The
Chairman: The Minister would be entirely right to address
remarks to amendment 110. It was part of the group, and I thought that
the hon. Gentleman referred to it
obliquely.
Ms
Winterton: I must have missed that nugget.
I ask the
Committee to reject these amendments, because it is not clear what they
would achieve. It appears that they would make local authorities the
responsible regional authority without the involvement of regional
development agencies. When we come to the stand part debate, I hope
that it will become clear that we envisage a partnership between the
local authorities and RDAs in drawing up the strategy. We think that
that is particularly important given the focus on the economy, but the
amendments would limit that
partnership. On
amendment 110, I hope that I can reassure the Committee that following
amendments in another place, the Bill now requires that the access to
information provisions in the Local Government Act 1972, with suitable
modifications, as required, be applied to leaders’ boards as
constituted by local authorities. We are exploring, with RDAs and local
authorities, how best to manage access to information for their joint
working on regional strategies outside legislation. With that
reassurance and explanation, I hope that the Committee will reject the
amendment.
Dan
Rogerson: Through the amendments, we sought to identify
ways to allow for democratic involvement other than the leaders’
board formula proposed by the Government. I do not think that the
Minister seeks to be prescriptive, but the provisions talk only about
leaders being represented. It would have been good to have slightly
more leeway for local areas to come together and work out appropriate
arrangements for their particular circumstances. I have no problem with
the concept that RDAs and local authorities should work in partnership.
However, there is sometimes a slight power imbalance in that
relationship. We would seek to set up a democratic framework that would
put democratically elected people at the heart of decision making. The
appointed members and officers of the RDA should work alongside them,
but not have the same involvement in decision making. That is an
important principle that I would have liked to have seen in this Bill.
However, we can discuss in more detail, during the clause stand part
debate, what leaders’ boards are for and what they will do. On
that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. 12.15
pm
Dan
Rogerson: I beg to move amendment 109, in
clause 68, page 51, line 26, leave out subsection
(8). We
are moving into the area of the powers of the Secretary of State.
Clause 68(8)
states: “If
the Secretary of State considers that a Leaders’ Board
established for a region is not operating effectively, the Secretary of
State may by direction withdraw approval for the scheme under which it
is
established”. This
is contrary to the view shared by my party in favour of a bottom-up
approach. We should be moving forward and creating confidence among
people in local areas and regions that their views matter and will be
taken seriously. I am also concerned that we are talking about stepping
in, where there is a problem, against the leaders’ board rather
than the RDA. The Government may have constituted this as a partnership
between the two, but it seems that the Secretary of State envisages a
greater likelihood of problems with the leaders’ board than with
the RDA. We might call into question that
premise. My party hopes that we can remove this top-down measure, which
enshrines in the Bill greater power for the Secretary of State to
interfere in these local and regional
mechanisms. Mr.
Jackson: Again, I concur with the hon. Gentleman. We will
support his amendment. We believe that subsection (8) vests
disproportionate power in the hands of the Secretary of State,
particularly the power to remove a leaders’ board from the
plan-making process without new primary legislative authority. These
powers are open to the possibility of abuse—I use that word
because it could well
happen. It
also seems that accountability is only one way. The question must be
asked why the power is not used in respect of RDAs. Why is it used only
for leaders’ boards? It speaks volumes about the disregard and
disdain for people at the cutting edge of local government that the
Secretary of State can invoke pretty significant powers to disregard
the leaders’ board and not have concomitant powers applying to
the
RDA. I
am sorry that the Government, when drafting the subsection, did not
seek the advice, for instance, of the Royal Town Planning Institute,
which made the very reasonable point that it would have been better to
establish a mechanism enabling the Secretary of State to identify and
direct, where necessary, improvements in service by a leaders’
board and enabling equivalent action to be taken against the RDA if
warranted. The Government have been over-prescriptive and too
heavy-handed and, on that basis, we are minded to support the Liberal
Democrat
amendment.
Ms
Winterton: The aim of the amendment is to remove the power
of the Secretary of State to withdraw approval for the leaders’
board scheme. I want to assure the Committee that it is simply a
fall-back power to deal with situations in which the leaders’
board is unable to function to the satisfaction of the participating
authorities. It is important that we have this provision to ensure that
if any difficult situations arise, we can ensure that leaders’
boards function
effectively.
Dan
Rogerson: In responding, the Minister was keen to point
out that it would be almost a petition from the local area—from
the region—saying that things were not working well and asking
whether the Secretary of State could therefore step in. That is not
what the provision says at the moment. It concerns me that something
might be set up that is functioning and challenging Government policy
on how the region should move forward, but the RDA is unhappy with the
challenge it is receiving from the leaders’ board, and therefore
the Secretary of State could step in and say that there was some sort
of dysfunction and we needed to go back to the drawing board.
The
Minister’s response hints at the fact that leaders’
boards may not be the right model everywhere. In respect of the
previous debate, which I shall not seek to reopen, it shows an
acknowledgment by the Secretary of State that all might not be perfect
with leaders’ boards. Therefore, it is a shame that it is the
only model on
offer. Having
said that, the measure is unnecessary and gives too much power, which
could be abused, to the Secretary of State. I will therefore press the
amendment to a vote.
Question
put, That the amendment be
made:— The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
8.
Division
No.
37] Question
accordingly negatived.
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Jackson: I shall endeavour not to revisit the debate on
subsection (8), which focused on what was probably our primary reason
for thinking that the clause is unsatisfactory. However, there are
several other reasons as
well. The
clause is loosely written, in particular subsection (4)
about consultation. It is inappropriate to put in the Bill that the
Secretary of State should, in effect, be able to choose whom they wish
to be consulted with and by. No doubt the Minister will say that that
is normal procedure with Bills, and that it is how they are drafted by
people with more expertise than I have, but it cannot be acceptable in
a mature democracy that a central personality in, as I said previously,
a unitary state, can say that they will choose whom they seek to accept
consultation from on an important issue such as a regional strategy. We
are not happy about
that. Clearly,
we are also unhappy that subsection (8) is in the clause because it is
all very well for the regional development
agency—
Mr.
Goodman: Perhaps the Minister will provide an explanation
of the point, if any, regarding consultation. It is a bit puzzling that
such a provision was not inserted in previous clauses that we
considered. For example, clause 66 on local authority economic
assessments simply requires that the Secretary of State should
consult.
Mr.
Jackson: As ever, my hon. Friend is forensic and astute.
He is absolutely right, and the Minister should address that issue. We
need to know why the provision is considered to be appropriate in this
clause but not in
others. We
also need to look at the concept of “leader”. The
definition of leader is loose, and we can see future legal difficulties
in respect of it. For instance, is a leader a directly elected mayor in
the south-west region? Is the leader the directly elected mayor of
Torbay or is it the Conservative leader of the administration? We have
mayoralties across the country—in Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, and
Bedford. The issue of who the leader is needs to be considered. Will
the leader have a deputy, and will they always be the deputy leader of
the district council or the borough council? Moreover, the wording in
subsection (10) is very loose and massively open to interpretation. It
states:
“The
application referred to in subsection (9) may be with such
modifications as the Secretary of State considers necessary or
expedient.” That
vests enormous powers in the hands of the Secretary of State in dealing
with leaders’ boards but not with RDAs.
This whole
clause fails to rise to the challenge of the sub-national review. We
Conservatives took the Government at their word when the sub-national
review was announced and enacted. It was about devolving power to
localities and giving more say to democratically elected local
councillors. This clause is an inadequate response to the consultation
that took place at the time. People in district, borough and unitary
authorities and other councils did not say, “Abolish regional
assemblies and let us have this super-regional quango for the great and
the good.” They said, “Let’s have real democracy
and accountability at a local level.” Therefore, this clause
fails the test. We believe that it also fails in the context of joint
responsibilities for regional policy to address that democratic
deficit. Finally,
it is appropriate to mention the British Chambers of Commerce, which
makes the point that the architecture being established by this clause
within the context of the wider Bill would weaken the sub-regional
planning role of local authorities and further undermine their capacity
to make decisions in the best interests of their local
residents.
Therefore, for
all those reasons, we are not minded to support the clause and we will
be voting against
it.
Mr.
Curry: We now come to the central dilemma at the heart of
the Government’s policy. They believe that there has to be a
regional dimension—an aspect of policy that is delivered in a
zone below that of the nation. The question is, how do we make that
dimension accountable? Ever since the election in the north-east, that
question has remained unanswered. A directly elected regional assembly
would have been an answer. That went down not just marginally but
hugely in the region that was assumed to be the most likely to vote in
favour of it. Some people might argue that it was defeated because the
powers given to the regional assembly were piddling—about 6p in
the pound in terms of public expenditure. In fact the idea went down
for other reasons. It went down because people felt that there was
going to be another tier of politicians and they had enough tiers of
politicians already. Quite frankly, had the regional assembly been
endowed with the riches of Croesus and the wisdom of Solomon, I suspect
that it would still have been voted down in the
region.
Julia
Goldsworthy: Will the right hon. Gentleman give
way?
Mr.
Curry: On the Bible or on the regional
assembly?
Julia
Goldsworthy: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that part
of the reason why the assembly was voted down was perhaps that the
region did not make sense to the people who were being asked to vote to
make it democratically
accountable?
Mr.
Curry: What matters is that it was defeated. It was
defeated so heavily that that corpse will not come back to
life.
That was the
first outcome. The second way was to make the assembly directly
accountable to existing local democratic institutions. Broadly
speaking, that is a policy of my party, but the Government believe that
it is too diffuse and that one really has to have an alternative and
better form of accountability. The trouble is how to devise and deliver
it. If there is no regional assembly—that has been removed from
the picture—and one does not believe that local authorities have
the capacity or the scale to be able to do it, what is
left?
12.30
pm We
are now on our second or third attempt to find something left. We had
the regional assemblies with the nominated members, which have been
abolished by the Bill, and now we have the leaders’ board. We
envisage a somewhat curious mixture of a quango and people who are
indirectly elected to serve. They are not directly accountable; nobody
is going to vote for somebody to be a member of the leaders’
board. They are going to vote for their councillor who may emerge as
the leader or, perhaps, as directly elected mayor, and they will then
represent them.
That
immediately poses a series of questions, the first regarding the hybrid
of the quango and the elected councillors. Secondly, there is the
question of representation. I have already mentioned the south-east and
the existence of 77 councils, but I have just looked up another three
areas. In Yorkshire and Humber, which the Minister and I are most
familiar with, there are 22 councils. I suspect that two national parks
have to be added to that, so there are 24 elected bodies of one sort or
another. In the south-west of England, I make it 41
councils, and there will be national parks to add there as well. In the
north-west, we have 41 local authorities and they are quite different
in character. Yorkshire and Humber, in population terms, is weighted
towards the south and west of Yorkshire, which consists entirely of
metropolitan authorities. The district councils are very much
exclusively clustered in north Yorkshire. Much more scattered is the
south-west, where we have the new unitary councils, but the district
councils are much more predominant. In the south-east, of course, there
are huge numbers of district councils. The whole of old Lancashire is
still divided into district councils.
Even if
agreement can be made on who the leaders will be on the board—in
Yorkshire and Humber I understand that the agreement is for eight
people to sit on it—how do they then report back? It is one
thing for the leaders to have a congress of local authority leaders who
will choose their representatives to sit on the board, but it is quite
another for them to be accountable when they take decisions that might
not necessarily be popular. I am afraid that I am repeating myself when
I say that housing issues are always the most controversial. People get
most excited when they think that housing is being imposed on them. The
leaders have got to report back. How will that process of
accountability work? How will members be replaced if they do not
operate in, to use the Bill’s words, an
“effective” way? I can see all sorts of difficulty with
that very indirect
accountability.
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