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23 Jan 2003 : Column 499—continued
Mr. Hammond: I was about to mention city government. This is exactly the point that we are trying to make. If a settlement of the English question is to be durable, and if the decentralisation of power in England is to work, it has to start from the bottom up. It has to build on units with which people have an affinity, and with which they can identify. The purpose of new clause 3 is to put in place a consultation process, so that people can say to the Government, "It may take an extra year, but we simply cannot use these Government office regions that were created for a completely different purpose and are completely wrong for this democratic purpose, just for the sake of saving a few months." We must start at the beginning; I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
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I was about to say that I know many Manchester and Liverpool Members are interested in the concept of city government as another way of approaching the decentralisation of government in England, and that is a perfectly legitimate aspiration. Even among supporters of regional decentralisation, however, there is no agreement.
I was looking—as one does—at the website of the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) at the time of the last general election. On that Labour party-liveried website, he extols the virtues of something called the northern region to his constituents. He says:
- "The Northern region would include the counties of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and Cleveland; and, if the people of Cumbria wish it, Cumbria".
On his four-page website on a regional assembly for the north, the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge quotes the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Stringer), who was then a Minister, as saying:
- "The Government intend to bring forward legislation that will enable the electorate within the regions to determine whether they want an elected assembly."
Many Labour party members who supported the abstract notion of regional devolution had no idea at the time that they were signing up to devolution to the existing administrative regions. It is clear from the White Paper—I confirm to the Under-Secretary of State that I have studied it assiduously—that the Government envisage the offices of the regions working, as the White Paper puts it, hand in hand with the elected regional assemblies. They see an argument for coterminous boundaries. That means, of course, a beefed-up
Government office of the regions standing over the elected regional assembly, ensuring that what it does complies with the Government's requirements. It means, in effect, a prefect system.
Joyce Quin: Having followed the debate in the Labour party, I suspect, more closely and for longer than the hon. Gentleman, let me tell him that for a long time the regions covered by the Government office have commanded a wide spread of agreement in the party. They are thought to be the appropriate units on which to build regional government. Regions are not prisons, however. It is perfectly possible for the north-east to co-operate with the north-west or with Yorkshire and Humberside. Rather than always seeing such arrangements as confining, the hon. Gentleman should perceive that this is a new type of politics enabling partnerships to be forged.
Mr. Hammond: The right hon. Lady has underlined the fact that the consensus that existed in the Labour party has started to break down as the details have become clear.
Of course regions are not prisons. What I am suggesting is that if they are to be robust and durable, they must be built on firm foundations. I plead with the right hon. Lady and some of her colleagues from the north-east to understand this. I think they genuinely find it difficult to understand the objection of Members from regions such as the south-east and east of England, which make no sense at all. We understand that their region is probably the most coherent and has the strongest sense of identity. It is also the smallest. Why should we in the south-west, the east and the south-east face the Government's insistence on regions four times the size of the hon. Lady's, with no sense of cultural identity, no coherence and no economic, geographic or historical logic? Why can we not have an input in the process of defining the regions in which we will live and by which we will be administered?
Mr. Kevan Jones: Is not the main point about this Bill that it will give the people in those regions the option of whether they want regional government? Why is the Conservative party afraid of giving people a say in how their regions are governed?
Mr. Hammond: I go back to the website of the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge. The problem is that, if this is to be a durable solution, it must be a solution for all of England, not just part of England. The hon. Member for Tyne Bridge, perhaps sticking his neck out rather a long way, says on his website with the Labour party masthead on it:
- "English Regional Government is the answer to the 'West Lothian Question'. It will promote innovation and variety in the governance of our country."
Scotland is a nation. No one could doubt that. London is a city. No one could doubt that, but the south-east region, my region, is nothing. No one feels allegiance to it. No one identifies themselves as a citizen
of south-east England. The overwhelming majority of people would not be able to define it, unlike the constituent counties.If a geographical region called London and the south-east were created, perhaps that would have a certain coherence and economic and geographical logic, but it would underline the problem. It would be so overwhelmingly the largest region in the country in terms of population, gross domestic product and geographical area that it would make the system unworkable. Therein lies the problem: the messy, inconvenient fact that England cannot be divided neatly into regions that have any meaning for their people unless the Government are prepared to contemplate a significantly larger number of significantly smaller—in some cases—regions.
Andrew George (St. Ives): The hon. Gentleman is making extremely valid points that imply that the Conservatives might be in favour of devolution. On the assumption that they might be, does he agree that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) would be right if the Government gave the people a genuine vote on regions that exist, rather than on synthetic regions that do not and that are therefore destined to fail? The Government will succeed in their plan to establish regional government if they accept the type of flexibility that the hon. Gentleman recommends.
Mr. Hammond: That is precisely my point. I make no bones about it. We shall vote against the Bill on Third Reading, but the purpose of Report is to try to improve the Bill. Unless the Minister deals with this issue, he will not produce a workable solution for all of England. It will be a solution that may or may not work in some of the regions—the north-east is the obvious one in people's minds—but it will not work in the south-east region or the east of England region; I do not think that even the Minister for a moment believes that it will. The hon. Gentleman is right.
The Minister will never create a durable solution that is based on meaningless lines drawn on maps in Whitehall, with as much relevance to the situation on the ground as the lines drawn by colonial 19th century treaty makers on a map of Africa. In unitary areas, the Government propose that regional government will necessarily involve the introduction of another tier of government. In existing two-tier areas, elected regional assemblies will necessarily involve the loss of the historic and much-identified-with counties. Many people will reject that model of regional devolution for a variety of reasons, but the main reason, and the reason why resistance is likely to be least strong in the north-east and greatest in the south-east and east of England, is that people do not identify with the regions that the Government are putting them into.
Jim Knight: The hon. Gentleman says that, by necessity, unitarisation would mean the loss of shire counties, which people identify with. I agree that people identify with the shire county, for example, of Dorset, which I represent, and speaking personally, if there were a unitary structure in my area, I would favour the
retention of Dorset as the unitary authority, with the abolition of districts. Nothing has been said by the Government that militates against that.
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman would therefore move the point of government further away from the local community.
Jim Knight: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again and allowing me to expand on what I said. I should like reinvigorated and re-empowered parish and town councils to represent communities in a unitary county. I am pleased that the Department is giving parish councils more power, but I should like that to be extended.
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