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CRIMINAL PROCEDURE (INTERMEDIATE DIETS) (SCOTLAND) BILL
Ordered,
That, in respect of the Criminal Procedure (Intermediate Diets) (Scotland) Bill, notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.--[Jane Kennedy.]
1 Apr 1998 : Column 1386
Regions
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Jane Kennedy.]
11.19 pm
Mr. Andrew George (St. Ives): Those who may have been drawn to this debate through love of minutiae of etymological discourse will be sadly disappointed.
I asked for this Adjournment debate because I am concerned about the general failure to distinguish between devolution and administrative regionalisation; between responding to popular consensus to devolve power to Scotland and Wales and the top-down division of the remainder into Government administrative zones, without first establishing the same community of interests or popular support.
Today's final stages of the Regional Development Agencies Bill has confirmed once again that the debate is concentrating on specific functions--access to board members, concordats, planning matters and what should happen to the Rural Development Commission's resources--so much so that we run the risk of abandoning our critical faculties.
Pinned on to the emperor's robes--in this case, the robes of the regions--will be the badges of economic development agencies, chambers and probably regional assemblies. When it is pointed out that those regions do not exist, the badges will begin to look ridiculous, quite apart from being painful to the wearer.
The Government must recognise that, with a few honourable exceptions outside Wales and Scotland, there is little or no demand for devolution in the remainder of mainland UK. Where any interest is expressed, it is largely for reasons motivated by fear--fear of being left out or left behind as opposed to a demonstration of enthusiasm for devolution and the setting up of new regions. Many towns and cities are demonstrating that point right now.
Outside Scotland and Wales, the setting up of regions would create essentially artificial and bureaucratic constructs. England has not been divided into separate political regions since the Norman conquest. Given the option today, there appears little strong evidence that the English people would prefer a more decentralised model of government than the present unitary state. Indeed, as many of my hon. Friends regularly point out, as a Cornish man and not an English man, I can take a dispassionate and objective view on this matter.
Although power is being decentralised to London, it is not decentralisation in the proper sense, but rather a tidying up and clarification of strategic decision making and planning for the London area. Other than that, it is probably only in parts of the north of England where there appears to be some concerted public demand for the decentralisation of power, which is welcome.
Yet where there is clear popular support for devolution, the Government appear to ignore it. For example, whether one calls the territory a province, a department, a region or, as many would prefer, a small nation, Cornwall is an interesting case in point. In his 1995 report to the Labour party for the Institute for
Public Policy Research, Stephen Tindale draws attention to the special status of Cornwall. He says:
Whether or not Cornwall is an exceptional case, an important point of principle is established. Strong cultural traditions and identities can and should provide the platform for, rather than the obstacle to, devolution, just as they did in Scotland and Wales. In the headlong rush to set up regions, we need to be certain that we do not simply replace the bland uniformity of a centralised unaccountable state with the bland uniformity of synthetic regions based on bureaucratic convenience, thus adding to the problems rather than to the opportunities of places like Cornwall.
I urge anyone who has never noticed the Cornish pride and strong attachment to the area and wants to know what I mean to come to Twickenham on Saturday 18 April, when more than 50,000 Cornish rugby fans will take over that corner of London. I may be wrong, but I imagine that many of them know little about the rules of the game. They will be there for the county championship final not just to watch Cornwall crush whatever the opposition will be that afternoon, but as a focus for and demonstration of their pride and identity.
If, instead of being ignored, that passion was recognised as a strength and even a little of it could be bottled and used as the basis for a devolved region or province of government, a great deal could be achieved. Instead, under the current drift of policy, Cornwall and places like it face oblivion. Why?
For whose convenience are the regions being set up? With the historic opportunity of a period of significant constitutional change, why is the drawing of the regional maps so conservative? If the purpose is to ensure a substructure of government comparable to that of our European partners, why not examine the variety of regional structures on offer?
Mr. John Burnett (Torridge and West Devon):
Does my hon. Friend agree that vast regions with disparate and variable per capita gross domestic products will dilute the regional assistance available for areas such as my constituency, the county of Cornwall and the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey)?
Mr. George:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I shall deal with that point later.
Germany, Italy and Spain contain regions of a variety of sizes, including some smaller than Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
If regions are a response to public demand, where is the demonstration of popular legitimacy? The Government have argued that adopting a largely
administrative division of government zones is a convenient, ready-to-hand, off-the-shelf solution. Does the Minister recognise that that could do a great deal of harm and overlooks the great strength of building on strong regions or provinces that already exist? In some so-called regions there is more internal disagreement than community of interest. Many predict that the regions contain the seeds of their own destruction.
Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire):
Does my hon. Friend agree that the concern that he has described has already made itself felt in Wales since the referendum on the assembly? We are seeing the danger of internecine disputes in administratively defined regions that bear no geographical similarity to what those living in those enforced regional areas feel.
Mr. George:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that support. Many parallels can be established.
The Minister may believe that places such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are too small. Is that not another case of repeating accepted wisdom without challenging it? What economies of scale are being sought? Could they be achieved through partnership and collaboration? Part of my constituency is the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 2,000. As well as being a county and district authority, the council is also the public water authority. Most of the extra costs of running the authority are due to the distance from the mainland, not problems of scale.
Larger units also bring costs. For Cornwall, any economies of scale would be far outweighed by the associated diseconomies of scale, such as the leakage of higher-paid jobs to the east and the statistical invisibility of poorer areas. Even if the case for larger areas can be proven--I do not believe that it can--issues of accountability, sense of ownership, belonging and popular legitimacy are more important than a narrow Thatcherite focus.
Some may also argue that to allow regions to define themselves would inevitably lead to disputes and some claims for absurdly small regions or provinces. On any mild inspection, those problems could be easily overcome. Clearly, no one could justify the setting up of a strategic tier of government on a scale smaller than that of the largest tier of local government for the area. Therefore, waggish claims of unilateral declaration of independence for towns and villages would not survive cursory inspection. On disputes over size, just as it is not for the people of the west of England to hold a referendum on whether Wales should have an assembly, the decision of one area to call for its own regional assembly should--or rather could--not be overturned by its neighbour deciding that it could not allow it.
I reassure the House that in this debate it is not my intention to plummet new depths of parochialism and insularity--quite the opposite. As anyone who has experienced it knows--as I do from finding out what it means to be Cornish after I left school, I am sorry to say--by understanding oneself, one is able to make clearer parallels with other groups and minorities in other parts of the world.
"The Cornish conundrum poses a particular problem for regionalists"
and points out that, with a population of half a million, the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly region is larger than many other European regions. Like many others who have commented on this, he argued that cross-border issues are resolvable with the continuation of joint boards and ad hoc groupings. Tindale went on to argue that Cornwall should be given the option of becoming a county with regional status. He drew attention to the strong cultural and linguistic case for Cornwall, which he felt set it apart from other cases for small regions within the British state.
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