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18 Dec 2002 : Column 908—continued
Mr. Hammond: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman misinterprets amendment No. 24. It would require that 25 per cent. of the total electorate, rather than 25 per cent. of those who voted, were expected to be in favour.
Mr. Borrow: The hon. Gentleman failed in his speech to clarify how that 25 per cent. could be arrived at. How would we judge whether 25 per cent. of the electorate are in favour of regional government, apart from conducting a referendum, which is what we want anyway, or an opinion poll? The opinion polls that have taken place have shown that more than 25 per cent. of the electorate in every region of the United Kingdom are in favour of regional government. That in itself is not enough for the Deputy Prime Minister to call a referendum, so amendment No. 24 is unnecessary and we should not be tied to the idea of a threshold. We could discuss the arguments about thresholds—I do not happen to agree with them—but amendment No. 24 is totally meaningless.
I am also concerned about the business community showing substantial support before referendums are held. I would like to think that there was substantial support in the business community in my region before a referendum was held in the north-west. However, if there was clear support in the north-west for a referendum and in favour of regional government, I would not want the business community to have a veto because of a lack of substantial—whatever Xsubstantial" means—support for regional government.
In October, a few other Lancashire MPs and I met our local chamber of commerce to discuss the implications for business of regional government. It made the point that it wanted some input into regional government, and felt that it should have some say in whether there was regional government, or some membership in terms of a regional assembly. But democracy works on the basis of one elector, one vote, and businesses do not have votes and blocking powers to stop the electorate reaching the decision, so I do not really understand why the proposal has been included unless its purpose is to seek to obstruct the views of the electorate and to stop them getting what they want.
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): As far as that proposal is concerned, if regional economic development is isolated in the question for a referendum proposed by the Government as one of the principal functions of a regional assembly and the largest element of its proposed budget—in practice, the only power that we can identify is the power to appoint members of the regional development agency and to instruct them as to the economic strategy—does it not make sense that the business community should be supportive of that move?
Mr. Borrow: There is a lot to be said for the business community of a region being in favour of and supportive of a regional assembly. We should not, however, deny the people in a region the possibility of a regional assembly because there is not overwhelming support from the business community. To give one
section of the community a veto over the rest of community, which, in effect, is what the proposal does, is not what we would want in a democracy.The only other issue on which I want to touch briefly is local government reorganisation. I have some sympathy with people who argue that local government reorganisation should be decoupled from this process. I recognise, however, that if we had a referendum in my region, and we still had the possibility of an ongoing two-tier local government system, the opponents of regional government would use the fact that there were two tiers of local government as a strong argument against regional government. As politicians, we must make a judgment on the balance of good and bad. I am strongly in favour of unitary local government. What is happening now, however, is that the possibility of local government reorganisation is bringing strong opposition from those vested interests in the county councils that may support regional government in theory but are more concerned at the moment about losing the institutions to which they belong.
Matthew Green: Will the hon. Gentleman also accept that by linking change in local government to regional referendums, and ruling out change occurring separately, we will be preventing places such as Shropshire, which want unitary authorities, from having them until a regional referendum takes place? That is what the Minister said.
Mr. Borrow: Lancashire suffered the botched local government reorganisation of the early 1990s, when two of its largest towns, Blackburn and Blackpool, went unitary, but it is nonsense to say that there is strong support for the existing two-tier system in Lancashire. The institution of Lancashire county council, which had previously always strongly supported the concept of regional government, under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman), is now showing signs of objecting to regional government. I am sure that much of the reason for that is that it sees an end to its existence, and those who are members of, officers of or close to an institution will always seek to defend it.
7.15 pm
The same support does not exist across the county of Lancashire for Lancashire county council as an institution. For instance, Preston, where I live, was previously a county borough and was not part of a two-tier Lancashire county council system prior to 1973. Parts of the existing county of Lancashire were in the old county of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The idea that people have an overwhelming desire to be part of a county and for the county council structure to continue is therefore nonsense. People have a strong affinity with the area in which they live and with the county in which they live. Such loyalty is not affected by whether a county council exists.
DEFERRED DIVISION
The Temporary Chairman (Mr. John Butterfill): I now have to announce the result of a Division deferred from a previous day.
On the motion on section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, the Ayes were 275, the Noes were 153, so the motion was agreed to.
[The Division List is published at the end of today's debate.]
Mr. Key: If I have understood the Government's motive correctly in introducing this Bill and their regional government proposals to the House, it is to improve the machinery of Government and the delivery of services, to bring them closer to the people, and to improve accountability. I agree with the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), and I shall seek to explain why I fear that the Government's ambitions will be frustrated by local people who will be able to cast their votes.
The game was given away by the publication earlier this month by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of the handbook on the soundings exercise, paragraph 24 of which points out:
- XThe Secretary of State will be taking account of a very wide range of views, information and evidence in reaching his decision. It is not practicable to set a 'pass mark' above which a region would automatically hold a referendum and below which it automatically would not. In some cases the Secretary of State may have to balance several factors. Ultimately, these must be matters for the Secretary of State's judgement."
- XThese soundings are initially to inform the Secretary of State's decision".
I do not believe that the Bill is a European Union conspiracy, as the United Kingdom Independence party believes—it recently held demonstrations at the south-west constitutional convention and told us that we were quislings for even daring to discuss the issue, even though some of us are opposed to the concept. Nor do I think that the cuddly image of accountability will work in the future. The real argument is about whether we are addressing a democratic deficit or voter fatigue. I believe that it is voter fatigue. My hon. Friends have already explained clearly that the Bill provides no new policy making, no new powers, no new money—apart from perhaps some more council tax—and no economic and social partners in the future, which we at least have now.
My principal objection, however, is that people will not vote for the proposals in a referendum if they do not identify with the region. That is the basic point. As far as my area is concerned, the south-west region does not exist. The fact is that the economic planning regions of the United Kingdom date back to the second world war when lines were drawn on maps for the better delivery of wartime administration. That grew during the socialist years of the 1960s when the economic planning regions were developed, and we got stuck with those lines on maps—that is all that they ever were.
Cornwall, for example, could certainly have its own identity in relation to a regional assembly, as it has a very real identity. In Salisbury, my part of the world, we do not consider ourselves to have very much in common with Gloucester or the Isles of Scilly, because we are
Wessex, and we always have been. Bristol is a city state, and Gloucestershire is in the west midlands as far as I am concerned.
Andrew George: Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the Tory amendment in relation to new clause 3 simply proposes to replace sanitised, bureaucratic, convenient regions with standardised regions of a different nature?
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