Clause 12 - Local Government Review
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and 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.