Derek Boden- "Let's Do It Ourselves"

These are notes from the talk by Bury Councillor, Derek Boden, taken directly from the Deane-Cum-Heaton Labour Party's Branch minutes.

The formal part of the Annual General Meeting was followed by a talk by Bury Councillor and NW Regional Assembly Member Derek Boden. Derek's talk was followed by a question and answer session.

Derek started by saying that there had been interest in Regional Government by the Labour Party for many decades. In 1965 the first comprehensive report on the economy and environment of the NW was published by George Brown's Department of Economic Affairs. The last paragraph of the report had said that the NW had come into the 20th century bearing the scars of the industrial revolution and wondered if those scars would have been healed by the end of the 20th century. Derek believed that the answer is a qualified "yes". He said that we haven't completely cured the deprivation and dereliction but we've gone a long way to doing so. However, there are other internal scars resulting from the undermining of the community spirit as the staple livelihoods of the region - coal mining, the textile industry, etc. have died.

Derek thought that the remaining ills of the NW couldn't be solved in London. It must be done by local communities and this is what Regional Government is about. In the Party's last Manifesto it was pledged that Regions that want Regional Government could have it. A White Paper was published last July giving powerful arguments as to why there should be a system of Regional Government set up in England.

The NW is the most populous Region outside the SE and we are still the most industrialised part of the country. However, we are economically behind the SE. Past Governments and the present one have recognised for a long time that the Regions need to be treated differently and the Tories introduced a number of Regional initiatives that we have built on.

The existing NW Regional Assembly doesn't have a huge amount of money (a few £ million) and acts as an umbrella organisation for a number of Quangos. In this way Regional Government already exists and all the White Paper is about is democratising it and making it more accountable to local people.

Quite often national Government sets priorities that aren't necessarily appropriate for all parts of the country, e.g. education vs. libraries. Democratic control is necessary replace the unelected, and often self-serving, Quangos to make the system more transparent, more effective and more relevant to the Region.

Since the White Paper there has been a lot of discussion in the political parties. Not surprisingly, the Tories are against it as they are against all devolution. The Lib Dems are very much in favour, as are we. The Lib Dems, of course, want proportional representation, i.e. a voting system that will favour them.

A Regional Assemblies Preparations Bill has almost gone through Parliament. It only has to complete its Committee stage and should receive the Royal Assent in March. Derek said that there may be some trouble in The Lords but he believed that it would go through. Then the Secretary of State will order referenda in Regions where "it is considered appropriate", i.e. where there is enough local pressure. However, he needs to be convinced that the local government structure in a Region is suitable before allowing a referendum to take place. Decisions on which Regions can have referenda will be known around April 2004. If a vote is not approved then it will not be reconsidered for five years. If the answer were yes then the vote would probably take place a year later. Therefore there is a terrific amount of work to be done and the Labour Party will bear the brunt of it.

The difficulties we will have in campaigning is that this is an issue that the media doesn't engage with. In this country newspapers are either national or much more local. There is, for example, no NW regional newspaper. The only regional media is TV but Granada is no longer actually regional and only the BBC can be regarded as having a truly NW service.

BBC NW conducted an opinion poll in which they asked "Do you think in the NW we should be able to make more decisions on issues that affect us?" Even though the question was a bit loaded nevertheless the response was about 70% in favour. MORI and the Regional Assembly itself have got similar results.

The downside of Regional Government is that some of the business community is against it, especially multinational or large national corporations that definitely don't want Regional Government. Part of the reason for this is that, at present, they have a virtual monopoly when it comes to speaking to Government on regional issues and they don't want anyone else to get in on the act. Derek added that the CBI is dead against the idea. However, there is stalwart support from the NW Chambers of Commerce, which would support us in a referendum.

A further problem is that the Government has said that any Region deciding on Regional Government should have single tiered local government. This is the case in Greater Manchester and Merseyside but isn't in Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria. In fact there is two tiered local government in some of the Metropolitan Authorities too, e.g. in Bolton where there are still Town Councils. However, it's well known that the District Councils in Lancashire would like to see the back of the County Council, which, in any case, seems to be disintegrating and could quickly disappear as a political entity. The opposite seems to be the case in Cheshire but it's a County which is mostly Tory controlled anyway. Cumbria is different altogether. It's a relatively recent "invention" and still seems to be split along the old Lancashire, Cumberland, Northumberland lines.

Derek said that what we'll get if we do have Regional Government is direct control over about £1 billion per year, which is not a huge amount of money. But, it will come as a block grant to do with virtually what the Region wants. There will also be some control over several other £ billions that come into the Region via the Quangos, etc. But this could be just a starting point with the power of the Region developing as Government in Scotland and Wales seems to be doing.

The conclusions of Local Government Association's paper "Devolution to the Regions" are very positive and, from an independent standpoint, it says that Regional Government is very well worth having.

Derek concluded his talk and answered questions:

Graham sincerely thanked Derek for his talk and declared the meeting closed at 9:35 pm.

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