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18 Dec 2002 : Column 888—continued
Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster): Does my hon. Friend agree that there must be interest across a particular region, not just in a small area of it?
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend makes a good point. That issue, in a slightly different form, will be addressed by a subsequent amendment, and I am sure that he will have something to say about it.
I suggest that it will be sensible to hold a referendum only if there is substantial support for elected regional assemblies, if that is what the Secretary of State has determined. I also suggest that, in practice, that is the political judgment that the Deputy Prime Minister will make, so let us include it in the Bill. It is hardly conceivable that he will consider the support in a region, determine that it is overwhelmingly hostile and then call a referendum. Instead of having woolly words that mean effectively nothing, let us get the Bill to say what is going to happen.
Amendment No. 24 would require the Secretary of State to consider on the evidence available to him the probability of a certain level of support for a yes vote. However, the idea that some threshold of support for the proposal—the Minister for Local Government and the Regions prefers to call it a hurdle—has to exist before we enter into such wholesale constitutional restructuring caused angst in Standing Committee.
Originally, I expressed that idea in amendments as a requirement for a minimum percentage turnout. The Minister, in fairness to him, pointed out that that would have perverse outcomes, as it would create an incentive for people opposed to the proposition to abstain. We listened to what he had to say, went away and reformulated the threshold concept around a percentage of the electorate recording a yes vote, which would not produce perverse incentives such as the one which he suggested.
We have chosen 25 per cent. of the eligible electorate voting for the proposition, but that is contentious. Many of my hon. Friends will, I suspect, think it too low a threshold, but the Minister says that it is ridiculous to set any threshold at all. What is ridiculous is postulating a major constitutional change on the back of the
support of a tiny fraction of the electorate. The burden must be on those who propose to change the status quo to show support for that change.
Jim Knight: I am interested in why the hon. Gentleman has chosen 25 per cent. I assume it is because he thinks that being unable to achieve 25 per cent. voting yes would mean no legitimacy on such an important constitutional matter. Given that President Bush got less than 25 per cent. of the votes of those of voting age in the United States presidential election—I have checked the facts—does he regard President Bush as having no legitimacy?
Mr. Hammond: I can tell the hon. Gentleman exactly why I have chosen 25 per cent. as a figure to put before the Committee. My elementary mathematics tells me that 25 per cent. represents a simple equality of half the electorate voting. He is trying to equate an advisory referendum with an election, and he well knows that we have already had that debate in Standing Committee. Interestingly, perhaps, the 25 per cent. threshold would have legitimised the Scottish and Welsh referendums, but not, by a small margin, the Greater London referendum.
Mr. Borrow: The amendments are about the judgment that the Secretary of State would make of the support in a region for a referendum, but a subsequent amendment tabled by the hon. Gentleman calls for an all-England referendum in which all regions would vote on the same day. If this proposal is accepted, I assume that he will withdraw the amendment on an all-England referendum?
Mr. Hammond: I assure the hon. Gentleman that if the Minister rises to his feet to announce that he has suddenly seen the light and wants to accept amendment No. 46, I shall immediately go into a huddle with my hon. Friends. We may well want radically to change what we are putting before the Committee.
Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon): My hon. Friend is something of a high-hurdler and I am a bit of a high-hurdler as well, but the Government are distinctly low-hurdlers. He will recall the threshold to trigger referendums on directly elected mayors and no doubt speculate as to the turnout in those elections and their unsatisfactory nature for the Labour party, particularly in the north-east.
Mr. Hammond: My right hon. Friend astutely identifies an issue. The Minister's difficulty is that he does not like 25 per cent., but he has to agree—indeed, he has agreed—that, in principle, there needs to be a certain level of participation and a certain level of support for the proposition to be legitimised. However, he has so far successfully avoided putting a number on that, and he will not say whether a plurality of turnout of 10 or 20 per cent. would be enough to legitimise such a major constitutional change. I hope that we shall hear him speak on that subject this evening. Let him suggest the appropriate threshold for change.
Mr. George Howarth: Following the intervention of the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon
(Mr. Curry), perhaps I should say that I was a high-jumper at school. I suspect that, after today, I will be for the high jump with my Whips. Amendment No. 24 says:
- Xon the basis of the evidence available . . . it is probable that at least twenty-five per cent. of the persons eligible to vote in a referendum . . . would vote in favour".
Mr. Hammond: Unfortunately, we are constrained by the Bill's architecture, as is the hon. Gentleman. That is a test that the Secretary of State would have to apply before calling a referendum. When we debate clause 2, the hon. Gentleman will see that we have sought to address a yes vote of less than 25 per cent. of the eligible electorate, whatever the Secretary of State's judgment in advance of a referendum. In fact, if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I shall address that point now by referring to amendment No. 23, which is in this group. It deals with the test that the Deputy Prime Minister would have to apply before calling a referendum, but he would still be free to go ahead with creating an elected regional assembly if the turnout were very low—for example, if only 20 per cent. were achieved and 11 per cent. of the electorate voted yes.
Sadly, owing to the nature of the Bill, there is no scope to introduce a test for setting up regional assemblies, so we have tabled this amendment, which would add to the preamble to the question a statement of intent from the Government. I do not often offer to draft such statements for them, but on this occasion I thought I would. That statement is that the Government would not intend to proceed if less than 25 per cent. voted yes.
Some of my hon. Friends may think that I am naive to assume that the Government would feel bound in any way, shape or form just because they made a statement of intent. Consider their 1997 manifesto commitment and the litter of other broken pledges and failed targets that surround them. However, it is the best that I can do within the constraints of the Bill's architecture. I hope that it allows other Members to address the substantive issue.
That brings me to amendments Nos. 9 and 10, which are offered in the alternative, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) would say in his lawyerly way in Standing Committee. If the Government reject amendments Nos. 46 and 24 and leave in place the absurd non-test of clause 1(4), which states that
- Xthe Secretary of State has considered the level of interest",
So provided that the Secretary of State made such an order within two years of setting off a local government review, he would be deemed to have carried out that consideration, whether he had done so or not. Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 would remove those paragraphs and require the Secretary of State, before ordering a review, always to consider the items specified in clause 1(8), namely,
- Xviews expressed and information and evidence provided to him",
- Xsuch published material as he thinks appropriate."
6 pm
Mr. Clelland: I do not want to make a long speech. I merely want to get to the bottom of the Conservatives' motives. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said a few moments ago—I think I quote him accurately—XWe want to dispose of this matter appropriately". That, I believe, is what the Conservatives want to do: they want to dispose of the matter altogether. They probably think that a wholesale reorganisation of regional boundaries, if it happened, would take so long that a general election would be upon us which, in their own pathetic minds, they imagine they might have a chance of winning. While that is not impossible, of course, it is very unlikely.
I see no need for a review of regional boundaries. As I said earlier, the current boundaries were drawn up by the last Conservative Government, who seemed to think them appropriate then.
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