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18 Dec 2002 : Column 950—continued
Mr. Streeter: I shall also be brief, Sir Nicholas, in the hope of winning your praise as well.
I should like to focus on one issue relating to the amendments: getting maximum information to the people who may be voting in the referendums. I think that it was Ernest Bevin—I know that the Minister has modelled his political career on this Labour bigwig—pleaded many years ago with the Labour party not to send him naked into the negotiating chamber. If the Bill is enacted, we will be sending our constituents blind into the ballot box and they will be voting on a series of questions about which they have inadequate information. We all want to trust the people, but before we can trust them to make a decision, we must inform them and ensure that they have the requisite information to make an informed choice. We have to spell out exactly what they would be voting for, but the preamble and question as they are configured in the Bill simply do not do that. What people know as they take part in referendums in years to come will be dwarfed by what they do not know about the new elected regional assemblies and local government reform.
Clause 19 gives us a clue about some of things that people will not know, as the information will be available after a referendum. For example, they will not know about
- Xthe electoral areas into which the region is to be divided...the number of electoral areas or the name by which each electoral area is to be known".
- Xthe total number of members to be elected to the assembly",
When I approached the Standing Committee some weeks ago, I very naively assumed that strategic transport decisions would be taken by the elected regional assemblies. I did so because I thought that that was what the White Paper said. It states that a transport strategy
- Xwill spell out plans to address congestion, improve public transport and road links, and ensure that the transport system supports sustainable economic growth".
Unless we can spell out exactly what people will get, we will be leading the electorate up the garden path. I still do not believe that that explanation can be given in any form of preamble, as it will come at the wrong time. The ballot paper is not the right place for such information. I believe that we need an active Parliament that clearly defines all the powers, and that an executive summary should be sent to each potential elector well in advance so that he or she can make an informed and coherent decision. Unless the Minister can deliver on that tonight, I shall vote in support of the amendments.
Mr. Key: I wish simply to underline all the comments that have been made about the importance of local government's delivery of services. I think that we will lose a great deal in that regard. Most people do not know that every single local authority has nominated a member of our regional chambers who will take decisions every day on the important strategic issues, including waste, transport and a range of other things. We will lose that under the Bill. I would rather ensure that every local authority was indirectly elected under the existing system than see its replacement by 30 people who have neither the dedication of local government councillors nor the desire to fight for a seat in this House. What sort of people will they be to take over those functions?
Mr. Flook: In order to be brief, I wish to speak mainly to amendment No. 55 and about its recognition of the importance of the county and district set up, primarily as it exists in Somerset.
The south-west region is very much a man-made construct that is of modern hue and has no connection whatever with anyone in Somerset. As the Bill stands, when a local voter goes into the polling booth, should the referendum ever take place, he will be confused even by the question of what region he lives in. Somerset is the county of cider, cricket, the renaissance of the Wurzels and Somerset clotted cream, rather than that of Devon.
Mr. Flook: Somerset clotted cream is, as we know, far superior to that of Devon.
The voter will also wonder, when he walks in to the polling booth, what a single tier is. He will not know that local authorities represent a single tier, because he has lived under the administration of Somerset county council and Taunton Deane borough council. Will he be aware, as he votes, that Bristol, Swindon, Torbay, Exeter, Gloucester and Plymouth are already unitary? Will he also be aware that he is at a disadvantage compared with his colleagues in the north of the so-called region of which he is part? Will he have thought that the urban areas will have different needs? The Liberal Democrats who control Somerset county council keep telling us that the area is rural, although
they never do anything about that. Will the voter also be aware that, if there are to be unitary authorities in Somerset, Taunton would be part of the west Somerset unitary authority—which, ironically, would be good for the Conservatives? Although I get on very well with my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger), I am not sure that the people of Taunton get on well enough with the people of Bridgwater to want to be in the same local authority.A regional area is a construct that has no relevance whatever to anyone in Somerset. That is not surprising, because the regional development agency, on which the regional assembly would be based, has been completely useless to the people of Taunton. When I wrote to the RDA asking what contribution it had made to the Taunton constituency, it tried to dress up its contribution, but in fact the money that it had spent had been given to it by English Partnerships. The real keystone, the Government office for the south-west, was, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) said, for the convenience of Government. He also talked about an elected convenience of local authorities. In fact, we miss the point if we have regional assemblies based on a regional construct, because what we need is democratic ownership. That is why I shall be voting for the amendment.
Mr. Jack: I firmly believe that the terms of amendment No. 39 should be supported. In relation to the preamble, anyone would find it difficult to agree on a word that everyone would be satisfied with, but simple questions are what referendums are about, and we should have two such questions: one on the regional assembly and one that makes people aware of what the local government implications are. My constituents would certainly not welcome finding the borough of Fylde subsumed into a city of the Fylde, dominated by Blackpool. There is antagonism of an historic nature there, and people need to be alerted to the situation.
I agree with the comments that have been made about the need to ensure that people have full and adequate information before they reach the ballot box. Having this type of statement in the preamble is not the place to debate the issues of the moment on this matter. If, however, the amendments are lost and this statement does appear, the Minister should tell us at what reading age it has been aimed. I would like to know why, for example, no alternative form of display for this information has been proposed. It could have been displayed perhaps not in a paragraph but in bullet point form. Perhaps the skills of tabloid journalists could have been applied, in a positive sense, to convey a lot more information to people, so far as the text is concerned. The enthusiasm for regional government was demonstrated to me last Friday when I met members of the north-west CBI. In an altogether random but none the less interesting straw poll of about 60 business people, only two voted positively for this proposal. I believe that the use of two straightforward questions is the way forward.
Mr. Raynsford: We have had an interesting debate that has focused on three main issues: whether there should be a preamble and whether there were precedents for it; the use of a single question linking the issue of the
regional assembly to the unitary local government arrangement, as against the preference of some Members for two questions; and the definition of regions. I shall try to deal with all those points while responding on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond).Amendment No. 39 would require any order made under clause 1—that is, one to hold a referendum—also to direct the Electoral Commission to determine the question or questions. Amendment No. 11 would also leave the form of the preamble to the Electoral Commission, but Parliament, through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, gave a specific role to the commission. What we propose is entirely consistent with that role, which is to comment on the intelligibility of UK national and regional referendum questions and to be consulted when the question or preamble is set by subordinate legislation.
The 2000 Act does not give the commission the responsibility to set the question and understandably so, as it is meant to be above the political fray such as that which we have seen today over the form that the referendum question should take. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) emphasised, such decisions should ultimately be taken by an elected Government who are answerable to an elected Parliament.
As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge explained, amendment No. 11 has other implications.
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