Clause 26 - Regions
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
9:15 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
Last night, one of my right hon. Friends observed that he could always tell when the Minister was defending the indefensible because his smile became broader and his expression more fixed as he was doing so. I also detect a law of inverse aggression: generally speaking, the more aggressive the Minister becomes, the shakier the grounds of his argument.
The Minister must know that this new clause goes to the heart of his problem with the Bill. He would be on much firmer ground if all the regions were like the north-east, where a significant number of people would probably accept that the boundary is about right, even if they do not like the idea of regional elected assemblies. He is, however, on very weak ground, because he knows that in most of the English regions, perhaps in seven out of the eight, the majority of the public regard the regional boundaries as arbitrary and irrelevant to their daily lives. We are suggesting that that issue must be addressed. The Minister's only defence is that it would be an awful fag for him and his officials to get off their backsides and undertake such a review.
There is nothing magical about the review process. A range of propositions would be put forward by local authorities and other interested bodies in England. Any local authority in a region faced with local government reorganisation would be likely to put forward a proposition, so the number of propositions in the review would be an aggregate of those put forward in each region in response to local government reviews.
The Electoral Commission will have to comment, but its comments will not be unguided, because there are criteria specified in the new clause to steer it. The decisions will not be easy to make, but nothing worth doing is easy. The Government should bear that in
mind when they focus on how quickly, rather than on how durably and effectively, they can get things done.
The Minister says that the proposal would be a recipe for an open-ended review, but there is no reason to make it open-ended. A timetable could be set for the expression of opinions and for the reporting of the Electoral Commission. If that is the Minister's only objection, we can easily write such a provision into a similar new clause for consideration on Report. The Minister, however, prefers to proceed in what he calls an ''orderly and pragmatic way'', a phrase that is worthy of Napoleon. The Minister should not plead order and pragmatism ahead of democratic accountability when discussing major changes to our constitutional arrangements.
We do not have the opportunity today to debate this important issue to the extent to which it deserves. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends regard it as the crux of the debate about elected regional assemblies. I hope that, by withdrawing the amendment, we shall be able to debate the matter further on Report, when many more hon. Members from both sides of the House will be present. I am aware that there are hon. Members on the Government side who feel equally strongly about the issue. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 26 ordered to stand part of the Bill.