Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I find myself in the unusual position of supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, but coming at it from the opposite perspective. On these Benches, we have always believed that the regional level of government is absolutely appropriate and correct for some decisions at some times. The question is about when such a size is the appropriate measure. The experience of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is of Essex, which in a European context is the size of a region in itself. There are other counties and local authority areas which are not big enough. It seems to us on these Benches that, for some decisions, the regional tier of government is absolutely right. However, there were a number of problems with the way in which the Government attempted its regional agenda. One was certainly that some of the English regions are simply too big. The South East region is enormous, covering an area from Bournemouth to Dover, then up to London and as far as Milton Keynes. It is simply too big to have any sense of coherence. It certainly has no sense of local identity in the way in which the electorate relate it. That was the first problem. The second was that the regional agenda never really involved proper devolution from central government down to democratically accountable regions. It was simply that the bureaucracy was moved from Whitehall out to the regions, but there was no sense in which democratically accountable people from those regions had a say in what was going on. From the point of view of those of us on these Benches, that has been the big weakness of the Government’s approach. If we understand what is now proposed, the only part of the regional agenda with any form of democratic accountability—the regional assemblies made up of councillors—is now to be removed. Therefore, all the regional powers will remain, in effect, with quangos or civil servants who just happen to be based in regions rather than in Whitehall. It does not in any sense represent devolution. We on these Benches would certainly support the notion that it is time for a rethink of how regional decisions are made, although coming at it from a rather different perspective from the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. We accept that local authorities, as currently constituted, are not always the right size of decision-making body for the sorts of decisions we have to make.