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18 Dec 2002 : Column 926—continued
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are prejudging the decision of Parliament by including this passage in the preamble:
- XAn assembly would be responsible for a range of activities that are currently carried out mainly by central government bodies"?
Mr. Hammond: In a strict sense, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Even the Minister who is promoting that agenda concedes that the provisions deal not with responsibilities as ordinary people understand them, but with abilities to exercise some influence on central Government. That is precisely what the Minister said yesterday.
Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman obviously was not listening when I responded to the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who raised that question earlier. I pointed out that there were a number of significant powers and responsibilities. When I raised the matter in Committee last week, as the hon. Gentleman said—
Mr. Raynsford: Indeed. I said that the role of the elected regional assembly would be to influence government and that there would be a combination of direct delivery powers and considerable powers of influence. It is certainly not true to suggest that the assemblies will not have powers.
Mr. Hammond: I do not see any evidence of that in the preamble as it is currently drafted, which states:
- XAn assembly would be responsible for a range of activities that are currently carried out".
Mr. Streeter: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister has just made his case for him? People voting in the referendums will not know where an elected regional assembly has influence, power, responsibility or decision-making ability. It is all in the lap of the gods. The Minister waves his White Paper in the air, but White Papers and draft Bills do not bind anyone. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need an Act of Parliament to spell out the responsibilities, powers and functions of the elected regional assemblies? Failing that, people will be voting in the dark.
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Electors will be invited to vote for a pig in a poke. That is one of the major problems with the Bill.
Mr. Hammond: I must make a little progress.
The Government's reluctance to introduce a Bill that Parliament can scrutinise, so that we can ensure in legislation that everyone understands precisely what the powers and responsibilities of regional assemblies will be, contrasts with their insistence that, before they can conduct a referendum, they must carry out a process of local government organisation review in each region. By their own admission, that process will take a year. Why can they not parallel-track with their current proposals the Bill to implement the regional assemblies, so that we will all know exactly where we are when the question is put?
Mr. Edward Davey: The hon. Gentleman may recall that, when the House debated the Greater London Authority Bill, we found that its measures on the powers of the authority were very different from those in the White Paper that was published before the Bill was introduced. In the Bill, the powers of the Greater London Authority were very circumscribed, as many powers were retained by the Secretary of State. Indeed, the Bill mentioned the Secretary of State more times than the Mayor himself. He is therefore making exactly the right point, as people will be voting for an assembly that will not have the powers that the Government set out in the White Paper.
8.15 pm
Mr. Hammond: That is precisely what Opposition Members fear. We would prefer the Electoral Commission to write the preamble, but if the Government resist that proposal, the next few amendments would introduce specific improvements to help the existing preamble to be clearer and fairer in putting the situation to the voter on the day of the referendum. I would prefer the Electoral Commission to draft the preamble, but if it cannot do so, I would rather I did it than the Government.
Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde): Many interventions have concentrated on the function of the regional assemblies, but does my hon. Friend agree that the first line of the preamble,
- XYou can help to decide",
Mr. Hammond: I do indeed. If my right hon. Friend looks at some of the other amendments, he will see that they seek to remove the first line from the preamble.
If the Government resist the proposal to allow the Electoral Commission to write the preamble, the other amendments would make improvements. Amendment No. 19 would provide information about the region in the interests of ensuring clarity for the elector. The regions that the Government are using are so arbitrary and unconnected with people's everyday lives that voters simply will not know the extent of the regions in which they live. Of course, I concede that someone who lives in Manchester is likely to understand that they live in the north-west region, but I am prepared to bet the
Minister that if he goes out on to the streets of Manchester and names at random a few communities on the periphery, people will not know whether they are included and will not have any idea of the extent of the region in which they live.We therefore propose that the preamble should include specific information about the extent of the region. It is not appropriate to ask whether people are interested in a referendum on a regional assembly when we do not even know at this stage whether people understand what region they live in and what other communities are included or excluded. We need some transparency, including more detail on the ballot paper than the name of the region, which is all that the Government propose that it should include.
Amendment No. 22 seeks to insert in the preamble detail of the boundary committee recommendations. Again, it is vital that before electors make their decision about how to vote, they understand precisely how they will be affected by the boundary committee's recommendations. That can only be achieved by setting out the information in a simple tabular format, with the names of the proposed new local government units on one side of the table and those of the old local government units, or those parts that are included in the new region, on the other. That will ensure that each elector who at least knows which local government unit he currently resides in will also know which one he belongs to if the boundary commission changes proceed.
Amendment No. 38 would do the same for electoral areas in a region. That is another Government omission. The Government propose that, although the minute detail of the changed local government structures will be known to the elector if he takes the trouble to find out about them when he votes, he will not have any information about the likely electoral divisions in the region. I suggest that those divisions are equally important to him, as he will need to know how his community will find its voice in any putative regional assembly. He will need to know about the split between rural urban influences in any such assembly.
The Minister is defending an utterly illogical position. We are being asked to engage in a referendum with no Act defining the powers of the regional assemblies and no electoral districts telling people how their limited influence on the assembly will be exercised or with whom they will be grouped in exercising it. However, a boundary committee is an absolute requirement and the full detail of the local government reorganisation must be worked out in advance of the referendum. I suggest to him that electors will not be making an informed decision unless they understand the detail of the local government reorganisation and the electoral divisions in the region, and the powers that such a regional assembly will have.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury): Does my hon. Friend agree that, although those specific details do not appear in the amendments, because that would be to take a step too far at this stage, without them it will be impossible to know what the transitional and future establishment costs of any future configuration of local representation will be? To lay the charge of the administration at the door of local people through their
council tax and other taxes, without their knowing the cost of those changes, would represent a considerable absence of information in their decision making.
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will recall that the Labour manifesto at the 1997 election, which committed the Labour party to going down the route of elected regional government, said that it would do so only if it could produce an independent auditor's report confirming that no additional public expenditure would be involved. That commitment has been quietly dropped. It will be blindingly apparent to all my right hon. and hon. Friends that the local government reorganisation that the Government are making a prerequisite for elected regional assemblies will indeed involve a significant additional amount of public expenditure.
Amendment No. 54 would change the opening lines of the preamble to deal, in part, with the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). The words inserted by the amendment would say explicitly to the elector, whom the Government would like to mislead by saying
- XYou can help to decide whether there should be an elected assembly"—
- XThis referendum is advisory only. The Secretary of State will decide, after considering the referendum result, whether to establish an elected assembly."
Amendment No. 20 is something of a probing amendment.
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