Regions and the Labour Modernisation agenda

Regions and Labour modernisation agenda.

The modernisation of the British constitution is one of the key modernising messages that Labour puts across. Necessarily this is done in broad brush terms: much of the detail of the overhaul of Britain’s unwritten yet prolix constitution excites virtually zero interest in the mind of the average voter, yet the ‘mood music’ does.
The idea that the House of Lords was a bastion of outmoded privileges ripe to be swept away was the reason for the ineffectiveness of the Tory rearguard action, however inexactly most people perceived its actual constitutional role. Similarly, the ‘justice’ of devolution to Scotland and Wales, overrode argument on constitutional detail to gain rapid acceptance of its permanence and reality from a Tory opposition that had barely finished opposing the move ‘root and branch’.

The ‘mood music’ conspicuously does not play as well when it comes to English regional devolution. Not only have the opposition yet to concede the legitimacy of the new Regional Development Agencies, but some headway has been made with the argument that English regionalism represents an unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy, and that the solution to Scottish and Welsh devolution, if it has to come is, instead, an English national Parliament.

This is, at first sight curious, in that English regionalism sits logically as part of the Governments modernising agenda, and ought to be an accepted consequence of reforms elsewhere. There are reasons for this and they shed some light on why progress remains uncertain, and the immediate future approach is likely to be ambivalent.

Firstly, the logical consequence of the abolition of the house of Lords is to achieve some kind of ‘legitimate’ second chamber that is more than a grand QUANGO. The public has been persuaded to accept that this is so currently because, it is assured, a process is at work: quite rightly, it is observed that successive reforming governments have foundered on attempts to provide a fully worked out solution to abolition before clearing the place of hereditary peers. But what then? Lord Wakeham has come up with his proposals, which among other things claim that one of the key roles of the second chamber should be to ‘provide a voice for the nations and regions of the United Kingdom at the centre of public affairs’ The alternatives for regional representation all gloss over a key point: how do such representatives emerge from the regions: what sort of platform should they exercise their ‘voices’ from? The obvious missing piece of the jigsaw is an elected regional assembly, which would in itself give the those claiming to speak for regions a far greater degree of legitimacy that the mere fact of standing in an election within a region, but on terms which might as well be a division of a national election.

Secondly, the Existence of elected regional structures in all the major players in the EU, and the entry of candidate members with regional arrangements already in place suggest that the constitution of the UK is strikingly and increasingly at odds with the normal processes of decision making in Europe. This does not have merely academic consequences. The networking of regions between each other: the bilateral discussions of Brussels and regions, the growing influence and significance of the ‘Committee of the Regions’ in EU affairs are all closed doors to English regions. It is no surprise that ‘subsidiarity’ meant ‘power resting in the nation state to John Major and something else to everyone else at the time of Maastricht. If a modernising agenda means, among other things, being able to act ‘at the heart of Europe’ in a meaningful way, then a polity that includes a genuine and accountable regional tier of government seems essential.

The problem lies in articulating this aspect of Labours agenda in a way that does not throw the whole trajectory into reverse. Regions, in terms of the logic of the second point sound a bit too ‘federalist’ but in order to enunciate a clear ‘endgame’ for the House of Lords reform, we need to enter into such conceptual minefields. Put in this light, it is perhaps unsurprising that quietness is the order of the day.

For this is what we currently have. A quiet acknowledgement that sometime, sooner or later, when circumstances allow, with the consent of the people involved, we will have English regional government. In the RDA white paper, it is stated that

‘the government are committed to move to directly elected regional government in England, where there is a demand for it, alongside devolution in Scotland and Wales and the creation of the Greater London authority"

This formula is repeated in various other Government papers, including the Local Government organisation and standards white paper. The Labour Party’s policy document on Environment Transport and the Regions, presumably the basis of the Party’s policy for the next election, pretty much repeats the formula without advancing greatly on it.

So where does ‘quiet’ English devolution as doctrine come from, and what are the problems of moving down this particular road?

The origin lies in the splitting of Labour's devolutionary ambitions prior to the 1997 election. This suggested that there could be two kinds of devolution: economic devolution, which could be advanced through Regional Development Agencies , and was examined by the quasi-independent Millan commission (title?) and ‘political’ devolution, which was separate and was the subject of a distinct report ‘a choice for England’ largely authored by Jack Straw.

It is Straws document that has engineered the current ‘quiet’ devolution formula apparent in Party and Government documents. ‘A choice for England’ introduced the concept of ‘rolling’ devolution; that is, the establishment of an ‘off the peg’ general provision of a referendum (or, significantly ‘other tests of legitimacy’) to trigger the transition of an assembly to an elected chamber. This envisages, one imagines, a period during which particular regions develop unelected structures and prove the worth of regional economic arrangements, after which a referendum is triggered because it is felt that it is , in principle winnable. This is hurdle one, and quite a formidable one too. It raises a number of (as yet) unanswered questions. Who actually triggers a referendum? Does a referendum have to be held on the present boundaries of Government Offices? What if the population likes devolution but not on the boundaries offered? Will ‘rolling’ devolution result in an almost permanently unstable pattern of devolution which links central regional and local government through a broken patchwork of actual assemblies, failed chambers where a referendum has been lost, and non-assemblies where no referendum has been attempted. The latter scenario is a live issue in the south East, where by common reckoning, three identifiable regions (Wessex, home counties and Thames Valley) have been cobbled together in one Government Office. Hurdle two is also high, but as yet unclear in its operation. This is the stipulation that a unitary system of local government would have to be in place before any moves towards an assembly structure could be countenanced.

No such constraints have been placed upon ‘economic’ devolution. On the contrary, Regional Development Agencies, following the Millan report model, were established universally by legislation and have proved remarkably successful and initially warmly received in their early stages. But in the medium term they will stand accused of themselves being super QUANGOS unless they are perceived to be a part of a wider process. The now substantial dissonance between the two parts of the process means that this is an increasingly likely political reality. At best we can say that the progress of ‘political’ devolution has become stalled. It s timid initial manifestation, regional assemblies indirectly elected from local councillors are interesting but essentially toothless creations., of use mainly for those who believe that the process is inevitable and that sooner rather than later they will inherit the mantle of regional government.

A consequence of this uncertainty in overall direction has been the proliferation of initiatives emerging from the centre which require local and regional implementation and co-ordination. These have occupied the space, left as it were by the stalling of the regional modernisation agenda. Departments that want to get things done have no clear line of supervision for their initiatives: do they tuck them into the remit of the government office for the regions, the Regional Development Agency, local government, or none. In many instances ‘none’ has been the preferred option, and hence a plethora of initiatives such as sure start, Education Action zones, Health Action zones, the various New Deal programmes and of course prospectively the new Learning and Skills councils are operating in a kind of regional limbo - not reporting or relating either to government offices to RDAs or to local government, but clearly affecting the work of all. On top of this the lottery continues to spray money around in parallel with capital and revenue spent by all other programmes, often pulling in funding from all or some of these bodies in their wake.

The Cabinet Office Report ‘Reaching out: the role of central government at regional and local level’ firmly signposts this problem and makes a number of admirable suggestions for reform. However, these are essentially centred around the strengthening of the government Office for the Regions, bodies which, as the title of the report suggests reach out to the regions from government rather than work on cross cutting issues which concern regions from within each of them. The report makes small mention of the agenda of elected regional government, other than to report

"that the model suggested…..appears neither to require nor preclude most plausible forms of elected regional government; and we conclude that our model should be assumed in any further consideration of the impact of regional government’. (p.131)"

If this is so, then the regional government agenda looks to be in trouble. For what is being suggested, in essence is that the reform of the various government initiatives into GOR co-ordinated structures will be a permanent feature of government, making the actual function of a regionally elected assembly peripheral, to say the least. For the regional modernisation agenda to proceed, the issue of the relationship of the government Offices to an elected regional structure must be addressed, and it must be done on the basis that, whilst there will always be a role for central outreach agencies, devolution of function means a primacy of action within regions, rather than from government to regions.

If this is one nettle to be grasped, then another certainly looks to be the future of local government. Is government pursuing an agenda for the modernisation of local government which displaces any serious further consideration of the regional agenda? A number of commentators have suggested that the programme of elected mayors falls strongly into this category. A string of powerful city -based politicians with a mandate and real responsibilities would substitute for any feasible regional structure.

This is, to some extent fuelled by the misleading nomenclature used for London. In truth, London devolution is similar in scope to that of other capital regions in Europe such as Madrid. They represent the ‘greater city’ area and perform a regional function. The mayor of London ought more accurately to be entitled the first minister of the London region. Elected mayors outside London, however, would clearly not fit this description. Not only would they have powers and responsibilities that directly related to local government functions (represented in London by the London boroughs) but they would be the elected mayor of their own local authority area only, which in almost all cases represents far less than the real city. Elsewhere in Europe, even where mayors do represent whole cities, they do not self-evidently cut across regional structures. Whilst they may be strong, there is still ample political room for the region - as is witnessed by the relationship of Barcelona and Catalunya.

An issue of much more serious concern is that of the little noticed caveat to ‘A choice for England’. Does local government really need to be unitary in nature before elected regional government can safely proceed? In this instance the irresistible force of modernisation meets the immovable object of tradition. Counties . During the last local government review the historical strength of units of local government in most instances unchanged since 1399 proved a strong rallying point for those fighting change> this sentiment will undoubtedly come alive again if elected mayors become widespread in local government. What better way of trumping the authority of both city and (unelected) region than to have an elected mayor of the county? An elected county mayor claiming a mandate over a larger county already able to present itself as performing quasi-regional functions would raise questions about overlapping legitimacy.

There is a strong temptation to conclude, therefore that unitary status would be necessary prior to the completion of Labour's regional modernisation agenda. In practice, though this condemns elected regions never to happen, which some cynics suggested was the purpose of the requirement in the first place. Government would not easily countenance another early round of local government functional reorganisation, after the appalling mess of the last effort. The real political task is to reconcile counties and regions. Already this is happening with the emergence of the Regional Development Agency making claims on regional economic development that some counties have promoted themselves on a sub-regional basis. Similarly, the emergence of greater reliance on regional guidance notes, and the co-decision making that is beginning to take place between regional planning conferences, RDAs and Government Offices with the regional chambers acting as sounding boards and consultees, takes much of the ground away from counties claiming that they are the real regional units in England. In an ideal world, one could envisage regions ‘growing’ out of counties - with an amicable transition of function accompanied by the maintenance of the county as a cultural and historical entity. Whether this transition will be easily possible in the face of the reality of where the regional agenda presently stands is a big question. Perhaps the solution lies in the British tradition of the fudge. If the house of Lords can be reformed by a two stage process, why not the county-regions dilemma? The process of establishing elected regions does not require counties to be absent from the birth. It does require them to go away in order for the process to reach maturity. A period of notice would encourage counties to join together and metamorphose into regions in a positive way.

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