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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for moving this amendment, because it has led to a really interesting debate, and it gives the Government an opportunity to explore and explain further the details of the policy initiative which is represented by the abolition of RDAs and their replacement by local enterprise partnerships. I start from the position of being a provincial. I am a fen-man. I come from an area that is rather overlooked by almost everybody. I live within five miles of the eastern region, but I happen to be in the east Midlands; it is an example of where regionalism tends to draw quite arbitrary lines. Sometimes those lines can be much harsher than when a lot of smaller bodies integrate within a jigsaw of interests. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked about the north-east. It is not an area that I know well but I know it well enough to know that it is not a monolithic area; indeed, it is very different and the interests of Tyneside are different from those of Teesside, Wearside, the Durham coal-field and all those different integrated parts. It has been a problem and a challenge to Government to develop a policy that is going to provide proper, sustained economic growth in the regions of the country. The noble Baroness referred to initiatives going back 20 years or so; I can remember—I am young enough, or old enough, to remember—Harold Macmillan, and Quintin Hailsham with his flat hat on. I will not talk about recently departed individuals in the north-east, but it shows that it is a long-standing issue. The great advantage of this debate is that it gives me, as my noble friends Lord Eccles and Lord King of Bridgwater have said, an opportunity to explain the Government’s policy. We could have had an afternoon’s debate on this sole subject, could we not? Probably we will. At least I can give an outline of the background, and I hope that will inform our debate yet to come. I would like to set out the Government’s rationale for abolishing RDAs and encouraging the establishment of local enterprise partnerships. The Government’s economic ambition is to create a fairer and more balanced economy. We wish to see business opportunities in a broad range of sectors balanced across the country and between businesses. Our local growth White Paper, which was published in October, sets out how we will put businesses and local communities in charge of their own futures, rather than having to rely on centrally imposed RDAs. We are encouraging businesses, local authorities—noble Lords questioned where local authorities fitted into this pattern—and their partners to develop local enterprise partnerships, based on real economic areas such as Greater Manchester. My noble friend Lord Greaves mentioned the slight unease he sometimes had in the north-west at the dominance of the big conurbations of Manchester and Merseyside, for example. Rather than these artificial, created regions—