Council of Europe: Local and Regional Democracy

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I feel a little bit out of place, in that I am not expert at all in the matters of the Council of Europe and local and regional government in Europe, or indeed the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, although I have spent a lifetime reading about their activities of interest. I was very grateful for the extensive briefing from the House of Lords Library, which alerted me to all kinds of things.

I shall speak very briefly about these matters, to echo the generous commendation of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, of my Liberal Democrat colleague, Keith Whitmore, for the enormous amount of work that he has done on these areas over many years, and in particular for his work as chair of the congress last year. I have a note here from the secretary-general of the congress, which says:

“First of all the tremendous work of Keith Whitmore should be mentioned … he does not seem to be appreciated enough in his home country”.

That may be so. I remember Keith when he was a bright leading light of the Young Liberals in Manchester, and a very important person in the resurrection and regeneration of liberalism in that historically very great Liberal city.

I shall say no more about that, because I am taking part in this debate as an excuse to say a few words about the north of England as a very important region in this country and in Europe. In general, the larger countries of Europe have regional governments. The systems vary a lot. In Germany, with the very strong länder, there is a fully fledged federal system entrenched in the constitution of the country. Spain is constitutionally a unitary state, but it has extensive though asymmetric devolution to autonomous democratic regions. The strongest of these, particularly Catalonia and the Basque country, approach something akin to the status of regions within a federal system.

In France and Italy there are democratic regional authorities that are more akin to very large local authorities in their constitutional status and some of their functions. Nevertheless, they are important bodies within their spheres. Here we have a real constitutional mess. We have devolved elected bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland in particular, regardless of what happens in the forthcoming referendum, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are approaching the status and powers that they would have in a fully federal system.

In the rest of England, apart from Greater London, we have nothing at all. In Greater London, we have a sort of city region with the Greater London Authority, the mayor and the London Assembly, but in the rest of England there is zilch, so our system is a bit like that of Spain except that throughout England we have nothing at all. I would argue that the north of England is a distinctive region. Anybody who visits it knows that it is a distinctive region within both this country and Europe. Socially, culturally, environmentally and economically it is regionally distinctive and forms a regional unit.

In the three subregions of the north of England—the north-east, the north-west and Yorkshire, although they may have slightly wonky boundaries at the moment, but never mind—regional bodies have developed on an ad hoc basis over the past few decades, which resulted in the regional development agencies, which had considerable influence and finance but were not democratically accountable. Regional assemblies were set up in these regions which, if they were democratic at all, were not directly democratic. They were indirectly democratic and they included representatives of business, trade unions and so on. Nevertheless, they met and they represented the regions, although it is fair to say that they did so in secrecy—not of their own volition—because nobody noticed them. I should say that I was a member of the North West Regional Assembly for a while.

In November 2004, there was a referendum in the north-east to set up a formally elected north-east regional assembly. The proposal was thoroughly trounced by some 696,000 votes to 197,000 on an almost 50% turnout. That really killed off the idea of elected democratic regional assemblies or government in the north of England for quite some time. The Conservative spokesman for the regions at that time was Bernard Jenkin—at least they had a spokesman for the regions at that time, so they must have recognised that regions existed. He said that,

“the whole idea of regional government has been blown out of the water”,

and that what was being proposed was a “toothless talking shop”. Both those statements were effectively true. The scheme that was put forward was flawed, the proposals were feeble and the Government at the time failed to put it in the context of what they wanted for the country, or at least for the north of England.

I argue that it is time to start talking about regionalism again in the north of England. I remember that back in the 1960s a group of Liberal candidates in the north-west, of whom a leading light was my noble friend Lord Tordoff, produced a report on regional government in the north-west. That started the ball rolling as far as our party was concerned and had considerable influence.

A body which has been founded fairly recently—it is not a Liberal body—is the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, which is based in and around Huddersfield, the general-secretary of which is Professor Paul Salveson, who is not a political colleague of mine but is a friend. The body has as its first aim,

“influencing the political agenda to support elected regional government for the North”.

Its second aim is that of developing,

“a distinct ‘Northern’ politics based on Labour, Co-operative, Radical Liberal and other progressive traditions”.

I can associate with at least three of those descriptions. Although Professor Salveson is a socialist, and says that he is, I think that a lot of his views, and the views of his foundation and of his campaigning, are ones with which radical Liberals will go along.

A serious debate has to begin again in the north of England. In particular, we need to think about the future and whether, if Scotland is to be an autonomous unit—I do not use the word “independent”—in whatever form, and if it is to have considerable financial powers and influence, effectively the people of Scotland will be running their own affairs to a very large extent. Whatever happens in the referendum, in the coming years it seems that the north of England will have to look at itself and ask, “Are we actually three subregions comprising the north-west, the north-east and Yorkshire, or should we get together as the north of England and say that we are twice as big as Scotland in population, and that if Scotland can do this, why cannot we in the north of England do it?”.

Perhaps that is the future. That is the thought I want to put in the minds of your Lordships this evening. Then we can join in with all the Europeans who talk about regional government and talk to each other from regions in Europe. We can be one of them. At the moment, we have more and more direct rule from London and it is not satisfactory.