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Local and Regional Government

: I thank hon. Members for a very wide-ranging debate. The title of regional and local government allows comment on just about anything. I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate and on giving us the opportunity to share different policy ideas and strategies. I also thank him for asking questions about his constituency. I am grateful for the advance notice that he gave me, and for the spirit in which he approached the subject. I reject the central charges that hon. Gentlemen have made against Government policy. There have been caricatures of policy, repeats of urban myths and some slight exaggerations. We have also been accused of control freakery yet again. This Government, who devolved power to Scotland, to Wales and to London, and who have pursued a policy of freedom and flexibility towards local government, cannot fairly be accused of control freakery, especially when contrasted with the Government of the 1980s and early 1990s, a period to which some hon. Members referred. We have also been accused of regionalisation. That is unfair, and I shall try to explain why in the brief time available to me. The debate in Government and in Parliament was whether transport, for example, should be regionalised down from Whitehall, not up from local authorities. Some functions, such as those performed by regional fire control centres, are performed well at regional level. Emergency numbers have worked very well indeed in London for most of the past 100 years, and have the support of most fire officers across the country. I shall try to answer as quickly as I can some of the specific points made by the hon. Member for St. Ives, because it is his debate. He called for a new meeting of the Regional Affairs Committee. The Government are open to that suggestion, but I remind him that only eight Members responded, if my memory serves me correctly, when the views of the House were canvassed on whether it should meet again.