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


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100 - 102)

WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004

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

  Q100  Mr Sanders: It is a good point but I think beware of populations because your minimum population might exclude Cornwall which probably has the strongest case of any area in the country to be treated as a region in its own right.

  Mr Bowles: I certainly agree with you that you want those conditions to be minimal and non-existent if possible.

  Mr Sanders: Yet at the same time you would not then want to attract people in another small area.

  Q101  Chairman: I do not want to name any particular place but is not the danger of that approach that you end up with perhaps three relatively affluent areas wanting to get together and to leave the poorer area which is within it outside that sort of pattern?

  Mr Bowles: That is a very, very good point.

  Q102  Chairman: And, lastly, what is the justice? I have heard various people who were complaining in Blackpool that the people in Wyre were going to have a vote as to whether they wanted to become part of Blackpool whereas the people in Blackpool were not going to have a vote as to whether they wanted to take in the people in Wyre under the proposals that were in place for the North West. I think that is replicated in several other places.

  Mr Bowles: I would have thought that anybody who is going to be affected by an arrangement clearly has to have a vote on that arrangement. It is just the logic of democracy, is it not?

  Chairman: On that note, can I thank you all very much for your evidence.





 
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