---

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with the gist of Amendments 8, 12 and 16. I am aware that we will discuss regional development agencies in their own right not much further along in the Bill—at least, not much further down the page—so I will reserve most of what I want to say for that time. However, we have to see the amendments and the future—or non-future—of RDAs and where their functions are going to go in the context of what will, in effect, be the destruction or removal of the entire regional tier of government in this country. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but things will be very different from what they are now. In my view, this decision has been made from a very south-east of England perspective. People tell me that, given London’s governance arrangements nowadays with the mayor and the London Assembly, a regional development agency in London is redundant. I can understand that. People also tell me that the regions that have been created and drawn on a map in the south-east make no sense whatsoever. In any case, it is not clear why a regional development agency is needed in a part of the country that, at least to those of us who live in the north of England and other distant parts of the realm, appears to be relatively prosperous compared with the regions in which we live. There may be a question as to whether a uniform pattern of regional government is required across the country, but what is—and always has been—clear is that some level of regional government, or governance, in the northern regions is essential. We now face the position in which, not very far to the north, Scotland has its own Parliament, which has an increasingly federal relationship with the rest of the UK. Scotland is able to make decisions for itself and, clearly, can attract and create investment in a way in which we cannot. The idea that Yorkshire, however you define its exact boundaries, and the north-west of England—never mind the north-east, about which other noble Lords have spoken eloquently—are not regions in their own right with an important role to play in economic development in particular and in a series of regional associations, and in regional provision of services of many kinds, seems to me to be nonsense. I forgot to declare my interest at the beginning of Committee stage as a member of Pendle Borough Council, so I do that now. Some of us who live perhaps in the fringe areas of the north-west get very uptight about what we see as the attempted dominance of the region by Manchester and Liverpool as Greater Manchester and Merseyside. Nevertheless, no one who lives in the north-west would deny that they live in the north-west, which is a clearly understood and accepted region of England. It seems extraordinary to me that our regional level of government is being abolished altogether. I am all in favour of decentralisation and devolution within the region, but whether the local economic partnerships—which I hope will be set up in all areas, although we have not got them in Lancashire yet—will be the answer is a matter that we will need to see in future. If we are not careful, we could end up with a hotchpotch system in which LEPs will be very effective in areas such as Greater Manchester and Merseyside but much less effective in areas such as Lancashire, because they may not reflect the genuine economic geography there. There is a big argument going on within Lancashire, as some noble Lords will know, about exactly which areas the LEPs will cover. If we are not careful, there is a real danger that we will end up with a two-tier system, which would be unfortunate. The question is whether the regional development agency has been of any use to people on the ground in, for example, Pennine Lancashire, where I live. The answer is that, yes, it has. The regional development agency as an organisation has been able to hand out to local councils the capital moneys that the Government were making available and it has been able, to some extent, to co-ordinate private sector investment as well. That has been extremely valuable. At the moment, no such money—or very little new money—is coming from the Government for Pennine Lancashire. Schemes that we had, such as housing market renewal, have been closed down or are about to be closed down at the end of the financial year. What used to be called the council’s capital allocations—more recently, they have been called the housing pots—are also being ended, so there is no real money for people to hand out at the moment. However, it is inconceivable that public sector regeneration and development moneys will not be made available by central government in future, so there needs to be a mechanism by which such moneys can be channelled to people in the region or sub-region who are capable of making sensible decisions about priorities within the region. That is where Amendment 8, which has been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, comes in. The idea that people sitting in London could decide whether a scheme in Nelson, Burnley, Accrington or Blackburn should receive the limited amount of money that is available at any given time—or decide how that money should be divided between those or other places on the ground—is ludicrous. Civil servants in London are simply not capable of sensibly making those decisions. At the moment, officers of the regional development agency—both the elected officers, if I may call them that, and the permanent staff—travel around the region, visit places and find out for themselves by seeing things on the ground. We occasionally get visits from people from government departments in London. They set off on the train from Euston in the morning and come and spend three or four hours during the day before going back. For them, it is as if they had been visiting a foreign land, as it is a day out when they do not have to do any work. The idea that those people could maintain a steady and constant relationship with people on the ground—people in the council, the local business community and other local organisations—is far-fetched, to put it mildly. They could not do that. Given the number of local authorities in the country, they would require a huge number of staff anyway, which just will not be there. Some sort of regional organisation is necessary. If the new LEPs are to do that, so be it. However, we have to understand that. In my view, it would be disastrous if a lot of the functions that are currently performed at regional level—either in the regional offices or in the RDAs—are moved to London or elsewhere in England. That would be absolutely disastrous. If RDAs are to close down, the LEPs appear to be the only bodies that could fulfil their function. Amendment 12, which suggests that the transfer of functions must be to somewhere within the existing regions, is therefore crucial. These are fundamental issues that are not just a matter of efficient organisation of services and functions but a fundamental matter of whether decisions are made by people who are sufficiently local to have the understanding, contacts and networks to make sensible decisions. I support the amendment.