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18 Dec 2002 : Column 904—continued
Mr. Curry: I lay claim to the authorship of the abolition of Cleveland and Humberside—and I am delighted to do so. My argument is not about whether unitary councils are good or bad; on the whole, I have some sympathy for unitary local government. My argument is about who should take the decisions. Decisions on unitary authorities were taken by the House. Orders were passed in this place. However, the Bill proposes a referendum process in which people who may have no interest in the matter, who do not represent anybody else and who have not been elected will take decisions for my constituents.
Important issues will be involved. Health and social services are probably the most important of all. As we know, the Government are constructing a whole new architecture to manage them and, as the Minister will know, North Yorkshire has experienced chronic underfunding in those sectors.
Mr. Raynsford: Just as the abolition of Cleveland was effected by the House so, too, any proposal arising from
a referendum will be effected through the House by the Secretary of State. There is no difference whatever from what the Conservatives did when they were in government.
Mr. Curry: Of course there is a difference: it is precisely what my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood spelled out. There will be what the French call a "présomption préalable"; in other words, a preliminary question will have been put. There will have been a referendum that will set a process—a motion—in train. The Minister says that if there is a positive vote in the referendum, he can decide that he will not pursue that course of action. That is radically different to the circumstances that obtained at the time when we created unitary government. That is my first concern.
My second concern is about the sampling process that will relate to a regional assembly whose powers we know not. That is the closest thing to XBlind Date" that has ever been attempted in politics. We do not know what powers the assemblies will have. The White Paper was extremely circumspect. Whenever someone mentions strategic powers, one should reach for one's gun because we know that they cannot work out exactly what such powers should be.
Whom will the Government sample? I suppose they will sample the chambers of commerce and no doubt the faith groups, as we must now call them—perhaps even the Women's Institutes, although that be rather dangerous. The Government might sample the constitutional conventions, which are self-appointed, and perhaps the Soroptimists and the Rotary clubs. Will we be inviting people to make non-submissions if they do not have a view?
What about the person described colloquially as Xthe punter"? We constantly talk about consultation and the Government are always calling for great public debates about things. It is always daft for Governments to do that: sensible Governments do not want great public debates because they know that such debates will be dominated by self-interested organisations and NGOs.
What about the punter coming back from St. James's park after watching Newcastle United do rather well this season? At least, the team has been doing well until now—sadly, it looks as though it might soon be exiting from the European cup. What about the punter at the optimistically named stadium of light where Sunderland plays? Sunderland is fourth or fifth from the bottom and may be struggling for survival in the premiership, Mr. Butterfill—I know that you follow such things closely, even from your base on the south coast.
Will those punters be asked what they think they have at stake? The problem is that they will be asked about something in which they have no stake, because nothing is at stake yet: there are no powers. This is a proposal for a referendum on an assembly whose powers we do not know, followed by an invitation to people to vote for elected members to an assembly whose powers they probably cannot define. That is a recipe for an extremely low turnout, and we are all agonising about that now.
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My final point relates to regional identity. I hope that we shall not get ourselves caught in the arguments about that. We have great arguments about identity, usually in
relation to Europe. Identity and organisation do not go together and are not the same thing. It is a mistake to assume that people identify with some sort of geographical construction. In fact, many people in the regions are much more interested in differentiating themselves than identifying themselves with one another. My constituents in Craven do not need to differentiate themselves from London, because they are different from London—but by golly they want to differentiate themselves from Bradford, for reasons that I will not explain in any detail tonight.I draw the Minister's attention to what I might call the postcode wars. He represents a constituency on the edge of London, but those of my constituents who are in the southern part of North Yorkshire have a Leeds postcode. That is tantamount to a declaration of nuclear war. Some people in Bentham in the north-west of my constituency have a Lancaster postcode. That is worse, if one can envisage such a thing. It might be suggested that such things are perfectly logical, but people identify themselves not in that way, but on a much more local basis. They may well broadly describe themselves as coming from Yorkshire, but they are probably thinking of a concept of Yorkshire produced in a previous reorganisation—or even the reorganisation before that—when they say it.
So let us not pretend that people will vote on the basis of regional identities, even in the north-east. My whole family comes from Durham, Northumberland and Teesside, and the notion of the north-east identity is no more coherent than that of the Yorkshire identity. People identify themselves with much more local areas, so I hope that we will not let ourselves be diverted down that route.
I hope that the Minister will say that there is no reason whatever why a two-tier system could not persist in an area such as North Yorkshire, even if there were a regional assembly. If the regional assembly has as few powers and is as light—XGovernment Lite"—as he says, I can see no reason why we should go to all the hullabaloo of regional reorganisation, which removes accountability and prevents people from being relatively close to their local councillors, simply to elect people who represent 350,000 people, topped up with a drop of proportional representation.
I can see no way in which that will develop accountability or promote the economy, given that the gap between regional performance has increased since the now Minister for Sport said that the regional development agencies would have failed if they did not close the gap in regional performance. So the two great claims for the proposals will simply not be delivered.
Mr. Raynsford: As the right hon. Gentleman suggests that no reorganisation should proceed, will he tell the House whether he regrets his role in the Banham process?
Mr. Curry: No, I do not. I brought a great deal of sense to the Banham process, if I may say so.
I have explained the differences in the constitutional procedures, but there is only one thing that tempts me to vote for the proposal: the possibility of touring the south-west, urging everyone to vote yes, so that the Minister has a major local government reorganisation
on his hands throughout that area. I would find that a wonderfully entertaining spectacle. Having got the tee-shirt, I would lend it to him with enormous enthusiasm, and it would come back with just as many holes having been made in it as when I wore it myself. I do not regret that, but I believe that there are more urgent pressing issues.As I said on Second Reading, intellectual arguments can be made for devolution. I have never said that the whole idea is absurd. I have said that this proposal simply is not worth the candle, and the downside is significantly greater than any conceivable benefit that people may derive from it. Five or six years down the road, if my constituents are asked what the regional assembly has done for them, they will say, XWhat?"
Mr. Borrow : In view of the number of other hon. Members who wish take part in this important debate, I shall only speak for a few minutes.
I wish to speak initially to amendment No. 46. I have considerable sympathy with paragraph (b), which refers to the need for the people in any region to know what they would get if they voted yes in a referendum before doing so. I shall repeat the point that I made on Second Reading, and I will continue to make it. Referendums will be successful only if the powers of the regional assemblies are clearly specified in Bills before they take place. Such Bills may not need to receive Royal Assent before the referendums are held, but draft Bills will be needed at the very minimum.
The White Paper, which is all we have at the moment, is incomplete, so it is absolutely essential for Members of Parliament to have the opportunity to debate the powers outlined in the White Paper, to discuss them in detail and to firm them up before the referendums are held. The proposed powers are fundamentally flawed in many ways, and I would find it very difficult to agree that everything in the White Paper would set up the sort of regional assemblies that I would wish to see set up.
I repeat to my right hon. Friend the Minister and his Front-Bench colleagues that we will return time and again to that issue. We need clear evidence about what will happen if people vote in favour of regional government in a referendum, and at the moment we do not have that evidence.
Amendment No. 24, which says that the Deputy Prime Minister should reach the view that at least 25 per cent. of a region's electorate want to vote in favour of regional government, is totally superfluous. If an opinion poll in the north-west produced a figure of 26 per cent. and the Deputy Prime Minister said that it formed part of the evidence for a referendum, he would be very foolish.
The opinion poll evidence produced by the BBC in March this year showed that the minimum amount of support for regional government in the south-east was 49 per cent, so amendment No. 24 is totally meaningless. Before putting any region through a referendum,
the Deputy Prime Minister needs to form a proper judgment, using all the evidence, to show that a majority of people favour regional government.
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