Devolution

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:25 pm on 21 July 2004.

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Photo of Gordon Prentice Gordon Prentice Labour, Pendle 5:25, 21 July 2004

I must make progress. The wind-ups start in about 10 minutes and I have a number of points to get through.

We are told that this reorganisation will save money—the leaflets distributed to all households in the three northern regions say so—but of course, the Electoral Commission used a Government-devised financial model that excluded transitional costs and the ongoing costs of change, which will be considerable. Whenever we have embarked on local government reorganisation, it has always cost more than people predicted at the outset.

There is another important point. If these regional assemblies are born, the Labour party will not be running them. We are introducing proportional representation, with constituency members and list members, and as sure as night follows day there will be coalition regional government—even, I suspect, in the north-east. In the light of the results of the elections on 10 June, there is no way that a single party will be running the show. The Deputy Prime Minister constantly tells us what a great first-past-the-post man he is, but yet again this Government are introducing a system that will definitely lead to coalition government.

As a consequence, there will be a democratic deficit and we will lose hundreds of local councillors. My own local authority, Pendle borough council, will disappear and be subsumed into a "Burpendale" plus Ribble Valley body. Burnley, Pendle Rossendale and Ribble Valley combined have a population of 300,000. There is no way that people in my area will have easy access to local councillors, because their numbers will obviously reduce.

I am also concerned about all-postal ballots. Five election petitions are outstanding and they will go through the courts in the normal way. I believe—others may not—that all-postal ballots make it more likely that the integrity of the ballot will be compromised. I have read some of the debates that took place in 1872. In that year, legislation popularly known as the "Ballot Act" introduced the secret ballot for parliamentary and municipal elections. It was hugely controversial at the time; now, we are casually throwing all that away.

I was also disappointed to learn that there is no guarantee of funds for returning officers who want to establish polling stations in areas with modest populations. I am troubled by the thought that, in those circumstances, returning officers will not get their costs reimbursed.

I hope that these orders will not go through today. I suspect that, if the referendums are held, the Labour party will lose them heavily. In my view, there is no demonstrable demand for regional assemblies. It is doubly unfortunate that the Government have impaled themselves on this particular hook, because they probably have no way of getting off it.