Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR NICHOLAS
BOLES, MR
JOHN ADAMS,
MR DAN
CORRY, MR
WARREN HATTER
AND DR
PETER KENWAY
Q80 Sir Paul Beresford: But the economic
development argument, which everybody would agree with the crux
of what you were saying, this Assembly can talk about it, it can
get a strategy, but it cannot do anything; all it can do is talk
to other people, all it can do is consult or react to consulting.
Mr Adams: I do not think that
is true. The Regional Development Agency does exist.
Q81 Sir Paul Beresford: It can build
thousands of houses in areas where the local people will not necessarily
want them but they will not have any say in it because it is no
longer local.
Mr Adams: But there are very important
regional decisions when you come to regional planning. There are
extremely hard decisions to make about regional planning and whether
local authorities can just carry on building the houses wherever
they want, or whether you have to take some hard decisions across
the region to have some more tempered increase in the supply of
housing, and those are very difficult decisions which have not
been made and which have very important knock-on consequences
for people who have to live in areas of low abandonment and also
possibly for economic growth.
Mr Boles: I think you are shifting
the goalposts there because you were suggesting that economic
development was the key and now you are moving to their planning
role. The planning role is, I agree with you, a real power and
an utterly inappropriate one for a body this distant from the
people and this distant from the communities affected by planning
decisions to exercise. So that is the one real power that they
have and they should not have it. The economic development point,
fortunately the British people understood quite a long time ago
the one thing that guarantees full employment, which is fortunately
what we almost have in this country, is not what RDAs or Regional
Assemblies or anybody else does; it is the fact that we have low
inflation, a good monetary policy and, though I am not a total
supporter of his, a Chancellor who is manning a very tight budget.
That is what creates the circumstances of economic development.
The RDAs have a role and it is a role that is best run by local
businesses who understand what are the real constraints on their
development, not by a bunch of rather distant, full-time politicians.
Q82 Mr Betts: In terms of winning
public support for the concept—and we have talked about
the referendum test as being something that we have to get to,
and in some ways I am rather glad I am not trying to persuade
people to vote for this in its present form—is it not true
that we are going to have to have two or three things which the
public easily understand are the functions of a body which, in
exercising them, is going to make a difference to their lives?
We can see in London that the transport was not really connected
to any part of the democratic process and the changes with the
Mayor and the GLA brought it back into the democratic process.
If the regional bodies in England were to have some power to bring
back regulation of bus services, which is a complete shambles
at present in places like Sheffield, then people might begin to
understand that there is something for them to do which will actually
affect them.
Mr Corry: You are underestimating
what is already in the Bill. If you can say this Regional Assembly
is all about trying to deliver economic prosperity in the north-east—and
at some time Nick needs to look at the inequalities across the
regions in these things, he is living in a strange world—this
is quite something. But, I absolutely agree, transport is the
big missing thing in the Bill. The White Papers on transport that
came out at the time of the Spending Review started to move to
a more regional approach, particularly with the PTEs and so on.
I think that is the one thing that we would like to see quite
a lot more of.
Q83 Chairman: Can I take you on to
the question of scrutiny in the Bill? Does it do it well?
Mr Corry: I think as Tony said
earlier, there is a difference from London—and we have done
work on how scrutiny works in London—and there is a big
issue there because the Mayor has separate legitimacy through
the way he is elected. In the Regional Assemblies it will be different.
We have proportional representation, so it may well be in a lot
of Assemblies we will have almost "coalition governments"—it
may not be true in the first one, but it may be. So that is going
to make things different. I think the design of the Review and
Monitoring Committee and its sub-committees and area committees
is quite interesting. I heard what people said earlier about a
change from the way things are done elsewhere on the proportions
of party representatives. The powers look pretty strong—to
call people, and so on. So I think everything is in place. I think
all places where scrutiny has been brought in recently, in London,
in local government, the scrutiny people have found it difficult
to find out exactly what their role is. In London scrutiny has
done some very good reports raising issues to political attention,
reports on the health of the London economy and that sort of thing.
What they have been much less good at is scrutinising the decisions
the Executive makes, and the same thing has happened in local
government, and I doubt we have found the answer in this Bill.
But I do not know what the answer is, to be honest; it is tricky
stuff and we are all learning.
Q84 Chairman: Should the bill then
prescribe or should it be left to the Assemblies to make up their
own mind how they would do it?
Mr Corry: I think maybe there
could be a bit more discretion in here, but I think the way the
government seems to see scrutiny working is to try and make it
not just a political bun fight, and there is a danger that if
you left it entirely to an Assembly to decide, the dominant party
would seek to shape scrutiny so that it would not cause it any
trouble, and that could not be right.
Q85 Christine Russell: A number of
you have already pointed out and identified the fact that the
draft Bill sets out this very wide general purpose but, in reality,
gives the proposed Elected Regional Assemblies very little spending
money. You, Mr Boles, have mentioned perhaps transferring some
NHS funding to the regional bodies. Is that a serious proposition?
What other additional areas of funding do you think could be realistically
transferred to the proposed bodies?
Mr Boles: I think that is perhaps
putting the cart before the horse in the sense that what I am
suggesting is that if you are going to have Regional Assemblies
at all there is only a point in doing it if you are transferring
a very large chunk of something that central government currently
does to Regional Assembly management, and one example could be
to regionalise the NHS which is, let us face it, the most centralised
organisation in the western world. That would be real, beefy at
that stage for a Regional Assembly and it would be real devolution—it
would be power going away from the centre rather than being sucked
from below. I think that taking a bit of NHS funding and ladling
it to them without having a real role is not really the point.
I would agree with Tony Travers' comment earlier, which is that
if you are going to create these bodies—and I sincerely
hope that all of the referendum will turn them down—then
at least give them independent funding power because we see with
local government that local government is really no longer local
government, it is local agency. If you want to make it local government
or regional government it has to be independent and autonomous
in its funding as with everything else.
Q86 Christine Russell: So what about
the other three groups of you?
Dr Kenway: I think there is a
general point that the things that seem to us to be most appropriate
at a regional level are things that you could in some sense call
"infrastructure". That obviously includes transport.
There are some issues—and again we are looking here at the
London level—the question of some aspects of school, not
the performance or what schools do inside them, but where schools
are; an admissions policy. There is a move at the moment to have
some attempt to provide across London a uniform admissions policy.
You have accused me already of trying to move the goal posts;
I think the next suggestion is more a Clive Woodward, of trying
to change the game. But one area of infrastructure that in some
parts of the country, certainly the southwest of England, people
would, I suspect, be very keen to have some democratic control
over is water. That is even further away, given that it is now
privatised and regulated, although not in any sense competitive.
I think one has to think in quite an ambitious way along those
sorts of lines, but certainly transport is the biggest single
thing, and the evidence from Europe, when you look and see what
have these regions done, one finds it is things to do with transport
which are their big successes.
Q87 Christine Russell: Do your two
organisations also agree about transport?
Mr Corry: I mentioned about transport
earlier. I think in the long run you can see the regions playing
a very different role from that envisaged in the Bill. We have
published a report suggesting that the regional allocation for
local authorities should be given to an Elected Regional Assembly
to then allocate down to local authorities, much as happens in
most European countries. But that is in the long run. I think
it would be wrong to jump in this Bill to that sort of system.
There are serious question marks, which there already are in London,
about what on earth the Government Office is doing and whether
it should be so big, and whether there are a lot of things it
does that should go. If we do have an Elected Regional Assembly
I think that will be a question that will come up very quickly.
Learning and Skills is the other area worth highlighting there.
If Regional Assemblies happen and are successful what we would
expect to see them leading successful regional economic policies.
It is a big part of the agenda, and obviously there are issues
with the relationships between different government departments
and where these funding streams come from. Clearly there is no
way that, by the time we get the first ERAs, Learning and Skills
Council funding is going to be directly under ERA control, but
I would suggest that that is the way to move.
Q88 Christine Russell: Can we talk
now about running costs? Five pence a week on the rates and £25
million a year; is that realistic?
Mr Corry: It is hard to know.
You will have to ask the officials how they calculate the numbers.
What should be happening is that this should not be additional,
most of this money should be stuff that was being spent by Whitehall,
from Whitehall civil servants, or whatever, coming down, and we
must make sure that is what happens. Similarly, some of it should
be coming out of the Government Office work as the work is taken
over by the Regional Assemblies.
Mr Adams: Can I come back to the
comment about funding? Obviously funding must follow the powers
and I agree with other colleagues on the table that transport
is the great big hole in the government's devolution plans. I
think the area of Learning and Skills is more controversial. I
am not an expert on Learning and Skills by any means, but my colleagues
at IPPR, who do a lot more work in this area, are more sceptical
about the regionalisation of the Learning and Skills agenda because
fundamentally what they would like to see is the empowerment of
the individual to choose his or her own training skills, rather
than the ability of officials within the new regional Learning
and Skills, or whatever would replace it, trying to plan the skill
needs for individuals. So fundamentally the people who argue for
regionalisation are pretty much arguing for that because they
think they can do a better job of working out what the local economy
needs. I am not an expert but that is the argument put forward
by my colleagues within IPPR. If you look back 10 years a lot
of people were very dismissive about individuals who took media
courses—they called them "Mickey Mouse" media
courses—but of course the evidence now shows that the individuals
who took those courses do better than the average. So for that
individual, the 18-year who made that choice, it was a very intelligent
choice to make, but some of the people who know best would not
have gone down that route. I sit on the fence somewhat because
it is not particularly my area, but there is not the consensus
which there is in transport, I believe.
Mr Boles: I just want to register
an emphatic nod to everything my colleague just said.
Mr Adams: Colleague?
Mr Boles: Okay, opponent, if you
prefer!
Q89 Christine Russell: Can I ask
you about targets because in your submission you referred to this
idea of setting targets for the Regional Assemblies and then linking
additional funding? Do you have any further comments to add on
that?
Mr Corry: There are two bits.
We were thinking about the way local public service agreements
(LPSAs) work and whether the regional assembly should play some
role in either negotiating them, rather than the government office
as they do now, or at least being involved so that LPSAs are consistent
with regional strategies. This is all about making everything
consistent. There is also an issue about whether we should have
regional public service agreements. Is that the way to do these
things? A bit like local government, regional assemblies ultimately
are going to end up doing some things where they have complete
freedom to do what they want and there are going to be other things
where the Government is going to ask them to be a delivery agency
or at least a monitoring agency. The Treasury sometimes refers
to these bodies as "intermediate" bodies in its Devolving
Public Services paper. Some of these ideas are interesting.
We are very interested in multi-tier governance, which is what
we are getting and the key thing is how do these different levels
join up. There are a lot of mechanisms and some of them will be
around these kinds of ideas.
Q90 Chairman: One of the key things
is going to be the amount of money that the government has to
pass down to these bodies. When I used to dish out pocket money
to my kids it was relatively easy to give them money for things
that I approved of them spending it on but when I definitely did
not approve it was quite difficult. Do you really see the mechanism
in here to ensure that the English regional assemblies are going
to be able to get money from central government to do things that
central government might not approve of?
Mr Corry: Central government has
real problems doing that with local government. The thing that
I am united with Nick on is that they should do a lot more to
devolve. You have got to take the ring-fencing off and all the
rest of that sort of thing. With regional government it is the
same thing, the more it comes out of a single pot and you leave
it to the assembly to decide how to spend it better. The crunch—we
all know that—will happen when we have a government of one
colour in Westminster and of another in the region, the same thing
we are waiting for to happen, if it ever does, in Wales and Scotland.
There will be different tensions. Multi-level governance does
have tensions and does have conflicts but ultimately you have
to decide whether it is the right direction to go in or not.
Q91 Chairman: In quite a lot of European
countries there is almost a constitutional settlement which not
only sets out the powers but sets out separate funding. Would
that not make a big difference to this?
Mr Corry: It would. I think we
are a long way from leaping to that though.
Chairman: Adrian Sanders?
Q92 Mr Sanders: How would you characterise
relationships between current regional organisations (RDAs, government
offices, regional chambers) and what changes are likely if an
elected regional assembly is introduced in place of regional chambers?
Mr Hatter: I think the first part
of the answer is that it differs in different regions. Let's bear
in mind that that question really also includes the English regions
that are not up for a referendum, be they delayed or not. There
is certainly some evidence from our research, but anecdotally
as well, that in regions where an ERA is just not on the agenda,
let's say the South East for example where there really are not
very many people who would argue for it, that means that there
are not the tensions there that are associated with support or
opposition for an ERA which means that there is no barrier to
the three main regional bodies working effectively and to local
agencies and others working with them. But, I do not think it
is as simple as saying that in regions like the South East things
work more effectively. What seems to be the case is that relationships
work best where there are people with real credibility who are
trying to make progress on agendas where it is clear that there
is a need for a stronger regional dimension than there is now.
I think another thing to bear in mind starting to come through
from some of our research is of course in reality a lot of the
individuals who will be involved if we do get ERAs will be the
same people and that will facilitate relationships working fairly
well. I think that reflects on what Tony Travers said in response
to one of your questions earlier on.
Mr Adams: I think it is also fair
to say that of the three regional institutions the regional chambers
and regional assemblies are very much the junior partner. It is
almost like politics where Labour and Conservative are the two
big parties and the Liberals are possibly half another one. The
capacity of regional assemblies is simply not as big as the RDAs
or government offices. They do not have the staff or the capacity
and they are also disadvantaged by their governance structures
where they report to local authorities, which of course is a collection
of representatives, a sample of local authorities across the region,
so that mitigates against, for example, taking harder decisions
in regional spatial strategies because you cannot expect the individual
from Durham not to argue for Durham and you cannot expect the
individual from Newcastle not to argue for Newcastle. So taking
region wide hard decisions is very difficult with that sort of
structure.
Q93 Mr Sanders: How would that change
if they were elected? Surely it would be even worse if they were
elected and the person elected for Newcastle would be arguing
for Newcastle within the regional assembly? How does it differ?
Mr Adams: I see what you are saying
but I think you underestimate the parochial nature of the current
regional assemblies and also when you have an elected assembly
you will have to be an executive representing the political parties
and talking for the whole of the region. So I think it will be
much harder to hide behind different geographical interests when
you have the executive headlining supposedly leading for the region
in a much more high profile manner.
Q94 Chairman: Can I take you on to
this question. We are basically going to end up with a hotchpotch
of devolution, starting in Scotland, coming down through Wales,
with some of the English regions possibly with elected bodies
and some of them without. Does that matter?
Dr Kenway: Not at all. It seems
to me to be in a way a rather strange question. Yes, it is going
to pose challenges for ODPM and central government but that is
what they are there for. It is the model in other countries. You
have different regional settlements. If you look at somewhere
like Spain—
Q95 Chairman:—That causes a
certain amount of tension in Spain, does it not, with some of
those who do not have quite as much autonomy wanting more autonomy?
I think the same is true in Italy, is it not, that there are some
fairly substantial autonomous regions and other regions are pressing
to have equality with them?
Dr Kenway: That is true so those
tensions between almost competitive regions seem to me to be in
many ways constructive and positive. People are going to be arguing
for more powers because they see others having them and presumably
using them to good effect. In a way that seems to me to be a rather
British approach to the thing, that rather than trying to design
a perfect blueprint and imposing it from the top, you allow a
system rather messily to emerge through experience. In substance
what this Bill in our view needs to do is to allow that to happen.
We should see that as a strength not a weakness. Really that would
be a central planner's perspective and not one I would have thought
was—
Q96 Chairman: Is it logical to start
with regions or might it be more logical, at least for some parts,
to look like city states or enlarged city regions, particularly
the issue of the South East?
Dr Kenway: I would certainly agree
that one should not in any sense restrict this thing to the boundaries
of the government office regions. It seems to me to be inconceivable
as it is to everyone else, that anything in the South East could
possibly exist. One ought to allow potentially other regions or
subregions to emerge if there is a desire for it and a need for
it with those things being ultimately decided in the referendum.
Q97 Chairman: The Government obviously
resisted that pressure because it just thought it would be very,
very difficult to get agreement on alternative regions or subregions.
Do you think there is any evidence that you can produce a pattern
for some of the places that you have just referred to which will
work logically?
Dr Kenway: I do not know is the
straight answer. Do I have evidence? No. I think to go down a
route that involves drawing lines on maps you have already lost
it. I think one wants a process that in some sense says if subregions,
which could be groups of counties for example, want to come forward
that seems to me to be the only way to do it but no, no evidence
that it would work.
Q98 Chairman: You could split the
South East into three, could you not, and still have three subregions
that were larger than the North East?
Dr Kenway: I think that is probably
right.
Q99 Mr Betts: Could I follow that
through. Initially the problem with the current model is that
we are dealing with historic lines on maps. Just to go back to
my own situation in Sheffield, which is a fairly significant subregional
economy, the regional boundaries actually cut through the travel-to-work
area and about a third of Sheffield's travel-to-work area is in
a different region. If regional economic planning is the main
purpose of these bodies it seems rather odd that we end up with
that sort of situation.
Mr Bowles: I completely agree
with Nick but just want to suggest a practical way that one could
go forward. You could just say that if a sufficient number of
people had got together, signed a petition, or whatever it is,
saying that they want to have a referendum on a particular region
they could get funding from the Electoral Commission for a campaign,
and you would have a campaign. That organising group would have
had to have got to a minimum target level of support and they
would define what was the region they were trying to create. The
question would be put to the people in that space and it would
be decided and then central government would have a duty to pass
to that regional construction. You would probably have some minima
in terms of size of population but that would be proper, grassroots,
organic devolution taking place rather than this top-down construction.
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