Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment No. 42, in

clause 12, page 5, line 36, at end insert—

'(1A) The Secretary of State may only direct the Boundary Committee for England to undertake a local government review in subsection (1) above if he has first considered the level of interest in relevant local authorities for that local government review'.

Mr John Butterfill (Bournemouth West, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 43, in

clause 12, page 5, line 38, leave out from 'interest' to end of line and insert

'in the relevant local authority areas in any local government review'.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

We have now moved on to part 2, which is about local government reviews. The Liberal Democrats are concerned that the Government have coupled referendums on regional assemblies with local government restructuring. The amendments are intended to tease out why the Government want to go about the process in that way. We believe that the two things are separate and that the amendments 34would help to make that separation clear.

I initially took some comfort from clause 12(1) because it states that the Secretary of State

''may direct the Boundary Committee for England''

to make a review of local government structures. However, clause 1(5), which refers to clause 12, makes it a condition that there must be a local government review. So my initial comfort was soon taken away. Clause 1 will doubtless be debated further on the Floor of the House.

The amendments set a test for whether local government reviews should go ahead. We decided to use the Government's test for whether referendums on regional assemblies should go ahead; namely, the level of interest in the process. It could be said that the level of interest is an odd test. It is subjective, and it is questionable whether it should be used as the trigger for referendums on regional assemblies. However, it is the Government's choice of trigger, so we have used it.

Presumably the Government have chosen that test as a trigger because they want to know whether there is real interest in regional assemblies. In that case, there is no reason why they should not use the same sort of test to find out whether there is any interest in local government reviews. That is the democratic way forward, and puts the argument back in the Government's court.

The Government would find that, in many cases, the soundings showed that there is interest in local government reviews and that proposals to restructure local government and to have unitary authorities would get the consent of the people. We suggest only that the level of interest should be the trigger. The Government should not insist on forcing a demand that local government be restructured. There may be areas in which there is no interest whatsoever in restructuring local government and the Minister has to deal with that. There may be places where people do not want to have unitary authorities and want to keep county and district councils, as well as a regional tier of government. If the Government were to exclude that, it would be a shame for democracy and for the flexibility in the way in which local government is managed.

If the Government were to adopt our test, they would get soundings about whether there was any interest in local government restructuring; that would be an advantage to the review. I hope that the Government will at least consider the amendments. I am sure that we shall return to that key issue in other amendments to the clause and certainly in amendments to clause 1. It is important that the local government review is totally decoupled from the referendums.

Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede & Weybridge, Conservative)

I have some sympathy with the underlying sentiment of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. Local government restructuring is to be imposed on regions that want elected regional assemblies, if any regions want them. Concern has been expressed that, in many regions, that will represent tyranny by the urban and already unitarised or metropolitan majority over the rural 35minority. However, the essential point is that the Liberal Democrats draw the wrong conclusion from their analysis. Their analysis—that it is wrong to impose local government restructuring on people who have not voted for it and to impose by a majority of the electorate of the entire region a change in local government arrangements in a specific, currently two-tier area—should lead them to the conclusion that the Government's approach to elected regional assemblies is wholly wrong. It will not deliver benefits in terms of genuinely local community government.

The Government are obviously, understandably and rightly terrified of being portrayed as imposing an additional tier of government. We certainly understand their reasons for not wishing to be portrayed as imposing yet another tier of government, so that many areas would have three tiers between central Government and parish councils. Our conclusion is based largely on the required reorganisation of local government; we believe that the Government have simply got it wrong and made what was never a very appetising proposal for limited elected regional assemblies wholly unappetising by imposing a restructuring of local government that will be neither fair nor democratic in the areas where it is imposed. It will most definitely not help local government to deal with what must be its number one priority; improving service delivery to the local communities that it serves.

The conclusion must be that the Government's regional assembly agenda fails because it fails to address the real challenge of devolving power to genuinely community-based governance. Instead, it presents us with two stark alternatives; either impose an additional tier of government and bureaucracy, with an additional level of ministers, elected members, bureaucrats, cars and all the other paraphernalia of government, or impose, without local decision-making, wholesale restructuring of local government in a way that may not be to the liking of local people in that region.

Mr Jim Knight (South Dorset, Labour)

Is the hon. Gentleman now saying that it is his party's policy that in any future local government reorganisation individual referendums would be held in every area concerned? That was certainly not the policy of the previous Conservative Government when they reorganised local government. In Dorset, it was nonsense for Bournemouth and Poole to have separate unitary authorities. I know that you might disagree with that, Mr. Butterfill; I do not know what your opinion was at the time. I certainly do not recall the good residents of Bournemouth and Poole, or the residents of the whole of Dorset, being given a referendum to decide whether they agreed with the outcome of the review.

Mr John Butterfill (Bournemouth West, Conservative)

Order. I hope that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge will not be tempted to respond too assiduously to that invention or, indeed, to pursue much longer the line that he is taking on the amendment. He is beginning to stray into clause 1 territory, and I should be grateful if he confined his further observations to the amendment.

Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede & Weybridge, Conservative)

I am grateful to you, Mr. Butterfill. The intervention of the hon. Member for South Dorset was undoubtedly not intended to be helpful, but I should have liked to answer it because I have an answer ready for him. However, I have no doubt that I shall find another opportunity to deliver it to him in due course.

In addressing the Liberal Democrat amendment, I thought that it was important to sympathise with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton's basic discomfort with the idea that voting for an elected regional assembly could result in a local government reorganisation for which one had not voted. The remedy is to reject altogether this incarnation of the Government's elected regional assembly proposal and to go back to the drawing board to try to come up with a genuine improvement in local community government, and not just the imposition of a remote tier based on entirely artificial regions. However, I shall not pursue that matter further, Mr. Butterfill.

Turning to amendment No. 43, again we sympathise to some extent with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. However, considering the level of interest is a very poor test because there will be a high level of interest in an area that is strongly opposed to regional elected assemblies. The Minister, presumably, would not suggest that discovering that there is a very high level of interest, nearly all of which is hostile, would be an excellent basis on which to call a referendum on the introduction of an elected regional assembly.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton will know that we have introduced for consideration on another day proposals that would create a more objective set of tests. However, I understand and, to a significant extent, sympathise with his point. He will know, and I have heard, that people in local government are generally very unhappy with the idea of reorganisation or restructuring being imposed upon them. Ironically, I suspect that the Minister has made it more difficult to win a yes vote in his own referendums.

This is not mischief making, Mr. Butterfill, but it has been suggested to me by a number of external, impeccably neutral observers that the hand of Downing street is behind the linking of the referendum question with the reorganisation of local government. It looks as though someone has taken the Deputy Prime Minister's pet project, which he has been nurturing and cherishing for the past 10 years, and said, ''Okay. Let us give him an outing, but let us see what we can do to it to make it highly unlikely that it will do any real damage to the constitutional arrangements in England. Let us put in an additional hurdle so that someone only votes yes if, first, they like elected regional assemblies and, secondly, they like the idea of wholesale restructuring of their local government arrangements being imposed upon them.''

I should not expect the Minister to comment on that conspiracy theory in any great detail, but as a thinking man it must have struck him that if he really wanted to get yes votes in referendums, this is not the way in which he would choose to go about it were he able to start with a clean sheet of paper.

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

The amendment would undermine the basic principle that the Secretary of State must consider the degree of interest in a region in having a referendum, and instead substitutes a requirement for the Secretary of State to consult two-tier local authorities on whether a local government review should be undertaken in a region. Since a review is a necessary condition for a referendum on establishing an elected assembly, the amendment would give one group of local authorities in a region a disproportionate say on whether there should be a referendum. That cannot be right.

We believe that the primary factor in deciding where a review should be carried out should be the level of interest in the region in holding a referendum. That is because the purpose of a local government review under the Bill would be to recommend the best wholly unitary structure for the region should an elected assembly be established, not to decide whether such a structure is in principle appropriate.

Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede & Weybridge, Conservative)

Will the Minister show me where the Bill says that the boundary committee would be restricted to examining a wholly unitary structure?

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman asks about the instructions given to the boundary committee. He will know that the Bill allows the Secretary of State to issue guidance to the boundary committee and that we have just issued for consultation our draft guidance, which we propose to give to that committee. We are consulting on that, so will obviously take account of any views expressed. The appropriate time to discuss that will be when we come to the relevant clause.

As I was saying, the purpose of a review will be to recommend the best wholly unitary structure for the region. We intend that an assembly would be established only following a yes vote in a referendum. If that referendum resulted in a no vote, we would not intend the recommended reorganisation to go ahead.

We believe that unitary local government is an integral part of the regional assembly package; not because of any of the conspiracy theories that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge chose to elaborate to the Committee, but simply because, without a rationalisation, a regional assembly would add undesirable complexity to the structure of government. There would be three tiers of elected government, quite apart from parish councils, below national level. That would be one tier too many.

We are therefore absolutely wedded to the policy set out in the White Paper, which will be carried forward if this Bill receives Royal Assent: that there should be a review of the local government structure in any region where it is proposed to hold a referendum, before that referendum takes place. That review must come forward with a proposal for a wholly unitary structure of local government.

It cannot be right that the views of two-tier local authorities, which might, for various reasons, be opposed to local government reorganisation, should in effect be accorded special weight in deciding whether a referendum on establishing an elected regional assembly takes place. We are therefore opposed to the amendment, and I urge the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton to withdraw it.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

The Minister's reply is not surprising. He has rehearsed the arguments in the White Paper and on Second Reading and I am afraid that we are still completely unconvinced. As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge made clear, many people in local government believe that the two issues could be treated separately. I was glad to hear that the Conservatives have some sympathy with the concerns that underlie the amendment, but again not surprised that they were not prepared to accept our conclusion.

Our conclusion is, I believe, the democratic one. By giving due weight and concern to the level of interest in a local government review, the Government could take the democratic route. It seems to me that people could have the right to choose three tiers of elected government if they wanted. I live in a unitary authority—a London borough—and if I were given the choice, I, personally, would vote to move to a unitary authority. I accept that that structure of government has many good characteristics and features. A regional assembly gives even greater strength to that, but I still think that people should have the choice in their areas, rather than taking what we impose on them from this place.

Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham, Labour)

Is it a new national policy of the Liberal Democrat party to say that local people should decide on the tiers of local government and the number of councillors? I reflect on what is currently happening in Newcastle, where a local government review is underway. The Liberal Democrats on the city council are proposing to reduce the number of councillors from, I think, 78 to 60 without any recourse to the views of local people.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

I cannot say that I know about the case in Newcastle, and I am sure that you would call me to order, Mr. Butterfill, if I went down that route. Under this amendment, we are talking about not the number of councillors but the number of tiers of government. That is the issue in front of us.

We are saying simply that what structure of government to have should be a decision entrusted to the people. Why should we in this Committee and in this Parliament force people to change a structure of government that they may like? I am sure that we will find people, and areas of the country, who will be happy to keep their district and county councils and vote for a regional assembly, because those bodies will be doing different things.

I do not intend to press my amendment, but we will return to the issue on the Floor of the House, where there will be correct and ample opportunity to pursue it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Woolas.]

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes past Seven o'clock till Thursday 12 December at five minutes to Nine o'clock.