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18 Dec 2002 : Column 897—continued
Andrew George: Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that that political dynamic or momentum would have any legitimacy—and that the Minister would give support—if the turnout were less than 10 per cent.?
Mr. Dorrell: I agree, which is why I support the introduction of some hurdle.
It is hard to imagine a more fundamental question for the House to address before agreeing to the principle of holding a referendum than the provision of a proper answer to the question as to what should be the powers and functions of such an assembly were it to be established, whatever the boundaries. I find it difficult to engage in an argument about what the boundaries should be when we are still wholly ignorant of the structure of powers and functions that the electorate are being asked to envisage. I do not regard this as a pedantic piece of small print and I make no apology for asking the House to pause to consider which issues would have to be addressed in the context of a referendum debate.
The services involved in the combination of the establishment of a regional assembly and consequent local government reorganisation—which, as the explanatory notes make clear, the Government regard as a precondition for allowing a referendum to go ahead—include the local education service, which makes up 60 per cent. of everything done by county councils in shire counties.
The second most important area in the provision of local services in a two-tier authority is the social services department. Conceivably, by virtue of involving social services in the reform—and by virtue of what the Government have said about the probability of power being delegated away from central Government towards regional assemblies—the debate would have to involve the future structure of health provision in the regions as well. That is not to mention the delivery of transport services around the regions. Those are the four key areas on which domestic political debate concentrates—the delivery of education, health, social services and transport. All four services would be caught up in the reorganisation that would follow a yes vote in a referendum on the establishment of a regional assembly.
6.30 pm
The House is being asked to agree to a proposal that a precondition for any assembly referendum should be that the boundaries must be sorted out. However, no provision or recommendation has been made about the consequences of a yes vote for the delivery of the core public services that I have listed.
The Government have made two potentially contradictory proposals about the consequences of reorganisation for those services. First, as I have noted already, the Government have said that more of the powers going to the regional assemblies would come from central Government than from the current tiers of local government. Secondly, it is clear that, in any area in which a referendum is held, there must be a parallel proposal for the establishment of a unitary authority.
One Labour Member contended that that does not mean necessarily that county councils must be abolished, but it is hard to see how a unitary local government structure based on the principle that districts should be abolished and that power should be concentrated in counties could be delivered. That proposal is unlikely to command wide public support. We should not agree to allow referendums on
establishing regional assemblies to go ahead without clear Government proposals about the consequences for delivery of the four core services that I listed earlier.
Jim Knight: I have some sympathy for the right hon. Gentleman's argument, and those problems are touched on in the White Paper. I should like a draft Bill to be published in the next Session of Parliament, so that they could be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. Would the right hon. Gentleman support that as a happy compromise, or perhaps a middle way? I also want to respond to what he said about unitary counties. It would be perfectly reasonable to take a look at the current district structure of where I live in Dorset. The districts of Purbeck and of Weymouth and Portland are not viable, in terms of their size. People are more emotionally attached to the historic county of Dorset than to the districts, and services are run on that basis.
Mr. Dorrell: I do not want to get into an argument about what the focus of a proposed unitary structure should be. I want to pitch my tent firmly on the territory that the Government should be clear about what they are proposing before they ask people to vote. The hon. Gentleman suggests that a draft Bill should come before the House before the referendum programme begins. I should be the first to agree with that proposition, which represents a huge step forward. However, the House must take seriously its function of probing the Government's proposals, calling the Government to account and setting down the terms under which this huge proposed reorganisation of the structure of local government should be allowed to go ahead. Hon. Members must not simply hope, as the hon. Gentleman does, that the Government might—out of the goodness of their heart and if it fits in with the timetable of the parliamentary draftsmen—introduce a draft Bill before a referendum is held.
The referendums will be about the reorganisation of the delivery of core public services. Before any are held, the House must have the opportunity to tease out the practical implications of a yes vote for the delivery of the education service and for the links between social services and the national health service. Will there be a greater democratic involvement in the delivery of the NHS, and would that be consistent with the principles of the NHS as it has developed over the past 50 years? Those fundamental questions go to the heart of the delivery of public services in Britain. They are not mere details to be covered in the footnotes of a Bill apparently more interested in regional government boundaries than in the delivery of those core services to electors.
Mr. Derek Foster: I detect some confusion about the architecture of what is being proposed. The proposed regional assemblies will be strategic and slimline authorities. I understand that a reorganisation of local government would have deep implications for the delivery of education services, but the regional assemblies will be slimline and strategic. The matters with which they will deal are already being discussed by
one configuration of regional authority or another, and the proposal means only that that discussion will have a democratic dimension.
Mr. Dorrell: With great respect, the right hon. Gentleman is focusing on the proposed slimline regional assembly. I recognise the rhetoric, but I doubt that matters would turn out that way in reality. Will he set out the implications for unitary local government in the area where a slimline regional assembly is to be established? The Government insist that those implications should be thought through before a referendum is held. If slimline regional assemblies as he envisaged are set up, the delivery of local government services such as education, social services, transport and, possibly, health would have to be fundamentally reorganised.
My contention is that we need to see the detail of that reorganisation before we agree to allow the referendums to be held.
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): As do the people.
Mr. Dorrell: My hon. Friend is right to say that that is what the people want as well. More importantly, we need to allow time for the complexities to be worked through. Any such reorganisation would involve institutions that have grown up over a long period. If we act in haste to reorganise local government, we will have plenty of years to repent at leisure, as we have learned to our cost.
Jim Knight: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. Will not the boundary committee look at the strategic functions in a local government reorganisation? The unitary proposal would be made clear to electors when they cast their ballots about a regional assembly. The democratic choice would be offered to electors.
Mr. Dorrell: With great respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman has missed the point.
Mr. Raynsford: My hon. Friend is right.
Mr. Dorrell: The Minister says that the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) is right. Is the Minister endorsing the hon. Gentleman's version? I do not need to give way to the Minister, which will be a relief to those of my hon. Friends who want to contribute to the debate. However, the suggestion does not answer the point, because the complexity of public service delivery must be thought out in detail. It is not good enough for the boundary committee merely to propose on the back of an envelope an outline scheme about how education will be delivered after the reorganisation.
If the House were being asked to consider the reorganisation of the schools service separately, no one would argue with the proposition that the normal way of doing that was for the Government to present proposals, publish a Green Paper and a White Paper and go through a legislative process. Yet we are proposing to do that for social services, transport and conceivably the health service as well, all spatchcocked
up into the same piece of legislation to be dealt with by the boundary committee. I do not think that that is a sensible way of dealing with core public services.I focused on the implications for those services from an organisational, managerial point of view. They are complex services and I am concerned that if we do it this way, institutions that have developed for good reasons will be changed without proper consideration. There is another reason why I am concerned about abolishing existing institutions and seeking to put in place a regional assembly as the new apex for political accountability for those services on the basis of a single, insufficiently informed referendum. If we are honest about what our constituents are saying, we know that there is already a problem in health and education. People do not really know who is responsible for the core services; they are already too far divorced from political accountability.
The political accountability of all the services that I have identified is already too diffuse within the bureaucracy. We should seek to make political accountability for those services clearer so that people know who is responsible for delivery and hold them to account. I fear that if we set out to deliver that by abolishing tiers of local government in respect of which there is a sense of local community and a local political process and replacing them with regions so that my constituents in Leicestershire are asked to go into an east midlands region where there is no sense of local regional community, that will lead to a further divorce between voters and the people responsible for the core public services. Not only will those public services be less efficient, they will be less accountable. If we manage to take those two tricks together, we shall do a huge disservice to democracy.
I do not regard the Bill as simply a minor party political quibble but as a major threat to good and accountable governance. As I said earlier, I think that it is inappropriate—a massively inadequate word—for us to address these issues in a debate lasting two and a half hours under a guillotine.
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