Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-149)
MR MARK
LLOYD, MR
ROGER HOWES,
COUNCILLOR ANGUS
CAMPBELL AND
COUNCILLOR KEN
THORNBER
20 MARCH 2006
Q140 Mr Betts: There is a contradiction
here. We have Mr Howes from Nottingham talking about this problem
of areas that fall between two regions in north Nottinghamshire,
between Nottingham and Sheffield, and he puts that as a reason
why perhaps they are not a good idea. Then we had the issue from
Councillor Thornber about diminution of links and the problems
at the periphery. Councillor Campbell has drawn attention to the
fact that there is this problem sometimes of areas that do not
have an affinity in some way being in different regions. That
surely leads back to the point that Mr Howes made; for example,
taking a place like Worksop, which is in Nottinghamshire. All
its links are with Nottingham County Council, but in terms of
its economic links it will probably have far more in common with
Sheffield but never has a say in what happens in Sheffield or
any decisions there. It is a completely different region, let
alone a different county. Have we not got to find some way of
addressing those sorts of issues?
Mr Lloyd: I cannot comment on
Worksop specifically but we have a similar example with North
Yorkshire and its affiliations with Tees Valley in the south of
the North East, and yet it is in a different region. We are trying
to construct a partnership that allows areas outside of current
governance structures to play a full part; so North Yorkshire
County Council are joining Durham County Council in discussions
with all of the unitary authorities that make up Tees Valley.
That approach is working well. We have moved away from a fixation
with the government structures and asked what we are trying to
achieve and the issues we are trying to address. What is the commonality
of purpose; what is the shared ambition; and how can we collaborate
around that? Rather than worry about how many seats we have around
a table, we are saying, "we want to create more jobs, do
we not; we want to improve transport, do we not?" We are
focusing on the specifics.
Q141 Mr Betts: It seems there that
while you would not call that a city region because Tees Valley
might not be a city, the concept you are trying to address is
very similar to the work say that Manchester is doing in terms
of collaboration on a city region there. It may be a different
brand name, but the process does not seem that different to me.
Councillor Thornber: The construct
has to be almost amoeba-like. I know Worksop—I come from
Nottinghamshire originally—and they will look to Nottinghamshire
on certain issues, and they will be drawn to certain issues in
south Yorkshire. Ideally, through regional governance and partnership
you can embrace the different issues as they arise through a flexible
structure, an amoeba-like shape, in order to be able to take in
the particular issue. Regional boundaries are pretty hard and
fast, are they not, sir? They are laid down by government. There
will be problems across regional boundary co-operation, which
can best be addressed voluntarily rather than—forgive me
using the term—by diktat.
Q142 Anne Main: You talked quite
a lot about influence. In the Dorset County Council's submission
there were claims that the government offices and regional development
associations had undue influence over regional assembly officers,
and yet at the same time local authorities and the public at large
had little or no influence. Can you expand on that somewhat? In
what ways do you believe that is the case?
Councillor Campbell: The whole
set-up, particularly in a big region like ours, is that you are
relying on 60 per cent of the people who are elected members to
various authorities having to get to Exeter—some come from
Gloucester, some come from Christchurch and some come from the
end of Cornwall—to a lot of meetings. There are a whole
plethora of meetings, particularly when we have the Regional Spatial
Strategy going through—about two years' worth. Our impression
is that the South West Regional Assembly officers are under constant
pressure, certainly from government office of South West and the
RDA, but particularly government office. So a small number of
officers, which run the regional assembly have to produce an awful
lot of paperwork and administer a lot of meetings, yet a lot of
the continuity that you would get in an ordinary authority cannot
be there as far as the elected element is concerned, because they
are not there with the officers as they would be at the district
or at the county level—also it is quite difficult to get
people to attend all the time because they have other duties.
You therefore get perhaps a third of people who do not get to
some of these meetings because of their other duties; whereas
the constant pressure on the officers of the regional assembly
from other quarters is constant. One tends to worry sometimes
about how things are moved on. For instance, it took us two years
working on the regional spatial strategy; there were arguments
over big issues like housing numbers and infrastructure particularly
with the housing numbers because you would naturally pick that
out—trying to get answers to that which the local authorities
could understand was in line with the evidence that they had supplied
against the top-down stance that was taken from the regional assembly
end. It took an awful long time and we probably did not get there
in the end. I feel that if it, Regional Government, was closer
to the people who are democratically elected to it, you would
get a quicker answer. It also takes us back to the 30 per cent
who are unelected; and, clearly, having SEEPs—social, economic
and environmental partners involved is useful as far as the advice
you get from them is concerned, but they can vote as a bloc, which
seems undemocratic.
Q143 Anne Main: You have not really
touched on the public apart from, obviously, through their democratically
elected representatives. What steps do you think would need to
be taken so that the public has greater influence over any regional
decision-making—because you have mentioned housing, which
obviously affects many people? You also noted that a project has
been established to improve accountability. I would like you to
expand a little bit on the project that you refer to in paragraph
5.3—public influence in this project.
Councillor Campbell: Yes. Clearly,
you have to get Regional Government closer to the public. You
mentioned the democratic factor—if the public can actually
elect people! From the point of view of most elected members I
should imagine—certainly our experience in Dorset, when
we go to our parish town council meetings, which we do regularly,
people at first are quite astounded that there is a regional assembly
because they felt that it had gone—such is the way the public
works. Then they are worried about where the money is coming from,
and how the decisions are made. Clearly, they are, at the moment,
separated from it, and it would take an awful lot of education
to get them into an area where they would fully understand why
it is there at all. One move would be to have a fully elected
Regional Government at county unitary level—at least the
people who went there would be elected. Dorset's idea, rom our
submission, is to bring any Regional Government closer to the
people, to bring it down to smaller units, which have the advantage
of being both strategic and local. The project you mention is
a different one. The chief executive, as in the evidence, went
to a meeting where there seemed to be a great deal of disquiet
about the number of regional organisations that were springing
up. The number was exaggerated at the time, but it was whittled
down to about 57. The officers were particularly concerned with
improvement issues and centres of excellence for improvement,
and that was the interest that our chief executive had with it.
They whittled the 57 down to 18 that are connected with improvement.
Now, they are going to get together to try to point up these organisations
so that all the effort is centred rather than diffused and dissipated.
If you want more detail, you can get a lot more detail if you
get in touch with the Chief Executive of Dorset.
Q144 Anne Main: You mentioned that
if you went to a parish council people were unhappy and did not
know such a thing existed and so on and so forth; so do you think
that regional government is becoming less and less accountable?
You have just mentioned this large number of colleagues; do you
believe it is becoming more remote and less accountable, less
democratic?
Councillor Thornber: They are
costly, and they are bureaucratic. They have capacity problems.
They have been given more and more powers that people are unaware
of, and my experience tells me that people intuitively are against
regional assemblies. I hesitate to answer your question directly
because you invite me to contemplate regional assemblies that
are powerful; and the only way to do that would be to make them
specifically accountable to the people through the ballot box,
as elected regional assembly members.
Q145 Anne Main: Fully elected.
Councillor Thornber: Fully.
Q146 Mr Olner: Do you all agree with
Councillor Thornber? If you are opposed to regional government
having those powers, do you think central government should keep
them?
Mr Lloyd: We have been through
the question in the North East of having an elected regional assembly
and people said "no", so I cannot sit here, representing
people, and say, "let us have an elected regional assembly".
That would be foolhardy of me. We do need to find a way of drawing
upon democratically elected individuals to bring legitimacy to
decisions, and through councillors in a region—not just
county councillors but elected councillors across the piece, we
have that legitimacy that we should try and find new ways of employing,
either on a regional basis or through delegating more decision-making
to a local level.
Q147 Chair: So you would not want
those powers to go back to central government.
Mr Lloyd: That is right.
Councillor Thornber: For the record,
Madam Chairman, I am not advocating elected regional assemblies;
I was responding to the question.
Q148 Chair: No, I understand that.
Do you want the powers to go back to central government?
Councillor Thornber: I want powers
from central government to sub-regional areas. Certainly there
may be some arguments for some of the regional assembly powers
to go back to government.
Mr Howes: I agree there. Perhaps
it is best to leave it at that particular point.
Q149 Anne Main: Councillor Thornber
said—the sub-regional area you referred to is that the model
would be the county council.
Mr Howes: Yes.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed gentlemen.
We will move on to another tier.
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