Examination of Witnesses
(Questions 125-139)
MR MARK
LLOYD, MR
ROGER HOWES,
COUNCILLOR ANGUS
CAMPBELL AND
COUNCILLOR KEN
THORNBER
20 MARCH 2006
Q125 Chair: Welcome to our first set
of witnesses this afternoon. We draw to the attention of the Committee
that Mr Byles from the Association of County Council Executives
has not been able to come. Would you like to introduce yourselves?
Mr Howes: I am Roger Howes from
Nottinghamshire County Council, Regional and International Manager.
Councillor Campbell: Angus Campbell,
Deputy Leader, Dorset County Council.
Councillor Thornber: Ken Thornber,
Chairman of the CCN and Leader of Hampshire County Council.
Mr Lloyd: I am Mark Lloyd, Chief
Executive, Durham County Council.
Q126 Chair: Can we start with you,
Councillor Campbell, because in the submissions of Dorset County
Council you urge "a return to local authorities of powers
that have been removed from them to regional level, particularly
in relation to strategic land use and transportation, planning
and housing." What evidence has your Council to put forward
that view, and in what way do you think that the regional level
of governance has been ineffective in those topics?
Councillor Campbell: We did a
bit of clear blue-sky thinking on this one when asked if there
was a future for regional government, which is why we looked at
it right from the beginning. There were various elements to your
question, which I think will probably come up later on. We did
talk for a long time on it in the last part, which says, "Where
do you think regional government is failing the system?"—so
I do not know how long you want me to speak about that.
Q127 Chair: Not too long!
Councillor Campbell: Quite! We
feel that however you work regional government, if there is going
to be regional government, then it should work on geographical
boundaries, which are geographically based socially, economically,
and historically if they can be; so that they are recognised by
the people. We also recognise that the move—and quite rightly—is
bottom-up as far as connecting with communities and the whole
community planning drive is concerned, so that it has some connection
with the people at the grass roots, as well as having a strategic
focus, being big enough to have a strategic focus and being able
to deliver. We think they all meet at the county council level.
Q128 Chair: Can I ask the other witnesses
whether they agree or disagree with that view, and whether they
perceive there to be any role for regional government either in
service delivery or strategic planning.
Mr Lloyd: I sit here representing
County Durham in the north-east of England and of course we have
the experience of having been through a referendum on 4 November
2004 to judge whether the people of the North East wished to see
an elected regional assembly put into place. My council supported
that policy, but the people of the North East rejected an elected
assembly on the basis of four to one, as John Cummings, Member
for Easington, will know well. In that light, we do have a legitimacy
problem with regional governments, but I have to say in a small
region like the north-east of England there are a number of policy
areas where it does make sense for us to come together with a
view to having a coherent approach to governance perhaps or administration
but not government; and we are working at the moment, as you will
appreciate, on issues like spatial planning, transport and housing,
and making some progress through the collaboration across different
councils representing the constituents in the North East. I think,
Chair, that we are different because of scale.
Councillor Thornber: One of the
problems for assemblies is that they lack capacity at the moment.
The capacity in the South East, where I come from, has been provided
by the county councils. As my colleague said, we are large strategic
authorities and we are delivering locally. There is a problem
of accountability too, Madam Chairman: 30% of the members of our
assembly are non-elected, and the others are not elected, they
are nominated—so there is that problem. There is also a
problem of identification with a region on the part of people
locally, and in the south east 8 million people are encompassed
from Banbury down to Dover, almost to Bournemouth and so on; so
there are those difficulties. There is tension between government
officers and regional assemblies, and I am aware of those. All
told, therefore, regional assemblies have not, in my view, added
value to the process; they have added a bureaucratic level.
Q129 Chair: Before bringing in Dr
Pugh, are you speaking against regional assemblies or regional
governance, and are you speaking in your role as Chairman of the
County Councils Network or as the Leader of Hampshire County Council?
Councillor Thornber: I am afraid
the two have overlapped in my reply, Madam Chairman, but I am
speaking on behalf of the CCN. The CCN speaks for our delegation
collectively. I was inevitably focusing on the present, and that
is regional assemblies, but with great respect I would advance
similar arguments in terms of not being in favour of regional
government. It is hardly the topic in our pubs and clubs, Madam
Chairman, is it? The people intuitively in the North East set
their minds against it.
Q130 Dr Pugh: Would you not acknowledge
that there is scope for regional decision-making? In fact, would
you not actually welcome a degree of regional decision-making?
Take for example a transport scheme that is wholly beneficial
to a particular area that uses an enormous amount of available
resources for that region, that will be validated and put forward
or not: would you not sooner that was done by the region agreeing
that that should happen, and that that project should be prioritised
over others; or would you prefer the traditional method, when
you get a big project emerging that spans many county councils,
like a large road improvement? It used to be done by the Department
for Transport looking at everybody's individual transport plans
and saying, "this year we will do this rather than that".
Would you not, as a group of county councils, or representatives
of people in those areas, want to decide some things as a region
for yourselves, with some resources, which you could not decide
and do not normally decide in unitaries as things currently stand?
Councillor Thornber: Madam Chairman,
I think there is a difference between regional government and
regional governance and partnerships. For example, forgive me
drawing from the south-east, but all of the county leaders meet
with their chief executives, and we operate almost as a virtual
regional assembly, and it is that sort of co-operation which will
involve unitaries too, which I think is the way ahead.
Mr Lloyd: Post the North East
referendum, 25 councils in the North East realised that we needed
to bring in a different form of partnership to the way we worked
together, and we have revitalised our Association of North East
Councils. That is not just about county councils but also about
the unitary and district councils in the North East. We are well
able, as a collective, to make decisions on behalf of the North
East, involving other partners. The advantage that that body has
is its legitimacy. The council leaders sitting there are all elected,
representing the people of the North East.
Mr Howes: Certainly very much
the view in Nottinghamshire is that regional organisations of
any sort have to add value, and perhaps at times decision-making
has been passed to the regional level more as a matter of, "it
is time something else moved to the regional level". I am
conscious that at the moment our police authority is meeting with
Charles Clarke today, and they are expecting to be told that things
will go regional as far as the police are concerned, when I think
probably they would say—whether it needs to be said—it
should be left at county level. Why should it go regional? What
is the added value for that particular level? A point was made
earlier about regional funding, and the question was asked whether
it would be a better idea that things passed down to the regional
level to assess priorities. We have got an example in the East
Midlands whereby through the process that has been established,
it has worked against us because we have the A46 between Newark
and Widmerpool, which is Nottinghamshire; it has a dual carriageway
in Lincolnshire on the A46, and then in Leicestershire we have
this awful part in between of single carriageway, with a horrific
road accident toll. It was at the stage of being ready to go forward
under the old system, and designs were sorted; now it is going
under regional funding procedures and because of its cost it would
take up three years' funding of this regional funding.
Q131 Dr Pugh: Is there a distinction
between a regional partnership and a regional decision-making
body? Could you not say a regional decision-making body is intrinsically
more dynamic because if all the partners do not agree to something
in a partnership it does not happen; on the other hand, if you
have a body of some kind that has to make decisions it has to
make decisions at the end of the day and things do happen? A partnership
moves as slow as the slowest member of it, does it not?
Mr Howes: I can see where you
are coming from, but with the regional assemblies at the moment
you have two-thirds local government and one-third of other members
of different stakeholders. Then you can have issues where in fact
if, for instance, the local government side may be split for one
reason or another—you could be talking about key strategic
planning decisions even coming down to levels of housing and so
on—the stakeholders who have not got any form of political
accountability will be effectively making the decision.
Q132 Mr Olner: The title of our inquiry
is: Is there a future for Regional Government? Mr Lloyd
has very aptly said that in the North East a huge question mark
has been answered, and since then it has not gone forward. What
I want to tease out of you is this. In that regional network is
there now a formal role for sub-regional government? I understand
what Dr Pugh said about the partnership issue, but should we not
be putting on the table something for strategic sub-regions within
regions? If that strategic sub-region is based on the city region,
how wide should they be, and how all-embracing should they be
in relation to peripheral towns to the city?
Councillor Thornber: The sub-regional
authority certainly within shire counties is legitimately and
democratically the county council. So far as city regions are
concerned, I do not have a great deal of experience apart from
certain suggestions in Hampshire; but I know intuitively that
people living in what we might call the hinterland around a city
would not want to be absorbed within the city region. I do think
there are ways of increasing productivity without going to the
level of city regions. I do not think productivity is addressed
by taking in the hinterland. There are, after all, social responsibilities
which districts and indeed counties have—not just economic
ones. I really ought to invite Durham to comment on this through
you, Madam Chairman.
Mr Lloyd: The Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister believes that in the North East there are two city
regions—Tyne & Wear and Tees Valley—so following
the logic through that has been promoted you would suggest therefore
two forms of local government in the north-east of England. I
would contend that the city regions of the North East overlap,
and it is not as simple as to draw an administrative line on a
map. If we take, for instance, Durham City in County Durham, it
is a key component of both the Tees Valley and the Tyne &
Wear Economic Development Plans, because it contributes to both,
in the light of the fact that it has a world-class university.
City regions are not new initiative constructs, and I would argue,
and I think many of the academics that have looked at the issue
would argue, that city regions have fuzzy boundaries, dynamic
boundaries that change depending on the issue you are looking
at. If we are concerned with job growth in a particular urban
area, then the travel-to-work pattern would determine the geography.
If we are looking at shopping, it would be a different geography,
and recreation would be another again. I do not think city regions
provide a new form of government, but they do provide helpful
development tools for us.
Q133 John Cummings: Do you see cities
like Durham being disadvantaged if city regions are implemented
widely because of the geographic location and the dynamics of
the county?
Mr Lloyd: Indeed. The short answer
is that I do see towns that are not at the core of this urban
policy being disadvantaged. Indeed, the original question talked
about peripheral towns, and that is just what they would be, which
is why I have some reservations about the notion of building government
on city regions.
Q134 John Cummings: Do you believe
in general that the needs of small towns on the periphery of cities
get enough attention under the present system?
Mr Lloyd: Chairman, if we pursue
the notion of urban-focused policy, the answer to Mr Cummings'
question is "no"; the peripheral towns will not get
the attention that they need. What we need is to make sure that
we have got a combination of urban and rural policy that ensures
the success of our cities—which we all welcome—and
which is not at the expense of other places. We need a balanced
portfolio of development.
Q135 John Cummings: Are you saying
that the present conception of the city region is basically flawed
in relation to the attention it gives to more rural communities?
Mr Lloyd: I share a concern about
the policy development, yes.
Q136 John Cummings: Is that view
shared by the County Councils Network and other members?
Mr Howes: I have just had an example,
which we gave in our submission. For instance, our area of central
and north Nottinghamshire, a former mining and textile area that
is going through a lot of regeneration, is between the Nottingham
city area and the Sheffield city area. If you were to have city
regions, the danger is that there would be a policy vacuum between
the two. In other words, they would not be fully part of one,
not fully part of another; and needing their own particular policies
to regenerate it. At the moment this is happening through sub-regional
partnerships, but a sub-regional partnership specifically for
that area trying to drive forward regeneration. I would also add,
as a separate but linked point, that when you go further south
in Nottinghamshire around the Nottingham area itself, you then
come up against overlapping hinterlands of Nottingham, Derby and
Leicester—as mentioned by Durham. We recognise that and
we are taking a positive approach to that, the strategic authorities
of the three cities of Leicester, Derby and Nottingham; and the
three counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire
are driving forward initiatives where there is added value for
looking at the three cities as a whole.
Q137 John Cummings: Have you conveyed
these concerns to the ODPM; and, if you have, what sort of response
have you received?
Mr Howes: We certainly conveyed
the fears. I think they are at the stage where they are taking
in a lot of information. We had the Minister around, and we made
points to him about the advantages and the difficulties that would
need to be overcome. They are at the stage of listening.
Councillor Thornber: I understand,
Madam Chairman, that we have not had a response.
Q138 Mr Hands: It sounds that the
four of you are all opposed to city regions, or the concept of
them, but possibly for slightly different reasons: Durham because
they would prefer to have the north-east region; and the other
three of you because you prefer the current status quo, county
councils and so on. Most of the arguments that you have come up
with against city regions sounded like, so far, ones of definition
and practicality—how you define a city region, and whether
you could define it in different ways for different issues, whether
you are talking about housing transport or whatever else in terms
of infrastructure. Do you see any major constitutional or other
issues that in your view militate against the concept of city
regions? What are the other arguments against them?
Councillor Thornber: I would say
that perceptions are very important in the acceptance of new structures,
and those people living in what we have termed the hinterland
would regard their legitimate democratic accountabilities as being
diluted, and their interests almost therefore not sufficiently
taken into account. There is the dilution argument for the present
structure, which would inevitably be impacted upon, whether it
is county or whether it is boroughs or district.
Councillor Campbell: Can I go
back to an earlier question?
Q139 Chair: If you are brief.
Councillor Campbell: It is connected.
Most of these things are connected. The point about how authorities
would need to get together anyway to make decisions—I can
see where it is coming from, but the problem we have particularly
in the South West, which is the biggest region, is that every
region like that has edges to it, however arbitrary it is. The
people we would need to communicate with are not necessarily the
ones that are in our region. That is one reason that led Dorset
to its conclusion that it did; that Regional Government should
be set at county, unitary level, and then move outwards, working
with its neighbours, because that makes more sense, both historically
and socially as far as the geography is concerned, to getting
things done.
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