Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR NICHOLAS
RUSSELL, MR
TONY BURTON,
MR RAY
COWELL AND
MR JULIAN
SIMPSON
Q180 Chairman: Do you want strategies
or do you want some extra powers in the legislation because that
is what we are looking at, the legislation? Do you want some extra
powers to actually let the assembly get to grips not only with
coming up with a strategy for health, but making sure that there
is some mechanism to get cash?
Mr Burton: Strategies will suffice.
Mr Cowell: If you are talking
about extra money, then there is nobody in the north-east, I think,
who would argue against that.
Q181 Mr Betts: Another strategy is
the transport strategy and the assemblies will have responsibility
for drawing up transport strategies, but not for implementing
anything. Do you think that is a problem?
Mr Russell: RNIB believe very
strongly that we should have an integrated transport authority
similar to Transport for London. We have been speaking earlier
about the sustainable development part and one thing which is
necessary to achieve that surely is the ability actually to deliver
on the transport front.
Q182 Mr Betts: Can I just pursue
this for a second. I have read your submissions on that and it
sounds all very nice, but what does it mean in practice, that
when my constituents have a problem with their local bus service,
instead of going down to the office in Sheffield to sort it out
where the transport authority currently is based, they end up
going to York or Wakefield or wherever the new regional transport
authority is located?
Mr Russell: Well, you could have
sub-regional provision for buses perhaps and that is a situation
where perhaps there is some provision for further devolution,
but there are some things where if we do not have a regional transport
authority and the result of the local government bid for the referendums
is that we end up with the unitaries being equivalent to the former
districts, for example, are we going to have the major roads all
as the responsibility of the district council? Transport for London
have the responsibility for practically all of the strategic roads
in London, except a few small sections. The Government's rail
review issued earlier this year specifically suggested regional
control as one of the possible methods of controlling our railways
and indeed the Government has already made it clear it is against
that.
Q183 Mr Betts: What you are arguing
is pushing responsibilities up from where they are with local
councils at present or transport authorities in the met areas
and not actually pushing them down in terms of the allocation
of resources from the centre and controlling what probably happens
to the national transport budgets.
Mr Russell: Well, certainly large
amounts of transport provision do need some sort of strategic
regional co-ordination. I think no one would argue for district
councils to be given powers to run a rail service, for example,
or the responsibility for—
Q184 Mr Betts: Well, they do or the
transport authorities in the met areas do have powers to actually
provide rail services and some do.
Mr Russell: I think we have to
remember that the passenger transport executives, as good as they
are, only cover some metropolitan parts of some regions and we
probably need, in setting up the regional transport authorities,
to look at a way of keeping the good that the PTEs have done.
Mr Burton: I think there is a
key relationship here between what happens to local government
within the changes that are being made. The more you move towards
smaller, fragmented unitaries, the more appropriate it will be
for the elected regional assembly to have transport powers and
the trouble is that we are likely to get a different approach—
Q185 Mr Betts: What sort of powers
would you see it having?
Mr Burton: Well, the powers in
relation to county council management of highways, for example,
would not be appropriately operated within a fragmented unitary
structure based on a district model. It simply would not operate.
But if you retained a large unitary structure within an elected
regional assembly, then the added value of the elected regional
assembly over the larger unitaries operating it would be less
obvious. So it may well be, as with so much of the regional debate,
that different solutions will win out in different parts of the
country depending on the relationship between the regional assembly
and the local authority structure underneath.
Mr Cowell: I think many of the
subjects we are talking about are not just regional or just local,
but there are interventions needed at district, local, sub-regional
and regional levels. What we are missing at the moment is that
regional level, the strategic kind of overview and the kind of
horizontal integration of local with sub-regional with regional
and that seems to me to be one thing that a regional assembly
could offer, that kind of vertical and horizontal integration
of those different levels of responsibility.
Q186 Christine Russell: Can I just
ask you who you really think should be responsible for setting
concessionary fares policies?
Mr Russell: That is something
that we specifically commented on.
Q187 Chairman: Just tell us who.
Mr Russell: Well, we were specifically
suggesting that this become part of the regional assemblies because
in the current situation we have a very big patchwork quilt and
indeed in the case of blind and partially sighted people, many
of them, for example, have to travel outside the area covered
by their concessionary fare issued by the district just to get
to their specialist eye hospital.
Q188 Chairman: So you are setting
it down for the regional assemblies?
Mr Russell: Yes.
Q189 Sir Paul Beresford: That would
not be necessary in the south-east because most people in the
south-east do not travel from Milton Keynes on one side through
to Kent on the other, but they travel on one side of London, it
is radial, so it just would not make any difference. It would
not be a real advantage.
Mr Russell: I accept that there
is a problem with the way the south-east region is constructed
with London stuck in the middle, as it were, but it still would
give you a wider area. I think, for example, if you were a visually
impaired person going to your nearest eye hospital, you probably
would not be travelling from Milton Keynes to Kent, despite all
our concerns.
Q190 Chairman: So you would want
a concessionary system across the area of a regional assembly.
Can I just take you on now to the question of the voting system.
Are there any problems with the referendum as it has been held
now in the north-east as far as the voting is concerned?
Mr Russell: We continue to maintain
our concerns about the fully postal voting that we submitted in
evidence to your previous inquiry on postal voting.
Q191 Chairman: I did not ask you
that. I asked you whether there was a problem now in the north-east
as far the voting is concerned?
Mr Russell: Yes, we believe we
still have the same problems. We also have the additional—
Q192 Chairman: So you have got people
who specifically complained to the returning officer in the north-east
about the way in which the ballot papers were being sent out?
Mr Russell: Well, we had complaints
all over the place with the recent European elections.
Q193 Chairman: No, I am not asking
you about that. I am asking you about the process which is now
in train in the north-east. Can you tell me exactly what is happening
as far as the difficulties that you envisage in the north-east
are concerned?
Mr Russell: It is too early—
Q194 Chairman: You do not know?
Mr Russell: It is too early yet
to hear from blind and partially sighted people on the ground,
but in addition to our concerns about postal voting per se,
we have an additional concern which is about the use of maps for
the local government part of the referendum which are nigh on
impossible to make accessible, except possibly via the web or
having to phone up to get the information. If, as is often the
case, your ballot paper is lying there on the doormat waiting
for your friend or relative to come and read it a week later,
you may be very close to the deadline for getting that paper back.
If you then have to make a call or go to the library to access
the website just to know what—
Q195 Chairman: So your concern is
that the maps which are available for people who have no sight
problems are not available in a form which is accessible for people
who have to use Braille?
Mr Russell: We tried to suggest
a very simple solution which was for the explanatory notes which
go with the ballot paper to have it made clear which district
council area you were currently in. If that was the case, we believe
it would have been possible to work out without the access to
the maps. Regrettably, the Electoral Commission and the ODPM did
not feel that this was possible.
Q196 Chris Mole: The Committee have
taken a strong interest in heritage. Mr Burton, do you think that
anything needs to change in the draft Bill perhaps to further
draw the heritage sector into the work of the regional assemblies?
Mr Burton: We would welcome clarity
that heritage and the historic environment are all part of culture.
This is a rather catch-all term which is used exclusively in some
places and inclusively in others. We do think there is merit in
investigating bringing together the cultural consortia and the
regional historical environment fora within a broad definition
of culture which embraces the historic environment. We think that
would ensure the potential and opportunity which is provided by
the historic environment to the delivery of economic, social and
environmental purposes would have a stronger voice and would be
better recognised. In terms of voluntary sector involvement, we
are disappointed that the Government appears to have jumped to
the conclusion that the only people who can provide formal advice
on the historic environment are English Heritage regional directors.
It seems a rather strange and exclusive way of approaching it
when they are talking about the voluntary sector and others providing
advisers in almost all other areas. We think it is an anomaly
which is a policy commitment rather than being on the face of
the Bill at the moment, but it is an anomaly which will place
a particular interpretation on the historic environment in the
process rather than put forward the one which we would see embraced.
Q197 Chris Mole: So what you describe
is the existing regional cultural consortia, which are voluntary
partnerships of interested agencies, coming together, being part
of the assemblies and continuing to have essentially only an influencing
role. Do you think there should be a direct role for the assemblies
in terms of taking over the funds which currently come through
DCMS, the Lottery, the Arts Council, Sports Council or those sorts
of channels?
Mr Burton: I think that case is
yet to be proven, but certainly not in relation to the Lottery
and we have not offered evidence in relation to sport or the Arts
Council.
Q198 Chris Mole: What needs to be
proven?
Mr Burton: What the added value
would be for the funding streams that are currently managed by
DCMS or English Heritage coming through the regional assemblies.
We are not persuaded yet that the case is there that there would
be regional benefit.
Q199 Chris Mole: Do you not think
that regional people would have a better view than DCMS on the
spending of funds in the region?
Mr Burton: We think that the opportunity
for ensuring that you have essentially a statutory basis for working
out what it is that is important is a starting point. It could
well be that once that has been proven, those streams could flow,
but we do not think you should start with the strengthening of
the strategy and a once-and-for-all decision about that.
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