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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I support my noble friend Lord Liddle. He is much identified with the west of the north—if I may put it that way—whereas I am identified with the east coast, where we have rather a lot of snow at the moment as well as very particular problems. I hope that the Minister will think a little more about the constitutional issues. In reality, the RDA in the north-east was not imposed from London. Way back in, I think, 1987 or 1988, my noble friend Lord Radice put forward in a Private Member’s Bill in the other place the idea of establishing a regional body in the north-east. There was much pressure at that time within the region for such a body to deal with economic matters and regeneration. At that stage, we were going through the end of ship-building in the north-east and—as I knew all too well—the closure of steelworks. We also knew that we were coming to the end of the coal-mining industry—thereby hangs a tale, but I shall not go there—so the body was created in the region but it also received the support of the then Conservative Government. The RDA in the north-east started in a totally different way from the other RDAs, as it was started through local enthusiasm and commitment to the region as a whole, which is a very small region in comparison to the rest of the country. Amendment 16 deals with an important issue, given the fear in the north-east that some of the critical decisions will now go to the body that is to be chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. The Government—and I shall make these arguments later as the Bill progresses—are making a huge mistake in the north-east. It is simply not true to say that people there want the RDA to be broken up. I listened carefully to the Minister last week when he said that the idea had come before the election from discussions that his party were involved in with business. In the north-east, that was not the message that business was giving. However, I shall say much more on that later. In reality, the RDA in the north-east came from the locality, was acknowledged by the Minister’s party when it was previously in government and has continued and fitted into the structure and architecture that my party introduced after it came into government in 1997. There is great fear and anxiety about the new architecture but, whatever the architecture is, the north-east will work with it—even if we think it a mistake—because we want the best for the people and industry in the region. However, we wish to make sure that decisions—particularly on some of the bigger projects—stay local and are not taken into the national body that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, will chair. I hope that the Minister can give us that reassurance through these probing amendments.