Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill 26 Nov 2002

Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby): Is not that the key point of this debate? Do not the Deputy Prime Minister's proposals stand in stark contrast to what happened in the metropolitan areas - North Yorkshire, Humberside and Cleveland, for example - which the Conservatives imposed on the country without any real consultation, involvement or participation of the local people?

The Deputy Prime Minister: My hon. Friend has highlighted the fact that, for the Conservatives, the rhetoric of opposition is entirely different to what they did in government, but we must take that as part of the political game. After all, they are the people who opposed the devolution of powers to London, Scotland and Wales, then quietly came round to accepting it later. I presume that that might happen in this case as well.

The Bill responds to the desires that many regions are already expressing.

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Lawrie Quinn: On the point about more power and more money, is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that Yorkshire would not want either of those?

Mr. Curry: All I am saying is that we will not get them; people are not being offered that choice. Of course, anybody would want more power and more money. If we get a devolved assembly, the first thing it will do is engage in competition for public funds. That, inevitably, will happen.

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Lawrie Quinn: The hon. Gentleman has obviously spent much time studying these matters. He says that the House of Commons is the appropriate place to effect such scrutiny. I agree with him, but, as a member of the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs for England, may I ask him how effective that Committee has been in scrutinising the matters that he says we should be scrutinising?

Mr. Shepherd: If the hon. Gentleman really wants to know, I think it is an absurdity. The Modernisation Committee looked at it. The Government do not want it. I do not know what it is about. But it could be given life if the House had a will.

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Lawrie Quinn: Does my hon. Friend welcome the principle in the measure that there should be independent assessment of the needs of local government, so that in North Yorkshire, for example, we could put right the wrongs perpetrated after so-called commissions such as the Banham review, when councils were abolished with no reference to local people?

Mr. Borrow: I agree with my hon. Friend in many ways. One of the difficulties of previous local government reorganisations was that Parliament decided that Parliament could decide, and that such decisions were not really a matter for local communities.

One can argue that the Bill is not perfect, but it is a damn sight better than a lot of the previous legislation that has dealt with the abolition of local government and the creation of new local authorities. I have concerns about Lancashire and wonder whether the commission should consider how the existing boundaries of Blackpool and Blackburn would fit, but we may need to consider those issues in more detail in Committee.

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Lawrie Quinn: I recognise that, like me, the right hon. Gentleman serves on the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs. Can he reflect briefly on his experiences, which may be shared, of that attempt to scrutinise and hold to account the current state of affairs?

Mr. Beith: My memory goes back further to the first attempt to set up a regional affairs Committee, which once had a debate about the north-east of England. First, no Conservative Members could be found to attend the Committee, until my good friend Lord Elliott was eventually found - he was usually the only Conservative who could be induced to appear on such occasions. Subsequently, not enough Labour Members could be found to get a quorum for the Committee. Even in its more recent incarnation, it is a virtually non-existent body. I cannot remember when I was last summoned to it, or when it ever did anything. Manifestly, it is the wrong sort of body even to oversee decisions, which should be overseen within the region.

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Lawrie Quinn: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Key: Of course. The hon. Gentleman has intervened on everyone else, so why not me?

Lawrie Quinn: The hon. Gentleman has made an extensive study of the proceedings of the House and has experience as a Minister. Does the Regional Affairs Committee do a good job? Is it effective and does it meet the demands of scrutiny, which is the high test that he places on it?

Mr. Key: I have no view on that because I had forgotten that the Committee existed.

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8.11 pm

Lawrie Quinn (Scarborough and Whitby): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak after such a clear reference to the beauty of the coastline and the seaside.

As the Member for Scarborough and Whitby I am particularly pleased to follow the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key). Many people in my part of the world remember his role as a former Minister. He was the man from Whitehall who came to Malton and scotched, probably for a generation or more, the possibility of improving the key transport link in the area, the A64 from the A1 to the Yorkshire coast, thereby denying us something that central Government had promised us. I mention that to demonstrate why we need to take a regional and more strategic approach in key areas such as transportation. I am sure that my local newspapers will remember that the key - if I may use that word - to our failure was the man from Whitehall.

I have said that I agree with the Bill in principle. It is an enabling Bill for an important process; it does not achieve the end but it begins to will the end. Like many Labour Members, my first acquaintance with this policy goes back to my involvement in the regional Labour party in Yorkshire. I recall that in the late 1980s, when there was a centralising Government down in London, we realised that we were disconnected from the decisions that would affect our locality.

I shall concentrate my remarks on what I am pleased to refer to as Yorkshire and the Humber because it has become a clearly identified region. If we compare it with a European nation state, such as Denmark, we find that there are clear parallels in the size of the population and in the economy, except that Yorkshire, as usual, comes out on top. Yet we do not have a mechanism for determining our future prosperity.

Mrs. Ellman: Does my hon. Friend agree that for his region, as for the other English regions, the Bill and the legislation that hopefully will follow concerns economic regeneration and the introduction of accountability to the regional organisations, the quangos, which already exist in every region?

Lawrie Quinn: I strongly agree. My hon. Friend gives the lie to some of the contributions by Conservative Members. They talk about extra money and extra costs, but we already have this stream of government. Earlier we almost had an acceptance by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) that we already have a form of regional government. However, it is not accountable and it cannot be influenced by the feelings and contributions of local people, particularly in my area, which is on the very periphery of the region.

Mr. Key: The argument about regional chambers, or in our case the south-west regional assembly, not being representative is wrong. Every tier of local authority, including unitary authorities, is represented on that body by councillors, who make up some three quarters of the membership, in addition to the social and economic partners. It is an indirectly representative body, and those councillors, as elected representatives, are working their socks off for us.

Lawrie Quinn: I do not deny the fact that those individuals are making a contribution to the life of the region, but the key point for Labour Members is that they are not accountable. They do not face the key test of the ballot box. All of us in the Chamber have been elected on an equal basis in a pure and simple form of democracy. That is the acid test. I know that when I go before the people of Scarborough and Whitby, representing my party and my propositions, I stand the chance of being sacked if they do not agree with me. That is democracy, and people want that umbilical cord link between representatives and significant public expenditure. At the moment, there is no ballot box to test whether they are representing the view of communities, and without that acid test our system is not accountable.

I turn now to concerns about the Bill, and I hope that there will be an opportunity to deal with them in Committee. I agreed with many of the contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House, most notably my right hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith). They pointed out that we need draft legislation to indicate what will follow the test of the referendum. I hope that Ministers will give further consideration to that during, if not before, the Bill goes into Committee.

Many hon. Members have referred to unitary local government, and I decided to test the proposition that they put forward not only in relation to my parish councils and my borough council but among the many North Yorkshire county councillors who represent Scarborough and Whitby. The clear message is that it is unnecessary to separate the two arguments because that would lead to confusion. The wreckage left in North Yorkshire by the Banham commission proposals was forced on the people without any test, any referendum or any consultation. I remember spending many nights in a room in the Shambles in York trying to argue the case for the Labour party in North Yorkshire to the commission. On one occasion, Sir John and the rest of us were locked in the room, and we had to escape by ladder. However, there was no escape from the horrendous piece of legislation forced on the people of North Yorkshire. To this day, the people of Whitby remember the early 1970s, when rural district councils lost the right to decide what was appropriate for an area. I almost received a grudging acceptance of that point in the debate on the Gracious Speech from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who has great experience of North Yorkshire affairs. The people of Whitby would like a big apology from the Conservatives for what they perpetrated for many years.

The people of Whitby would like a say in their destiny and what happens to them, particularly as the town is one of the most peripheral communities in our region. To many people in Whitby, Northallerton is the other side of the moon and London is a quantum distance away.

Mr. Lansley: I am rather confused. Is it not the Government's intention in clause 2 to impose unitary status where it does not currently exist in regions that vote that way? The people of Whitby will be so heavily outvoted by the unitary authorities in Yorkshire and Humberside that they will have no say in the matter.

Lawrie Quinn: The hon. Gentleman is welcome to visit Whitby any time. I am sure that the people who frequent Baxtergate would tell him that they were most offended by the fact that the Conservative Government did exactly what he has just suggested. At least this time, the people of Whitby, Scarborough and Yorkshire will have an opportunity to have a say in resolving that important question and will have the right to determine their future. The Bill makes that proposition and is a piece of enabling legislation.

There is a feeling that the number of regions allowed to hold a referendum would be restricted by the resources of the boundary committee. I hope that that would not be an unnecessary stumbling block, preventing regions such as Yorkshire and the Humber from having an early opportunity to test the question.

Mr. Austin Mitchell: Does my hon. Friend not agree that it would be sensible for the north-west, Yorkshire and the north-east to go together as the proud north in one referendum?

Lawrie Quinn: That proposition is very attractive. In Yorkshire and the Humber, 89 per cent. of people already live in unitary authority areas. The 11 per cent. in the rump of North Yorkshire, forced on us by previous Conservative Administrations, would have an opportunity to sort out that mess.

Finally, I hope that in Committee we can spend some time considering the wording of the ballot paper, especially the preamble. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) covered that in his speech. The preamble sounds long, complex and perhaps even rambling - some Members may think that it is similar to my speech - but we should pay close attention to it. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby talked about the great cultural reputation of Yorkshire and the Humber, but in his list of theatres he failed to mention the Stephen Joseph theatre, the pre-eminent theatre in our region, and Sir Alan Ayckbourn.

I hope that the Bill receives a fair wind on Second Reading, and I wish to express my willingness to serve in Committee.

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