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Mr. Raynsford: I am advised that there are two options for the Secretary of State. First, he may use his discretion to proceed with establishing an elected
regional assembly and implementing the local government change, or to re-run both referendums. That applies in a situation in which the Secretary of State, using his discretion, determines that the outcome of one or other of the elements in the referendum is unsatisfactory. If the Secretary of State were unable to proceed because an element had been challenged at law, there would be scope to re-run the local element of the referendum without requiring the regional one to be repeated. I hope that we have now established the position.Amendment No. 12 to clause 6 enables the regional referendum poll to be combined with the polls for local government referendums. These two referendums must be held on the same day, so it makes sense to enable the polls to be combined to reduce bureaucracy. Under the amended clause 6, it would also still be possible to combine these polls with other polls for local or general elections, or for local mayoral referendums.
Amendments Nos. 13, 19 and 23 are tidying-up amendments arising out of the introduction of the second referendum question. Rather than have separate requirements dotted throughout the Bill, the amendments bring together in one place the requirements to consult the Electoral Commission before making orders: in clause 11, which deals with supplementary provisions. Amendments Nos. 14, 17, 18, 34 and 35 are all consequential amendments to reflect that there will now be local referendums as well as regional referendums. I hope that we have now covered all the rather complex issues implicit in the amendments under consideration, and I urge the House to support them.
Mr. Hammond: I congratulate the Minister on thwarting my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) in his bet that he would pass the one-hour milestone in that opening speech. We have covered some particularly interesting and detailed points that Members genuinely wanted to explore. I should like to analyse what this large group of amendments does and does not do, and then look at the genesis of the rather cynical pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Government that lies behind them.
When it left the Commons, the Bill required the boundary committee to have recommended a unitary reorganisation of local government for a region—that is, one single unitary reorganisation pattern for the region—prior to any referendum on an elected regional assembly taking place. As the Minister clearly said, this group of amendments introduces a requirement for two or more solutions for such reorganisation to be put forward, and a provision that electors in two-tier areas only would express a view as between them in a simultaneous referendum.
I choose my words carefully, because the electors will not be choosing the local government system that they want to live under. They will express a view on two or more options that have been put to them. That is the nub of it. Most of the amendments would simply extend the scope of other provisions to accommodate the proposed changes. Thus, they are consequential, although I want to return to a specific detailed question in a moment.
2.30 pm
Mr. Beith: As the hon. Gentleman is setting out, quite correctly, what the amendments contain, it might be helpful to make it clear that they would introduce a principle that was not present on any occasion on which the Conservative party reorganised local government, abolished counties or created unitary authorities—namely, the voters in the area concerned would have a vote on which pattern they preferred.
Mr. Hammond: But they would not have a vote on the possibility of retaining the existing system, although the Liberal Democrats were vehement that that needed to be included when the Bill was considered in this place.
We have heard the Minister's explanation of the Government's volte-face, which he expressed in terms of giving people a choice. They will have a choice between two alternative forms of compulsory "unitarisation" of their local government, but they will not have the option of saying that they would prefer to retain the existing form of local government.
Mr. Kevan Jones: As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said, the previous Government gave local electors no choice at all on the form of local government. Is it now Conservative party policy to be against unitary local government and in favour of the option of retaining two-tier local authorities throughout the UK?
Mr. Hammond: Clearly, as I have said on a number of occasions, the issue ought to be decided by local electors, but it cannot be, because the Government are explicitly not allowing that choice to be put to them. As Liberal Members know, that point was made strongly from their Benches and supported by us when the Bill was considered in the Commons, so let me explain to the House what has happened here; the real reason for this rather cynical deal.
The Liberal Democrats, from the outset, have wanted the option of keeping two-tier local government. I assume that that is still their position. Indeed, at the end of the long debate in the other place when these amendments were agreed, Baroness Hamwee expressed that view. The Government, from the outset, have insisted on an all-unitary solution to prevent there being three tiers of government between central Government and the elector in some areas.
We sympathise with both views. We agree that three tiers are too many, but we also agree that it is wrong to impose unitary local government as a consequence. Our conclusion—the logical conclusion—is that the superfluous tier is not the historic counties or the districts, the tier closest to the electorate, but the proposed regional tier itself.
The Liberals argued consistently for a three-tier option. The Government, during consideration in the Commons, maintained that a unitary solution is a necessary precondition for elected regional assemblies. The Liberal Democrats also recognised something else, perhaps rather perceptively, early on in the proceedings—the reality that the electorate in two-tier areas are unlikely to believe that the consequence of an imposed unitary local government structure is a price worth paying for the dubious privilege of having an
elected regional assembly with uncertain, but certainly minimal, powers. They recognised the threat to the programme to introduce elected regional assemblies represented by coupling local government reorganisation with compulsory "unitarisation".Scandalously, in Committee, the Liberal Democrats sought to do away with the requirement for the boundary committee to report before a referendum, as they wanted to avoid the electorate knowing the detail of the changes that would be imposed on them and preferred to keep the electorate in ignorance. The Government, to their credit, rejected the idea at that stage and at least retained some of their principles.
In response to amendment No. 26, the Minister said:
- "Amendment No. 26 from the Liberal Democrats would remove the requirement for a local government review to be carried out by the Boundary Committee before an order causing a referendum was made. Rather, the committee will only have had to be directed to prepare to carry out a review. We believe that any local government review of a region should be carried out before a referendum on elected regional assemblies, so that voters are fully informed of the implications of a yes vote for local government in their region."—[Official Report, 23 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 515.]
I am sorry to say that, as the Government have seen support for that extra tier of government fade, even in the areas that they regarded as early candidates for referendums, their principles have been put on the block. The Liberal Democrats, who never had any and who saw from the outset the need to conceal from the electors the detailed consequences of a yes vote, as I have shown by reference to amendment No. 26, have done the Government's dirty work for them in the other place. These are not essentially Liberal Democrat amendments, although the principal amendment was tabled by Baroness Hamwee. However, she acknowledged the work that the Government put in on the amendments and the help that they gave.
There was a coalition effort at trying to salvage something from the regional agenda, as the Government and the Liberal Democrats—both keen exponents of it—recognise that the mood is drifting from them, even in those areas where they felt most secure.
Mr. Edward Davey: I will deal with some of the hon. Gentleman's more ludicrous points in my speech, but I want to get this on the record, as I am sure that he does not want to mislead the House. Amendment No. 26 was tabled in relation to other amendments, which were not selected at the same time, to facilitate complete decoupling of local government reorganisation from the regional assembly referendum. That is our main position. He is suggesting that we wanted to keep information from the electorate. That is not the case, and he knows it.
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