatic objection is not a good reason to fail totally to deal with what anyone listening objectively to the debates in this Room and on the Floor of the House would agree is one of the two major objections voiced by Members on both sides of the House and on both sides of the debate on regional assemblies. The other is the coupling of the creation of regional assemblies with local government reorganisation.
Jim Knight (South Dorset): Does the hon. Gentleman believe that it is possible to redraw regional boundaries in a way that would keep everyone happy? Is not it the case that whenever a boundary is drawn around anything, people on the edge of it believe that they should be on the other side?
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman is, of course, right, and the Minister says yes from a sedentary
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position, as if that is a fatal flaw in my argument. However, the right hon. Gentleman readily conceded to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) during last night's debate, and indeed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), that local government boundary reviews invariably create the same problem. In the end, no one is ever happy.
The probable truth is that if everyone is completely happy, the work will not have been done properly. It is therefore a compromise, but what is clear is that outside the north-east, no one from any of the regions believes that the existing regional boundaries—south-west, eastern England, south-east, north-west, west midlands—are right. The process outlined in new clause 3 would at least allow a bottom-up consultation on these issues. I do not suggest that the end result will be that everyone is perfectly happy, but it will be better than simply taking inherited administrative boundaries, which date back to the second world war, and casting them in stone for ever.
Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton): I agree. The present boundaries were designed for a totally different purpose. The suggestion made by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) that they could not be improved is nonsense. If we were given the chance to ask people in a one-off, short review what they considered their communities to be, surely that would be better than what the Government are offering us?
Mr. Hammond: I agree. It is bizarre that the Minister does not seem to realise that his proposal for elected regional assemblies will not work unless he tackles two principal concerns: the first was voiced by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) about the coupling of elected regional assemblies with local government review; the second was articulated by many hon. Members about the inappropriateness of the regional boundaries. If the Minister genuinely wants a stable and enduring solution to the English question—a settlement that works for all England—he must deal with those two matters. We are talking about a constitutional change that may endure for decades and it is simply absurd for the Minister to say that it would take an extra six months to do it properly, so he will not do it at all, but instead will try to graft this arrangement on to England using boundaries that are as relevant to the communities and areas in which we live as are the colonial boundaries of Africa, which were drawn on a map by a bureaucrat's pen many thousands of miles away.
Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby): I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's remarks. If we have a Conservative Government after the next general election, will he confirm for the record that one of their priorities will be to consider this ''English question'', as he puts it, and to carry out the sort of review of the regions that he is describing? Such a review would obviously include London, as London is in England. Will he commit that as a policy objective of a future Conservative Government?
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Mr. Hammond: I am not going to say anything about London because I am not going to reopen the discussion that the Liberals and the Minister had last night about whether London was an example of city unitary government or regional government.
The Conservative party recognises that there is an English question, which needs to be addressed following the devolution settlements in Scotland and Wales. There must be a reorganisation of the way in which England is governed below the national tier. We believe that that must be based on the existing established units and natural communities, and built upwards from the bottom, rather than downwards from the top, as the Minister would prefer. I can give him the assurance that it will be a priority for an incoming Conservative Government to deal with the issue, based on an organic solution that flows naturally from the communities with which people have affinity. While I do not think that it is necessarily the perfect way to go, the proposal to start from the bottom and review the regional boundaries from scratch is certainly much more in keeping with that approach than the Minister's approach.
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