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23 Jan 2003 : Column 485—continued
Mr. Streeter: Both the Under-Secretary and the Minister for Local Government and the Regions. I hope that they will think about that and change five years for 10 years in the Bill, and that they will agree to a recall mechanism, too.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): I support entirely the thrust of amendment No. 12 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond). I am concerned, however, about the threshold of 5 per cent. I would have welcomed a lower threshold although I wholly support the principle of the amendment.
To illustrate the difficulty of achieving that 5 per cent., I draw the attention of the House to the question that was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) on 20 January. He asked the Minister for Local Government and the Regions,
- "how many representations he has received from electors living in (a) the south-east region, (b) Hampshire and (c) New Forest East constituency in favour of the establishment of an elected regional assembly".
- "between the dates of 9 May 2002, when the White Paper was published, and 30 November 2002, the office of the Deputy Prime Minister recorded 18 respondents from the south-east who were in favour of an elected regional assembly . . . of whom two were from Hampshire."—[Official Report, 20 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 168W.]
Mr. Hammond: It is worse than my hon. Friend fears: there are 8 million electors in the south-east region. I
understand his concern. I thought long and hard about the figure of 5 per cent. and I tabled it in an attempt to reach for some consensus or centre ground on which I hope that the Minister and I can meet. It does not seem to me an unreasonable suggestion that there should be some recall mechanism. While I know that my hon. Friend takes a rigorous view on these matters, I hope that by going for 5 per cent. I will demonstrate to him that I am reaching out to the Minister in a spirit of compromise.
Mr. Swayne: I am persuaded and reassured by my hon. Friend, who, throughout the Committee proceedings, was entirely reasonable, as he is being now. I will follow his lead and accept 5 per cent. Nevertheless, Labour Members should be reassured that 5 per cent. will be very difficult to achieve.
3.15 pm
Jim Knight: Given everything that the hon. Gentleman has said about the difficulty of reaching a threshold of 5 per cent., would it not have been easier to have listened to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey)—I know that that is difficult, but on this occasion he is correct. It would be much easier for electors to elect people to a regional assembly and have them dissolve themselves in the same way that electors in the European elections, I am afraid, occasionally vote for the UK Independence party in the full knowledge that it is standing to dissolve a Parliament with which it does not agree.
Mr. Swayne: Turkeys do not generally vote for Christmas. Once an elected assembly is established there is little prospect of it dissolving itself. What this carefully crafted new clause does is to provide a means by which citizens can initiate the political process and exercise people power: power for the greater part of the population as expressed in terms of the 5 per cent. requirement in the petition.
Mr. Leslie: Will the hon. Gentleman, who is moonlighting in his usual role as a Whip, say whether, being so persuaded of the need for a 5 per cent. trigger mechanism, or any trigger mechanism, he feels, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight) pointed out earlier, that that should also be applied to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly?
Mr. Swayne: I do not want to stray from the terms of this debate, which is on the regional assemblies. I am therefore not prepared to be tempted by the Minister to go beyond that brief. I was interrupted in the train of thought that I was drawing to the attention of the House with respect to the difficulty of achieving a petition of 5 per cent. of the electors. As my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge says, the south-east region has 8 million electors. Eighteen responses were received in favour of a regional assembly. In Hampshire, there are more than 960,000 electors—not people, electors—but there were only two respondents in favour of the proposals. The Ministers know their uphill task. They have therefore devised an ingenious mechanism: any response whatever is counted as interest in favour of a referendum. The fact that someone might be wholly against an assembly, and might write to say so, will
nevertheless be counted as someone expressing an interest in a referendum. Our task in securing a petition will not be nearly so easy as the method that the Ministers have devised for themselves.
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight): I am shocked and amazed at the implicit duplicity of Ministers if, as my hon. Friend asserts, they should count a clear expression of objection to a regional assembly as an argument in favour of a referendum. I know of the huge amount of work that has been done by our colleagues, MEPs representing the south-east, in campaigning against a referendum. Is he saying that Ministers are genuinely taking such expressions against as expressions of interest in a referendum being held?
Mr. Swayne: I will preface my answer by saying that I am keen to move on to the next group of amendments. My hon. Friend should study the Official Report of the Standing Committee, as this was an issue that the Committee considered in some depth. The position is precisely as he fears.
Jim Knight: Does the hon. Gentleman not recall the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) talking about the sword of Damocles and about his concerns about the effects on people in local authorities? Is it not valid for a community to decide to campaign for a referendum so that it can resolve the issue even if it is against an assembly? It is perfectly valid for people to organise for a referendum so that they can say no.
Mr. Swayne: I doubt very much that the people writing to the Secretary of State to say that they do not want a regional assembly have any idea that their letters are counted as though they are in favour of holding a referendum.
My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has provided a mechanism by which we can put an end to the ratchet effect and can avoid what I described in Committee as African democracy. We want one man, one vote, once. Then the matter will be settled and there will be no going back. That is the reverse of what Ministers have provided for the proponents of regional assemblies. They will be able to go on ad infinitum and hold referendums every five years. It is therefore entirely appropriate to accept amendment No. 12 and to make the figure 10 years. In Committee, I argued for 20 years—a generation—but I will accept my hon. Friend's reasonable compromise of 10 years.
Mr. Andrew Turner : I want to make two points. The first is to admit that I am a little confused by the speech of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). The question is, who are the turkeys? He asserted, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), that the description of turkeys voting for Christmas was a slur on the electorate in a given region. I do not think that it
was a slur. The epithet "turkeys" was addressed not to the electors in the region, but to the members of the putative assembly.
Mr. Turner: My hon. Friends nod in agreement, so we have got that clear. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was slightly wrong.
My second point was about the threshold that the electors—not the turkeys—would have to achieve under the new clause to enable a second or recall referendum to take place. I disagree with the assertion of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne), because I have experience of petitions being obtained for a whole range of purposes.
Before 1997, I was pleased to assist schools with the complex but invigorating process of achieving grant-maintained status. It was necessary for 20 per cent. of the parents of the pupils registered at a school to sign a petition for a referendum, which was conducted by postal ballot, to take place. A huge number of parents from almost 2,000 schools were willing to sign a petition. They signed up in such numbers that referendums were called. It is not difficult to reach a threshold of 20 per cent., or one that is even higher than that.
I cite the case of the west Wight ambulance or the Tennyson ambulance, as it is called. It was given to the area by the widow of Alfred Lord Tennyson, who was a distinguished resident of the west Wight. The ambulance serves the area covered by the parishes of Freshwater and Totland, the town of Yarmouth and the parish of Brighstone in my constituency. That area has a population of about 8,000. However, when the Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS trust proposed to redeploy the Tennyson ambulance, I received a copy of a petition signed by 4,000 electors—such was the level of interest in the deployment of a single ambulance. Imagine the level of interest that there would be in the deployment of the many millions of pounds that Labour Members wish to tear out of the grip of electors and hand over to the bogus assemblies. As it would not be difficult to achieve a 50 or 20 per cent. threshold, it is reasonable to propose a 5 per cent. threshold, and my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge is to be commended for that.
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West also referred to people power. Putting power into the hands of the electors is the best way to determine such issues. It is not right to call the electors turkeys. I challenge the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton to tell me when a regional or national Assembly has voted for its own dissolution. If he can provide a substantial example of that, I might be forced to conclude that new clause 2 does not justify my support, but I do not believe that such an example exists.
I want to echo one or two remarks that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) made on the frequency of referendums. The referendums will be deeply unsettling. They will entail the abolition of a tier of local government and redeployment of a huge number of local government staff and officers. That will make recruitment to those
posts difficult. It is better to enable local government to operate in a stable environment—indeed, that is the objective of the Minister for Local Government and the Regions—but knowing that the sword of Damocles hangs over the assemblies every five years does not contribute to stability.
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