Clause 28 - Expenditure
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
9:45 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)
I do not take instructions from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and the Regions, but I take advice from him. In all such matters, he is helpful not only to the Committee but to his close and friendly colleagues. He has reminded me of a matter that had not escaped me but of which the Committee should also, perhaps, be reminded. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge proposed, through his amendments, not only a review of all the English regional boundaries but an all-England referendum. If he is now worried about costs and the expense involved in such arrangements, we should return to his statement at the outset of the Committee's debates about the mutually incompatible amendments that he said that he would table. He is now also making mutually incompatible arguments.