CROSS REGIONAL CO-OPERATION
60. If different regions developed individual strategies
and took on functions, it would be important that their priorities
and programmes were coordinated. The draft Bill only required
regions to work with each other in the context of a few specific
matters. For example, when preparing a draft revision to its regional
spatial strategy, an assembly would be required to have regard
to the strategy for neighbouring regions.[73]
By focusing on the role which elected regional government would
play in encouraging coordination within a region, these documents
play down the importance of coordination and consultation between
the regions.
61. A coordinated approach across regions would often
be vital to developing and implementing good policy. This is illustrated
by the ODPM's Northern Way initiative, which focuses on the three
northern regions: Yorkshire and the Humber, the North West and
the North East.[74] In
the foreword to that report, the Deputy Prime Minister highlighted
the importance of a joined-up strategy for the whole of the North,
rather than to separate strategies for each of the three Northern
regions:
To support that step change in development, we
need a long-term vision that can fully exploit the economic and
transport corridors that connect the North - a "Northern
Way" which looks east to west as well as north to south.
A new northern growth strategy which promotes greater inter-regional
collaboration and boosts connectivity and transport links so that
the sum of activity and investment is greater than the parts.[75]
62. Transport is one key area in which it would often
be inappropriate and ineffective for a single region to develop
and implement its own policy without reference to other regions
which would be affected. This was highlighted by the Minister
in oral evidence to us:
We have had fairly lengthy discussions with the
Department of Transport about the appropriate model to ensure
that there is real power and influence in the regions, but within
a framework that recognises that many of the transport networks
are national and have to be coherent nationally. You cannot have
individual regions responsible for sections of the rail network.
Clearly you have got to link, if you take the North East region,
beyond Berwick into Scotland and south of Darlington into Yorkshire
and other regions. That is the balance we are trying to achieve.[76]
Where a policy needs to be developed and implemented
beyond the boundary of a single region, the Government seems to
have taken the approach that the power to implement those policies
must be retained within central government, hence little power
with respect to transport would, under the current proposals,
be devolved to elected regional assemblies.
63. The successful development and implementation
of some policies, for example the maintenance and development
of cross-country railway networks, obviously requires coordination
across regions. An over-emphasis on the importance of central
government in coordinating inter-regional policies and externalities
could act as a brake on devolution, as it has in the context of
transport. The fact that an issue cannot be addressed adequately
by an individual region working in isolation does not necessarily
mean that it is most appropriate to resolve the issue within Whitehall.
Further thought should be given to ways of addressing inter-regional
issues within the context of devolution. It might, for example,
be possible to devolve transport responsibilities to the regions
on the condition that all regions affected by a major development
are required to work together to design, approve and implement
the policy. Central government could usefully retain a role in
facilitating such an inter-regional approach, but need not necessarily
retain overall control.
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