Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 72 - 79)

WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004

MR NICHOLAS BOLES, MR JOHN ADAMS, MR DAN CORRY, MR WARREN HATTER AND DR PETER KENWAY

  Q72  Chairman: Can I welcome you all? Can I just stress to you that if you agree with each other, once one person has said it the rest of you keep quiet! If you disagree, please chip in as quickly as you can catch my eye. If you would like to introduce yourselves for the record?

  Mr Hatter: Warren Hatter from the New Local Government Network.

  Mr Corry: Dan Corry, from the same place.

  Dr Kenway: I am Peter Kenway from the New Policy Institute, and may I apologise for the absence of Andy Howell, who was going to present evidence here with me today? He is on his way from Wales and obviously has not made it.

  Mr Boles: I am Nicholas Boles from Policy Exchange.

  Mr Adams: John Adams from IPPR North, which is part of the Institute for Public Policy Research, based in Newcastle upon Tyne.

  Chairman: Does anybody want to say anything by way of introduction or are you all happy for us to go straight to questions? Straight to questions.

  Q73  Mr Clelland: It is a general question to all of the witnesses. The elected Regional Assemblies look set to rely substantially upon a general power of competence rather than detailed powers and resources in particular policy fields. What impact is that likely to have upon the effectiveness of these Regional Assemblies and how, if at all, will elected Regional Assemblies add value to the current system of government and the regions?

  Mr Hatter: I think we need to learn from the experience of local government, specifically the Local Government Act 2000, which gave local authorities the power of well being. I think there is a pretty broad consensus that those powers have not been used to anywhere near the extent that one might wish. There are probably very good reasons for this, specifically that the relations between central and local government have been so polarised, and local government over the past few decades very much got into the mode of being a delivery arm and responding to guidance to legislation, to guidelines and to directives from the centre, and actually having a power, something that you can use rather than a duty as something that you have to do, guidelines that you have to follow, is something that unfortunately culturally local government has found it hard to grasp. On the other hand, I do not think it is realistic to think that there is any real point in trying to develop regional governance unless there is that general power of competence. What our research suggests to us is that the success of regional governance, whether it is through a Chapter II agenda or Elected Regional Assemblies in the future, should the electorate so decide, will depend on the individuals and the bodies developing regional governance having credibility with the people, with the public and with stakeholders to make it work, and in a sense that power of competence, you could argue, is more important than the specific powers that are given to ERAs.

  Mr Corry: Can I just add to that? We are not exactly sure whether the things outlined in Clause 43 do give enough. We are learning from what local government has; it has a `power' of well being which we think ought to be turned into a duty of well being, and made clearer. We are not exactly sure from our reading of what is in the Bill and in the policy statement so far, whether it gives that power, that duty.

  Mr Boles: Your colleague asked about whether this whole idea is likely to add value to governance in the country. I would have thought that all of you, certainly all of us, whatever political, philosophical persuasions we are, are probably more exercised about the question of how you restore public faith in the political process, public interest in what politicians are doing to them than almost any other question, because it is quite clear that nobody is listening to us and they all think we are a bunch of lying fools. It would be hard to design a piece of legislation that was more guaranteed to increase that cynicism and that apathy than this particular Bill. There is almost nothing in it that will inspire any confidence in anyone of the honesty, transparency or real willingness to do something to improve people's lives than this Bill. These things are a charade, they are a mockery, they will add no value at all, they will cost a huge amount of money and they will generate enormous amounts of blether, with absolutely no purpose. You could have created Regional Assemblies with a purpose, you could have decided—I do not know whether it would be a good idea—to regionalise the National Health Service, to give them control of all of the Primary Care Trusts in the region; you could have decided to go down that route, many European countries operate in a similar way. The government has not decided to do that, yet it is ploughing ahead with an utterly cynical exercise. It will add no value at all.

  Dr Kenway: Let me develop that point. We think—and I hope our submission made clear what we think—that one needs to look at the powers that the ERAs would have, in the context of the fact that they first have to cross the hurdle of winning a referendum, and we are fully in support of the idea that it should cross this hurdle, and that that hurdle should exist, that they cannot simply be imposed. But our view is that you will not, with the sorts of general powers which are there at the minute, stand any chance of persuading anybody that these things are worth having. There has, therefore, to be—and this perhaps is where I am getting close to my colleague here—some specific powers, some specific responsibilities that Elected Regional Assemblies need to have in order to persuade not just the electorate that it is worth voting for them but also to persuade serious politicians, whether at local or national level, that these things are worth getting involved in. Therefore, there needs to be something specific, there needs to be something concrete in there. Perhaps I might put one more point that I might develop later, that we do think those specific things might very well differ between different parts of the country—that what is important in one place may not be as important in another. In our view, in London it was quite clear that one of the main things that made people think it was worth having a Mayor was that there was transport to be dealt with. Whether you agree with what he has done or not it is quite clear that that is what the thing was about, it was not just about a general power. So our view is that there does need to be something specific, but that that could vary between different regions.

  Q74  Sir Paul Beresford: Your whole thesis is going back to what The Times said—you are providing an answer for a question that nobody is asking.

  Dr Kenway: I do not accept that because we have something, and the way we score it is that the present Bill gets one thing right and two things wrong. It is very important that this referendum test is there; I think we are all agreed on that and the degree of cynicism that exists. Therefore, it seems to us that there is a opportunity here, perhaps the opportunity with the delay, even the permanent delay of the referendum in the two other regions, to think again about what the scope of this Bill should be, and it needs to provide, in our view, something that is attractive to both the regional electorate and to potential regional politicians, and the present arrangements do not do that.

  Q75  Sir Paul Beresford: This is the shifting the goal posts so that you can change in size and shape just to fit a referendum that you want to say yes.

  Mr Corry: Can I just come in on that? There is a problem here. Your premise is that there is no problem, yet for some reason the government decided it wanted to have a Regional Assembly, maybe its back benchers in the North-east wanted it or something. But, there is a problem, a problem with the governance of this country and that is why we at NLGN have done a lot of work on concepts like New Localism. We have a very centralised system in Britain, but what governments have been doing for some time is recognising the need for a regional dimension to policy development. There were a lot of regional institutions, many quangos, set up under the previous government and under this government. There is a question about whether they should continue to be quangos or have some democratic legitimacy, and that is a key issue. There is an issue about whether we are ever going to sort out the relationships between central government and local government if we do not have an intermediate tier, which just about every other country in the world has. There is a question about whether the voices of some of our less well off regions are getting heard enough in Whitehall and whether elected bodies could change this. So I think there clearly is a need for ERAs. Whether this Bill gets it exactly right is another matter. There is a separate set of issues about whether the set of powers and the way they are described, will be something that the public can understand and grasp. But I think that potentially the Bill does give a general power to do a great deal of things. They will be different in different regions, and it seems to me the power allows for that. It will be up to the first set of politicians that are playing their role in the ERAs to really make these things hum.

  Q76  Mr O'Brien: Do you have a view on the general powers and strategies? In the White Paper it was suggested that the number of strategy papers should be ten; in the Bill it is suggested the mandatory should be four strategies that should be written. What is your view on this question and the reduction from ten to four? Is there a significance in that, on the strategies?

  Mr Corry: There has also been a general trend in terms of local government of the government pulling back from demanding lots of different strategies and trying to get them all wrapped up in one community strategy. That must be the right, basic thing to do.

  Mr Adams: The principle that you do not devolve responsibility without power must also be welcome. There is not much point asking a Regional Assembly to develop strategies in areas which has no executive responsibility and little influence. So it should be up to the Assembly to decide how it spends its time.

  Q77  Mr O'Brien: There is a vast difference from the White Paper's suggestion that they should have the strategies set in place for the region then to reduce them from ten to four. There seems to be a change there without any real explanation.

  Mr Corry: You can see it in different ways. All central government departments have worries about any devolution of power, and this is why it is so difficult. They worry that the Regional Assemblies will not care enough about their areas, and they also of course try to keep them out of their areas at the same time. At one point they all wanted the region to have a strategy for their area so that they could keep an eye on it and influence it. It may well be progress that now less of these strategies are being mandated.

  Mr Boles: I have to say that whilst I do not agree with much else that Dan has said I do agree with that. The real problem is that you still have four strategies because strategies do nothing. The only point in having a strategy is if you are the body that then does the stuff, that you provide the stuff, you commission it. The Regional Assemblies are going to do nothing. All of these bodies are out there doing things already; the RDAs are working, they are doing the stuff, they are going to continue to do the stuff. The Regional Assembly might have some influence with the strategy but only within the Secretary of State's guidelines. The fact is, it is just going to be a talking shop and it will create appalling cynicism.

  Q78  Mr Clelland: The problem is that some of these organisations are not democratically accountable and that is really what this is about. In terms of the RDA, the biggest area of responsibility that the Regional Assemblies will have is in the field of economic development. Do you think that that means because of that that other areas of influence they will have over, say, culture, sports, art, higher education will be driven to the periphery, or do you think they will begin diverting the resources from economic development into these areas, and what impact is that likely to have?

  Mr Corry: I think economic development is the number one thing and is the number one thing that people in the regions that vote for these things will be looking for. The Assemblies will have quite strong housing and planning policies. These are very strong powers. They do have a very strong link with the RDA, and it was discussed earlier as to how that would work and if it became too strong was that a problem, and so on. So that is going to be the guts of what they do. As Warren was saying earlier, our work in this area, including that on the London Assembly, shows regional bodies can start to have quite a big influence, even with their much maligned strategies, on certain things which they do not really have much competence over, by being focused, bringing partners and stakeholders together, and being an influence on central government departments, and so on. I think that its role in some areas will be much more like that, giving regional leadership.

  Q79  Mr Betts: When you read through the Bill and the policy statement it does appear—and it is probably taking a fairly hard view—that the powers that the Assemblies are going to have are essentially about consulting and being consulted about working with other agencies, about developing strategies. That is what they are going to spend the vast majority of their time doing. They will spend a tiny bit of their time doing what they are told by central government in various forms and virtually no time at all doing anything that is going to make a significant difference. Is that a very hard judgement?

  Dr Kenway: I think that is slightly too hard a judgement. They are going to spend a lot of time doing things that are going to make a small difference, as Dan was just saying about the London strategies. It does seem to us unavoidable that within this mix there has to be something in there that you can say, when you go out on the doorsteps and argue for it or against it, that people can understand these things are going to have to make a difference. I cannot imagine being able to drum up a great deal of support for a body whose primary public role is described as being economic development. That is all very important work but it is not the thing that is going to energise an electorate.

  Mr Adams: Call me old fashioned, but I do happen to think that ensuring that we have full employment and we provide people with jobs, which is absolutely crucial to individual well being, is an absolutely vital responsibility for the public sector to have. Economic development is not a very sexy word, but when it comes down to it the north-south divide, regional economic disparities are of absolutely crucial importance to the people of the north. If I can go back to Mr Betts' question, I think there is a difference between the relationship between the Assembly and, say, the Learning and Skills Councils or the Highways Agencies, where you are trying to influence organisations which are completely out of your control, and the work of the Regional Assembly influencing and actually driving the work of the Regional Development Agency. Experience in Wales, for example, has shown that the Assembly, Rhodri Morgan, has very much clipped the wings of the WDA, and has recently abolished it even. So the political imperative for the politicians to drive their priorities is very much there, even when you have an arm's length executive agency like an RDA.


 
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