Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR RICHARD
ALLAN, MR
IAN SCOTTER,
MR JONATHAN
BLACKIE AND
MR ANDREW
CAMPBELL
Q280 Mr Betts: That has been decided,
has it?
Mr Allan: That is the policy approach
in the White Paper.
Q281 Mr Betts: It is not in the legislation
though. One thing that is not in the legislation is the split
between directly elected and list elected members. You are saying
that the likely eventual secondary legislation which will define
that will have a 2-1—
Mr Allan: The Government has been
clear that it is a two-thirds one-third split, yes, but that still
gives you—you will still know, if you live, in a particular,
part of Yorkshire, that my constituency is X, even though it is
large, and my member is Mr Y.
Q282 Mr Betts: It is going to be
three times the size and that is going to give the sort of direct
local contact, is it, that might be necessary to make the regional
assembly relevant to people?
Mr Allan: This is not intended
to be a local body, of course, it is a regional body, and the
idea is to have—
Q283 Mr Betts: Parliament is not
a local body but the Parliamentary constituency is a third of
the size?
Mr Allan: Yes, I understand that,
but the ministers' starting point is that they do want—
Q284 Mr Betts: Have you had any consultation
with anybody about the system of voting or the size of constituencies?
Mr Allan: This has been the Government's
policy ever since—
Q285 Mr Betts: That is not the question
I asked. Has there been any consultation with anybody?
Mr Allan: The proposal was . .
. This was announced as the Government's policy in May 2002.
Q286 Mr Betts: Has there been any
consultation on it?
Mr Allan: A lot of views were
given in response to that paper.
Q287 Mr Betts: Which organisations
are in favour of this particular form of voting? Can you name
them?
Mr Allan: I do not think I can
give you a list. I mean, a lot of people—
Q288 Mr Betts: Can you give me one?
Mr Allan: I expect if I went back
to the office and looked at the hundreds of responses we have
had then I could. A lot of—
Chairman: Perhaps you could give us a
note, fairly quickly, of the number that is in favour of this
system.
Q289 Mr Betts: Is it not a bit strange
that at the very time that we have had the Richards Report in
Wales and the Scottish Executive apparently is looking at possibly
changing the voting system in Scotland away from these deficiencies
in the system that we are now proposing for regional assemblies?
Is there not a problem identified in the different roles that
members play, those who are directly elected have different functions
to those who are elected under the regional assembly?
Mr Allan: This is the system,
as you say, that we have in Wales, Scotland and the GLA, so it
is not a novel or an unusual system. The Richards Report is, of
course, addressed specifically at the Welsh Assembly. As I understood
it, its recommendation was that if the Welsh Assembly got larger,
more than 60 seats, then the method of voting could be looked
at, but I do not think ministers are in that larger assembly territory.
Q290 Chris Mole: Looking at the size
of assemblies, the existing voluntary assemblies vary in size
from about 35 up to over 100. Which of those do you think are
working best at the moment?
Mr Allan: I would not like to
make a judgment. They have been . . . Different assemblies have
themselves chosen different sizes to suit their circumstances,
and there are regions where, because there is a two-tier local
government structure, if you had all the local authorities represented
on the assembly that would give you a very large body. Some regions
have chosen to do exactly that, others have chosen quite a different
pattern.
Q291 Chairman: Do you think it is
a good idea to have an election system in which people work hard
to get elected and yet quite often, as in the Welsh Assembly,
you get a situation where the winner ends up having exactly the
same rights as the loser because the loser comes in as a topper?
Mr Allan: I would not . . . I
think it would be wrong to describe the person who has won through
the list system as a loser. He has won through a different route.
Q292 Christine Russell: Do you think
the low numbers that are proposed for the directly elected members
actually reflect the fact that they have very little to do, far
less perhaps than your average existing county council?
Mr Allan: It will certainly be
very different from an existing county council, because it will
not be a service-delivery organisation. There will be a small
executive, as defined in the Bill, and the main role of the other
members of the assembly will be scrutiny and not—
Q293 Chairman: And scrutiny does
not take up much time!
Mr Allan: Scrutiny and policy
formulation can actually take up quite a lot of time, but it is
a different function from the local government one.
Q294 Sir Paul Beresford: You said,
"Scrutiny . . . can take up a lot of time." Is there
not a well-known law about that? We are going to have difficulties
with yet another body trying to legitimise itself trying to find
something to do. The GLA is an example?
Mr Allan: As I say, it is a different
function; I think it is still a very valuable function.
Q295 Mr Sanders: Turning to the executive
in scrutiny, the Government have said that a three-member executive
would be enough to discharge the functions of an elected assembly.
The question is how would you envisage responsibility being divided
between members of such a small executive?
Mr Allan: The Bill provides for
it to be the leader plus between two and six, and it would be
for the executive to decide how to allocate portfolios between
them.
Q296 Mr Sanders: So you are not in
any sense concerned about how few people would be at the top?
Mr Allan: That would be for them
to decide.
Q297 Mr Sanders: The scrutiny committee
is supposed to reflect the composition of the assembly itself
and to follow the Westminster model. The draft Bill makes it clear
that this would not be possible, instead creating the likelihood
of the majority of the political party controlling the executive
with the opposition controlling the RMC. If this happened how
would it impact on the effectiveness and perception of the RMC
scrutiny of the executive?
Mr Allan: As you say, the RMC
is a body of back-benchers and therefore its political balance
is going to be different from that of the assembly as a whole,
depending partly on how the executive is made up and whether it
is drawn from a single party. That is going to have an effect
on the dynamic of how the RMC operates, though if you look at
the GLA, where the number of people is quite closely balanced,
both in the first election and the second election, it is a bit
more complicated than a big opposition block and what we might
think of the Government controlling the executive. You might expect
it to operate in a more co-operative fashion.
Q298 Sir Paul Beresford: It would
not really matter, because after all, as you have just said, it
is not doing anything on the surface, all it is doing is—it
is a talking shop, of sorts, and reacts to consultation?
Mr Allan: Well, it is not executive,
as you say, but it can be expected to want to develop a policy
for the region and, of course, to scrutinise what the executive
does. Ian, do you want to add anything?
Q299 Chairman: Could you speak up
a little bit because one or two people at the back are having
difficulty hearing.
Mr Scotter: The role of the review
model . . . First of all, I am not sure whether your comment was
about the elected assembly as a whole or the review of the monitoring
committee.
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