Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 48)
WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004
PROFESSOR ROBERT
HAZELL AND
MR MARK
SANDFORD
Q40 Mr O'Brien: On the question of
funding, the draft Bill sets out a very general purpose but many
of these areas the elected regional assembly will not directly
fund. What impact can an elected regional assembly have on advising,
being consulted or drawing up strategies?
Mr Sandford: It can have an impact.
I would never say it could never have an impact. If it does have
an impact, it will be a very long term and low key impact. An
assembly which has to make the strategic policy work but has no
funding and no funding and no executive power, no carrots or sticks
with which to make that policy work, has to rely upon the goodwill
of Parliament and the region, other public agencies, quangos,
it has to rely on being able to talk those bodies round to its
point of view, it has to rely on its point of view not clashing
with those bodies' own intentions, their own policies as required
by central government. The experience that I have had when talking
to people in the regions at the moment who are trying to sign
themselves up to strategy documents is that an executive agency,
the Housing Corporation for instance, which signs up to a regional
housing strategy very rarely signs itself up to something that
it was not originally going to do. Conversely, that means that
the regional housing strategy very rarely looks any different
from what the Housing Corporation had already intended it to look
like and that goes back to the fact that the Housing Corporation
is currently funded and receives its strategy and its direction
from central government. Ultimately, when elected regional assemblies
exist there are going to be lots and lots of executive agencies
still existing in the regions which receive their funding direction
from central government and they are not going to be able to turn
around and say, "Well, the regional assembly wants us to
do this. So, sorry, Minister, but we're not going to do what you
tell us to." That is simply not the way it will work. I think
strategies will make small differences over the medium to long
term, and I think this kind of influence can be seen in London.
Q41 Mr O'Brien: Is it your view that
the regional assemblies will have an impact on the strategies
if they are being funded by the RDA or by housing corporations
or the Culture, Media and Sport Department? If they are going
to have to rely on organisations for funding what impact do you
think it will have on strategies?
Mr Sandford: I think it will be
a long-term impact. With most of those bodies their funding tends
to be committed for one or two years in advance. If a strategy
is prepared by a regional assembly it will only start to take
effect after two to three years.
Q42 Mr O'Brien: Are there any additional
areas you envisage where the regional assemblies could have direct
funding?
Mr Sandford: We would tend to
argue for direct funding in some of the areas where they currently
are expected to have strategic powers. I think the three areas
I would most particularly draw your attention to are learning
and skills, culture and the environment. The learning and skills
for instance relates extremely closely to economic development.
We were given to understand in the White Paper that some of the
cultural quangos that currently exist in the regions would pass
to the regional assemblies. The Government appears to have backtracked
on that. It does not say so very clearly in the policy statement.
I think environmental quangos such as the Countryside Agency and
English Nature and possibly the Environment Agency would also
enable the assembly to have a serious effect if it had access
to their spending and their executive powers.
Q43 Mr Betts: It is interesting that
the housing budgets are going to be allocated by the regional
assemblies to the various housing associations but the transport
budgets and the skills budgets are not. Has that got to do with
the fact that housing is an ODPM function and transport and skills
are for other departments?
Mr Sandford: Broadly speaking
I would agree with the point you are making.
Q44 Mr Clelland: The policy statement
said that elected regional assemblies would have `considerable
freedom' under their general purpose to spend their funding as
they judge best, but in your view what real flexibility will these
assemblies have? Is it not the case really that, in terms of their
general grant, the budgets have been effectively fixed over the
short and medium term?
Mr Sandford: I want to burst out
yes but that is not quite the right answer. As you may remember
from the White Paper, this was another thing that was not mentioned
in the policy statement. Assemblies will have to agree a range
of six to ten high level targets with the Government. I assume,
though it is not said in the policy paper, that this will take
place through the Assembly Scheme which is laid out in the draft
Bill. Given the fact that an assembly will have to agree six to
ten high level targets and given the fact that it has taken over
specific budget streams from the RDA, the Housing Corporation,
various fire and rescue functions, rural regeneration, it is going
to be very difficult within that to find the flexibility to do
anything else. I referred earlier to soft money through the council
tax precept. There will also be soft money available through the
regional assemblies' limited borrowing powers. That soft money
is going to be the main source of anything unusual or inaugurative
that the assemblies will be able to do. I do not know how much
soft money will be available, I do not know what the borrowing
power will amount to in practice, but I suspect it is not going
to be a very large percentage of the overall budget of the assembly.
That is where the flexibility comes from. It is going to be a
limited flexibility. It is not necessarily an insignificant flexibility.
There is an example from London of a quite interesting use of
flexibility which is the Mayor's partnerships register for same
sex couples. That is something that does not cost very much to
do but is of interest to a lot of people. That is the sort of
inaugurative policy which it may well be possible for assemblies
to carry out, things which do not cost much but which achieve
quite a lot of public profile and do some good and mean something
to members of the electorate.
Q45 Chairman: The Mayor, because
of the size of London, has quite a bit of small change in his
budget to do some of those things. Is there going to be as much
small change for the northeast assembly to be able to do some
of those more imaginative things?
Mr Sandford: I would think not.
I would not like to give a definite answer on the amounts of money.
One would suppose that there is not so much money available through
the precept.
Professor Hazell: May I just add
one thing on the electoral system? Clive Betts asked me about
the Additional Member System and I replied saying that the first-past-the-post
system was notoriously disproportionate. The role of the additional
members is to correct for the disproportionality in the constituency
seats. The one thing I wanted to add is that the Bill leaves it
to the Secretary of State—it is in clause 3(4)—to
specify the number of constituency members and the number of regional
members for each assembly and I think that is a very odd power
to confer upon a government minister because in effect it could
enable them to decide whether in some regions one party will win
and govern or not.
Q46 Chairman: Does he make that decision
before or after the actual election?
Professor Hazell: One hopes he
makes it before the election. Even making it before the election,
if he specifies a low number of regional members he could in effect
determine the outcome. I am merely suggesting that this Committee
might want to recommend some kind of minimum ratio between the
number of constituency members and the number of regional members.
In London, for example, in a 25 member assembly there are 14 constituency
members and 11 London-wide, a ratio which comes to 44:56. This
Committee might, for example, want to recommend a minimum ratio
of 40:60.
Q47 Chairman: If the electorate have
the sense to produce an election result in which first-past-the-post
also represented very closely proportionality then the number
of top-up members that you would need would be small, would it
not?
Professor Hazell: Forgive me,
Chairman. The electorate has very rarely, if ever, displayed that
kind of wisdom.
Q48 Mr Betts: There is another problem.
If you go for a higher number of regional-wide elected members
then you will end up with larger constituencies and that goes
back to the other problem you identified earlier.
Professor Hazell: That is true.
Chairman: I think we had better finish
at that point. Thank you very much for your evidence.
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