| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): I welcome the opportunity to make a short speech. I am very much against the orders. There is huge disquiet on the Labour Benches among my colleagues for the three northern regions.
The issue of turnout has been with us for a long time. The Minister will not give his definition of derisory, but my fear is that turnout in the referendums, if they go ahead, will be modest indeed. In the Scottish devolution referendum in September 1997, turnout was 60 per cent. That was followed by the referendum on Welsh devolution, where the turnout was 50 per cent. We then had a referendum on devolution to the Greater London authority, at which the turnout was 34 per cent. In the northern regions—certainly in the north-west—the turnout could be embarrassing, to be frank.
In the process that triggered this—the famous soundings exercise—there were 10,841,000 electors in the region and 3,069 people called for referendums, representing 0.028 per cent. That persuaded the Deputy Prime Minister that there was sufficient demand in the three northern regions for referendums.
I will speak frankly and bluntly, echoing the words of the Deputy Prime Minister. If the referendums go ahead, Labour will get a good kicking. I will tell the House why. It is a scandal that we still do not have the draft Regional Assemblies Bill. We had a debate in Committee a couple of days ago to discuss a couple of orders and we are having this debate today. There is much speculation. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) said that the new assemblies would transform the north-west, but scandalously we do not have a definitive list of their powers. We are pointed to the White Paper that was published ages ago.
21 Jul 2004 : Column 415
If the assemblies are to be talking shops with planning and strategy responsibilities, people will not vote for them. They will not go out and vote for a body with next to no powers. We need to know precisely what the powers will be. It is not good enough for Labour Members to say that the region will be transformed, that housing will be transformed and that there will be new transport interchanges as a consequence of the regional assembles. People will say, rightly, that we have had a Labour Government here in Westminster for seven years and nothing has changed.
Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab): Nonsense.
Mr. Prentice: The Barnett formula has been mentioned. It is up to this Labour Government, if they wish, to renegotiate the Barnett formula and have equity between the regions. If my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) wants to intervene on that point, I will happily allow him.
Mr. Turner: You talked about the powers and about the fact that we do not have a draft Bill—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he should not be referring to me. It would also help if he did not turn his back on the Chair.
Mr. Turner: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend mentioned the draft legislation. Did he vote for the legislation on Scottish and Welsh devolution, before which there was no draft Bill?
Mr. Prentice: I did vote for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and we have now experienced those bodies. I have very firm views about the unity of the United Kingdom, and a Labour Government at Westminster should ensure fair allocation among the English regions. I do not want to witness the balkanisation of England that is being introduced by my own Government. I stress that we can revisit the Barnett formula and ensure that money is distributed equitably between the various parts—
Joyce Quin: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Prentice: I must make progress. The wind-ups start in about 10 minutes and I have a number of points to get through.
We are told that this reorganisation will save money—the leaflets distributed to all households in the three northern regions say so—but of course, the Electoral Commission used a Government-devised financial model that excluded transitional costs and the ongoing costs of change, which will be considerable. Whenever we have embarked on local government reorganisation, it has always cost more than people predicted at the outset.
21 Jul 2004 : Column 416
There is another important point. If these regional assemblies are born, the Labour party will not be running them. We are introducing proportional representation, with constituency members and list members, and as sure as night follows day there will be coalition regional government—even, I suspect, in the north-east. In the light of the results of the elections on 10 June, there is no way that a single party will be running the show. The Deputy Prime Minister constantly tells us what a great first-past-the-post man he is, but yet again this Government are introducing a system that will definitely lead to coalition government.
As a consequence, there will be a democratic deficit and we will lose hundreds of local councillors. My own local authority, Pendle borough council, will disappear and be subsumed into a "Burpendale" plus Ribble Valley body. Burnley, Pendle Rossendale and Ribble Valley combined have a population of 300,000. There is no way that people in my area will have easy access to local councillors, because their numbers will obviously reduce.
I am also concerned about all-postal ballots. Five election petitions are outstanding and they will go through the courts in the normal way. I believe—others may not—that all-postal ballots make it more likely that the integrity of the ballot will be compromised. I have read some of the debates that took place in 1872. In that year, legislation popularly known as the "Ballot Act" introduced the secret ballot for parliamentary and municipal elections. It was hugely controversial at the time; now, we are casually throwing all that away.
I was also disappointed to learn that there is no guarantee of funds for returning officers who want to establish polling stations in areas with modest populations. I am troubled by the thought that, in those circumstances, returning officers will not get their costs reimbursed.
I hope that these orders will not go through today. I suspect that, if the referendums are held, the Labour party will lose them heavily. In my view, there is no demonstrable demand for regional assemblies. It is doubly unfortunate that the Government have impaled themselves on this particular hook, because they probably have no way of getting off it.
5.34 pm
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con): I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with every single sentence of what the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) said—and I was looking out for something to disagree with. He spoke with great force and candour, because what he said about the consequences for the Labour party in the north-west was absolutely true: we will end up with coalition Governments in which the Liberal Democrats will no doubt hold the balance of power and decide whether it is a Tory or a Labour Administration between elections.
The hon. Gentleman spoke the great truth that these are unwanted referendums for unwanted regional assemblies. As he said, when the soundings exercise was conducted in the north-west, just 4,000 people responded out of the 7 million who live in the region, and half of them did not want a referendum. There is a growing number of north-west Labour Members—I do not know the proportion of Back Benchers and
21 Jul 2004 : Column 417
Ministers, some of whom are not holding to the collective Cabinet line—who have come out against. They include the hon. Members for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth), for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), for Pendle, for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope), for Stockport (Ms Coffey)—a Parliamentary Private Secretary to a Cabinet Minister, I believe—and for Warrington, North (Helen Jones), and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field).
Now Labour Members in other regions are starting to speak out, including the hon. Members for Selby (Mr. Grogan) and for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), and to say that this is not what the Labour party membership wants. If that is the public statement of Labour Members—taking a brave position, as it is not easy to stand up and oppose one's party and one's Government—one can only imagine what the private position must be. The other great unspoken truth concerns what Ministers must be saying privately. It is an open secret that the Prime Minister is not especially keen on regional government but has decided to allow the Deputy Prime Minister to pursue his pet project. It is an open secret that the Foreign Secretary, with his Blackburn constituency, is against regional government. It is an open secret that the Minister for Local and Regional Government himself was not a great enthusiast but decided to go along with it. He will probably get up and deny that, but it is true.
The great problem is that the Deputy Prime Minister has succeeded in getting this on the agenda—the orders are a measure of his political success in getting this on the Government's programme, although I agree with everything that has been said about there now being various let-out clauses—but unfortunately he has not been able to match that political success with success in Whitehall in getting any powers for the proposed assemblies.
Again, it is an open secret that there has been a Cabinet battle with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills over learning and skills. Guess what? The Education Secretary has won. It is an open secret that there has been a battle with the Home Secretary over policing powers. Again, the Deputy Prime Minister lost. Lord Haskins, the chairman of the Yorkshire yes campaign, said that "Stalinist" Ministers were stopping the powers being handed over to regional assemblies.
I can see the disappointment of people such as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman), who takes an entirely principled position in favour of regional government. She must be deeply frustrated that the Deputy Prime Minister has not been successful in seeking many of the powers that she wants to be devolved to the regions.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |