Clause 12 - Local Government Review
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Edward Davey (Kingston and 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.