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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): I see I have been left with one minute in which to speak, despite the fact that I had a long and interesting speech to make—too bad. Let me make one point in the 60 seconds available to me. The whole issue has become over-personalised because people associate the regional agenda with the Deputy Prime Minister. Leaflets circulated by the Conservatives in my area do not condemn Labour's regional assemblies, new Labour's regional assemblies, or even Blair's regional assemblies, but read, "Say no to Prescott's regional assemblies".

If my party is serious about winning the referendums, I wish the Prime Minister would make his position clear. His current position is rather opaque and I do not think he is convinced by the idea at all. The Deputy Prime Minister has set the agenda, but that has alienated the opinion not only of a lot of Opposition Members, but of some Labour Members. The Deputy Prime Minister will be speaking to my colleagues from the three northern regions in about 35 minutes.

The regional assemblies are a complete diversion, and I agree with the thoughtful speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Stringer). I fear that having been given a good kicking by the electorate on 10 June, we will get another good kicking in October. Before I entered the Chamber for the debate, a colleague from the House of Lords said to me, "Gordon, we are inventing new elections to lose." That is our problem.

4.26 pm

Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con): I am delighted that the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) managed to speak, albeit briefly.

Conservative Members support the principle of decentralisation—moving decision making to the lowest appropriate level based on coherent accountable units close to the people affected by decisions. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) pointed out earlier, the Government's proposed elected regional assemblies will not represent a genuinely decentralising measure. In the words of Lord Rooker, there will be "no new money" and "no new powers" will flow to them. They will suck powers up from local authorities instead of down from central Government. We are already seeing that happening with housing, planning and fire and rescue services.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said, we are being offered expensive and largely toothless talking shops with more politicians, more
 
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bureaucrats and more red tape. Decisions will be made further away from people, rather than closer to them. The assemblies will have no new powers other than those sucked up from local authorities. They will represent more big government that will spend more precious taxpayers' money without delivering a single extra doctor, policeman, teacher or social worker, and without offering real solutions to the genuine issues arising from the massive structural economic change that has occurred throughout the three northern regions over the past two and a half decades.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman says that regional assemblies will lead to more politicians. With the abolition of county councils, can he be absolutely sure that that will happen? Surely the proposal would lead to fewer elected politicians.

Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman knows that the north-east, for example, is already overwhelmingly made up of single-tier local authorities, so an assembly would impose an additional tier of government.

It is little wonder that outside the narrow confines of the political class, the Deputy Prime Minister's obsession has signally failed to grip the imagination of the people who are supposed to be enthused by it. It is little wonder that the evidence points to a growing sentiment in all three northern regions, especially Yorkshire and Humber and the north-west, that the proposed extra tier of government is simply not the answer to the regions' problems and that the Government's proposal reflects Labour's tired philosophy that more government equals better government, and that constant change equals progress.

As is so often the case, Labour is hedging its bets. Ministers talk about the importance of allowing the electorate to decide whether to have regional government in referendums, but they have already embarked on an agenda of reallocating responsibilities and functions from local government to regional forms of government, irrespective of whether elected regional assemblies come into being. The Government's amendment congratulates them on their endeavours to ensure that the electorate are well informed about regional assemblies. In truth, however, it is the Government, in the name of spreading clarity, either deliberately or through incompetence, who have created confusion and uncertainty about the extent of the powers, responsibilities and costs of elected regional assemblies.

The Minister's typical response to any criticism is to wrap himself in the mantle of democracy and proclaim that he merely wishes to allow the people in his selected regions to have a choice. It is clear that that commitment to choice is subordinate to Downing street's fear of another debacle on the scale of 10 June and the parliamentary Labour party's blind panic in the face of looming defeat and the damage that the Deputy Prime Minister's agenda could do to its chances at the general election. The champions of democracy proclaim that the people must decide, but it is apparent that they will only be allowed to do so if it is to Labour's electoral advantage.

Our debate has demonstrated that if the people are to decide, they must have clear and accurate information about the question that is put to them; they must be
 
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allowed to express their decision through a fair and effective voting system and they must know the costs of the proposals that they are asked to judge. They are entitled to honest and impartial information, not Government propaganda. The Government appear to be distancing themselves from the holding of referendums before a general election, but if they go ahead it is clear on the available evidence that the last thing they are seeking is an objective test of the mood of the population in those three regions. They are instead attempting to manipulate the process with all the powers at their disposal to achieve the outcome that they desire.

I fully recognise the Minister's problem—with just four months to go, in the analysis of the British Chambers of Commerce, there is a

"lack of interest in and awareness of the prospect of elected regional assemblies."

The more people know about elected regional assemblies, the less they like the idea. It will be difficult for the Minister to rise to the Deputy Prime Minister's challenge of delivering a yes vote in the regions and achieve a turnout that gives some credibility to the whole process. He is torn between those two objectives, and his efforts to increase turnout are likely to pull against his objective of securing a yes vote. Sadly, in his pursuit of a resolution to the dilemma, the principal victims are clarity and transparency. Genuinely open and informed debate has been sacrificed to his overriding need to achieve a yes vote on a half-reasonable turnout. That is the opposite of the genuinely democratic process advanced in ministerial propaganda and the self-congratulatory Government amendment.

The soundings exercise was intended to determine whether there was any genuine interest in the holding of a referendum. It was not objective, and was conducted at the discretion of the Deputy Prime Minister, who managed to determine on the basis of 833 positive responses from a population of 5 million in Yorkshire and Humber that there was a desire to hold a referendum in the region. The electoral system itself gives rise to problems. The Minister conceded early on that the Government would not impose elected regional assemblies on people if turnout was "derisory", although he has resisted all attempts to pin down what constitutes such a turnout. The Government therefore concocted the idea of all-postal referendum ballots in the hope that that would achieve a turnout that was not derisory. They are therefore in the absurd position of seeking to lay orders for an all-postal ballot before the post-mortem on the 10 June fiasco is complete. They have had to build in a reverse gear to enable them to cancel or postpone the ballots if the Electoral Commission report is damning or if it suits them to interpret it in that way.

There is a perfectly good solution at hand—it was identified by the right hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin) in an early intervention—that will allow certainty about the date of the referendums, will prevent the result of the ballot being tinged by doubts about the integrity of all-postal voting, and has the benefit of being familiar to the electorate at large. It is the traditional system of ballot box voting, but the Government will not adopt it because they want to keep open the option of backing out of their commitment to the referendums if they decide later in the year that it is electorally advantageous to them to do so.
 
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Having fudged the consultation on the level of interest and rigged the balloting system, the third prong of the Deputy Prime Minister's approach has been a propaganda campaign at the taxpayers' expense under the guise of information dissemination—a total waste of money, pushing a dud idea to an indifferent audience without even, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Stringer) described to the House, paying lip service to making an attempt at a dispassionate presentation of the arguments. The Deputy Prime Minister has been running around the country sowing confusion and obfuscation in all directions and, every time he is challenged, retreating behind the mantra that the powers will be as per the White Paper, only to sally forth the next day flying more kites and creating more confusion and doubt.

The truth, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex pointed out, is that there is a battle royal going on within the Government. Despite the big talk earlier of interdepartmental battles to be waged by big John, it seems that it was little Jeff who was right all along—at the end of the day, there will be no new powers and no new money.

Will the Minister confirm to the House, as many hon. Members have asked him to do in his winding-up speech, that the draft Bill will be published before the end of the Session, and that it will contain precise powers and not be structured simply as an enabling Bill, so that when the electorate go to the polls in October they are clear as to the powers and the costs of the regional assemblies if they vote for them? Will the Minister further confirm that the Bill will published at a time and in a manner that enables a debate to take place in Government time in this House and the other place, ideally before the recess, but if not in the September session, so that the important issues that will be raised by the detail of the draft Bill can be fully debated and reported in the regional press? Only in that way will the democratic process be properly conducted to the benefit of the country and the whole of its electorate.

4.37 pm

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