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Mr. Hammond: I simply quoted the Minister from Hansard. My understanding is that amendment No. 26 would have put the local government review after the date of a referendum. People will draw their own conclusions from that.
Liberal Democrats in the other place struck a deal with the Government, and this is what it amounts to. Liberal Democrat peers, working with my noble Friends, could have written into the Bill many important changes that Liberal Democrats argued for in this House, simply because of the arithmetic in the other place. For example, they could have included provisions on separate referendums on whether electors supported local government reform, rather than on simply which of a number of unitary options they preferred, and on reviewing the artificial and often irrelevant boundaries for the proposed regions. All those things were argued for strongly and passionately by Liberal Democrat Members of this House and by Conservative Members.
However, the Liberal Democrats chose to abandon the opportunity that presented itself in the House of Lords to push such amendments through in alliance with Conservative peers and bring those proposals back to this House for a further airing. They chose to abandon all those long-held objections to the Bill's structure, including that on imposed unitary authorities, in exchange for Government support for this cynical arrangement, which conceals and will conceal from the electorate the true consequences of a yes vote in a regional referendum. [Interruption.] It will conceal those consequences from the electorate. The original Bill proposed a single clear, unambiguous solution for the imposition of unitary local government on a region in the event of a vote for an elected regional assembly in a referendum. Under the new proposals, two, three or four possible solutions could be presented to the electorate to muddy the water, it being unclear which if any of the options would ultimately be imposed.
Mr. Raynsford: Why is the principle that the honourable Gentleman quoted me as having enunciated in Committee in any way compromised by the fact that the electorate will have a choice? While knowing full well that the outcome will be wholly unitary local government, they will be able to decide on the option that they prefer.
Mr. Hammond: We discussed that at length in Committee. The Minister knows that people are very concerned about the minutiae of local boundaries, local organisation and local structures; in fact, one of the great strengths of local government is its relevance to people because it is close to them. People will not be able to focus on three or four options as clear consequences of a yes vote in a referendum, as they could have done under the original Commons proposals.
The Minister may wish to deny this, but I submit that many Members and people outside favouring elected regional assemblies have observed, since the publication of the original Bill, that the linking of local government reorganisation with the establishment of assemblies and of the boundary committee review with the publication of the committee's decision prior to the referendum would make it significantly harder for them to carry the day.
Mr. Beith: Am I to understand that the Conservatives will vote against the amendment because they do not think electors should be able to choose their unitary authority, or indeed choose not to have a unitary authority, a choice that would fall to them if they had no
regional assembly? That would at least be consistent with the Conservatives' previous position: when they imposed unitary authorities, the electorate had no vote at all.
Mr. Hammond: The right hon. Gentleman will have to contain himself, and wait to find out what I advise my colleagues to do. He has, however, put his finger on the problem. Apart from voting against elected regional assemblies, electors still have no way of expressing their opposition to the abolition of their existing two-tier authorities. Liberals in the Commons argued strongly for such an opportunity. I am disappointed that Liberals in the Lords have abandoned not just that but a number of other important issues—for instance, the need for a review of regional boundaries with the aim of establishing something more like real, effective regions, rather than the totally arbitrary and irrelevant boundaries that the Government are imposing. Not a squeak did we hear from them during consideration in the Lords.
As every Member of this House knows, the House of Lords gives Liberals and Conservatives an opportunity to force the Government to re-examine the issues. That is particularly relevant now, when the Government are extremely sensitive about the time scale and have made it clear that they can afford no delay.
Mr. Raynsford: Will the hon. Gentleman reconsider his use of the term "totally arbitrary and irrelevant" to describe Government office boundaries made effective by his party?
2.45 pm
Mr. Hammond: They are indeed totally arbitrary and irrelevant to an elected democratic assembly, for which the Government propose to use them. That is not a very good debating point: the Minister has used it before, and I have answered it before.
For the record, the Government office regions have a long history. They originated in second world war food production planning regions, which were amalgamated in the 1970s and 1980s for economic planning purposes. The last Conservative Government used them as administrative divisions for the regional Government offices, which are administrative bodies and are not democratically elected.
As I am sure the House agrees, there is no point in my referring to all the amendments. Almost all are paving and consequential amendments surrounding a core principle. Let me ask the Minister one specific, detailed question. Lords amendment no. 11 proposes a new subsection (3G), to which he referred. It accepts a requirement for the Government to present the Electoral Commission's report to each House before an order is made.
Various amendments were made in the Commons—supported by both the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats—imposing such a requirement on the Government. The Government resisted the requirement for them to publish the commission's report. The commission confirmed to me that it would expect routinely to publish such advice on its website
and it would therefore become publicly available; I advised the Committee accordingly. The Government, however, have now changed their position and accepted that the Secretary of State should publish the report.I have, in fact, two questions for the Minister. First, why have the Government changed their position? Secondly, having changed their position in respect of the commission's report, why have they not been consistent and included a similar provision in each part of the Bill that provides for a report from the commission to the Secretary of State? That is, I think, the effect of the totality of the amendments tabled in Committee.
The amendments clearly do not offer the option of retaining a two-tier structure. This deal between the Liberal Democrats and the Government seals the fate of county councils in all regions that vote for an elected regional assembly. It does not even give local electors control over the form of unitary authority that they have. The Minister has already made it clear that the ultimate discretion will rest with the Secretary of State rather than the ballot box.
Mr. Kevan Jones: The hon. Gentleman talks nonsense when he says that this will mean the end of county councils. In the county of Durham, for example, the option could be a unitary county council.
Mr. Hammond: It is conceivable that in some cases the name may survive. In fact, we have already had this discussion. In an earlier debate, I invited the Minister to speculate on whether the Secretary of State might be minded to allow Kent or Essex—both with populations of well over 1.5 million, perhaps approaching 2 million—to become unitary authorities. Although the Minister definitely said that it was a possibility, the consensus is that the Government do not intend the creation of unitary authorities of that size. If they are created, the Government will have scored a massive own goal by moving the lowest tier of local government so far from the people it represents as to make it meaningless to them. The unitary authority of Kent or Essex would have almost the same population as the north-east regional assembly.
Mr. Raynsford: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman should be so disparaging about the work of Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart in Kent and Lord Hanningfield in Essex. Both are members of his party, and he describes them as being hopelessly remote from the people of their area. Does he accept that I have always made it clear that it is for the independent boundary committee to come forward with recommendations, and that its concern is to decide on the most effective form of unitary local government for the area? The committee will make that judgment, which could involve a unitary county or a different formulation. However, the judgment will be that of the independent boundary committee, based on the criterion of what is the best form of local government.
Mr. Hammond: I maintain that, in practice, the deal that has been struck means the death of county councils, at least in the great majority of cases. Let me place on record the fact that I have the highest regard for Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart and Lord Hanningfield,
although I am quite certain that neither would believe that their county councils—given the scale of the budgets that they control and the size of the populations and territory in which they operate—would be the most effective lower tier of local government, closest to the electorate.I am glad that the Minister mentioned that the boundary committee would make the recommendation, because that brings me to another point. The Secretary of State has a power—we have come to expect such things—to give the boundary committee directions. So off it goes, doing its independent thing, but with guidance and direction from the Secretary of State. Given that we are now in a different situation, in which the boundary committee will recommend not a single outcome but at least two outcomes, the Minister could help by giving the House an idea of what the Secretary of State's guidance will be.
Will the Secretary of State actively solicit from the boundary committee a range of outcomes that are significantly different—in other words, various radical approaches to the problem of reorganisation—or will the committee use the procedure that it would have used in arriving at a single conclusion, and simply stop a little short of that single conclusion, once it has whittled the options down to two? The process that the boundary committee will have to embark on will be very different if what he is trying to achieve at the end of it is distinctive alternatives to put before the Secretary of State and then, hopefully, the electorate. To take up the Minister's point about Kent, perhaps the guidance might be that one of the options presented should always be a unitary county. If that is what the Minister has in mind, it would be extremely interesting and useful for the House to be aware of that.
These amendments muddy the water by conveying the impression that the electorate has a say in, and a way of expressing a view on, the local government question other than simply voting no in the referendum on elected regional assemblies. Of course, the Government's nightmare—it is certainly the Liberal Democrats'—is that those who are opposed to local government reorganisation will vote no to elected regional assemblies not because of their views on them, but because of their views on local government reorganisation. Crucially, as I said in response to the Minister's earlier intervention, this approach avoids a clear, single, well-defined consequence from a yes vote in terms of local government reorganisation.
The Liberal Democrats' own Front-Bench spokesman in the Lords, Lord Greaves, at least had the decency to resign in protest at this rather squalid deal to conceal matters from the electorate. I hope that the House will forgive me if I quote Lord Greaves, because what he said is quite significant. He refers to the
- "amendments on the Marshalled List that are part of a package negotiated between members of my party and the Government—there is no secret about that . . . The crunch is whether people in areas that are to have referendums on regional assemblies . . . have the democratic option to decide for themselves and not be told by the Minister, 10 Downing Street or anyone else that two-tier local government is not allowed."
- "In Committee, when I spoke from the Front Bench on behalf of my party . . . Lord Rooker said:
'If this measure is decoupled, there will not be a referendum because there will not be a Bill. We shall take it away. That is the price to be paid. It is as simple as that.' . . . I said,
'We now have threats, bluster and blackmail from the Minister—not rational argument . . . The Minister's attitude is not acceptable . . . We are being threatened that if we do what we believe is right, the Government will take their bat and ball home. If it comes to that, do not blame us. The responsibility would clearly rest with the Government. It is arrogance of the highest order.'
Later I said . . .:
'The Liberal Democrats will not be brow-beaten in every instance'",
- "I repeat those words at some length because I believed then that I was speaking on behalf of my party. After I spoke, I was not given an indication that I had not been speaking on behalf of my party. But I believe that my party has, regrettably, now agreed to be blackmailed, bullied and browbeaten."
- "I do not blame my noble friend Lady Hamwee for what I think is a very sad series of events. I blame Ed Davey"—
- "and my colleagues in the House of Commons, and I am happy to stand up in public and say that. I believe that in my part of the world, and in other parts of the world, too, Liberal Democrats will believe that they have been let down on this issue by their parliamentary representatives."
- "'These concessions prevent the absurd situation whereby voters unaffected by local government reform would effectively be imposing changes on voters elsewhere in the region.'"
- "That is not true. The amendments do not prevent that. All that they do is give those voters a choice. If they believe that unitary government is some form of hell, it gives them a choice of two kinds of hell."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 April 2003; Vol. 647, cc. 20–21.]
This is a cynical manoeuvre by a desperate Government and unprincipled Liberal Democrats, from which label I must of course exclude Lord Greaves. The Liberal Democrat press release proceeded to crow that the amendments meant regional government was now assured. I am not sure about that, but to the extent that it is more likely, it is not more likely because a fundamental objection—the imposition of unitary local government, to which the Liberal Democrats still purport to object—has been removed, but because a smokescreen has been erected to obfuscate the issues and confuse the electorate. The Liberal Democrats, who so aggressively and implausibly stake their claim in this House to be considered a party of opposition, have demonstrated through this shabby affair—if any demonstration were needed—that they are not a party
of opposition, but fellow travellers of Labour in England, just as they are in a more formal sense in Scotland and in Wales.
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