UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 977-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

COMMITTEE ON THE OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER:

HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE

IS THERE A FUTURE FOR REGIONAL government?

monday 20 MARCH 2006

MR MARK LLOYD, MR ROGER HOWES, COUNCILLOR ANGUS CAMPBELL and COUNCILLOR KEN THORNBER

MS TRISH HAINES, MR LAIRD RYAN and MR KEN FOOTE

MS JO BOADEN, COUNCILLOR DAVE LEDGER, MR ROB WORRALL and MR KEVIN ROWAN

COUNCILLOR TONY NEWMAN, COUNCILLOR EDWARD LISTER and COUNCILLOR STEVE HITCHENS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 125-215

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions

on Monday 20 March 2006

Members present

Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair

Mr Clive Betts

John Cummings

Mr Greg Hands

Anne Main

Mr Bill Olner

Dr John Pugh

Alison Seabeck

_______________

Memoranda submitted by Durham County Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Dorset County Council, County Councils Network

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive, Durham County Council, Mr Roger Howes, Regional and International Manager, Nottinghamshire County Council, Councillor Angus Campbell, Deputy Leader, Dorset County Council, and Councillor Ken Thornber, County Councils Network, gave evidence.

Q125 Chair: Welcome to our first set of witnesses this afternoon. We draw to the attention of the Committee that Mr Byles from the Association of County Council Executives has not been able to come. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Mr Howes: I am Roger Howes from Nottinghamshire County Council, Regional and International Manager.

Councillor Campbell: Angus Campbell, Deputy Leader, Dorset County Council.

Councillor Thornber: Ken Thornber, Chairman of the CCN and Leader of Hampshire County Council.

Mr Lloyd: I am Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive, Durham County Council.

Q126 Chair: Can we start with you, Councillor Campbell, because in the submissions of Dorset County Council you urge "a return to local authorities of powers that have been removed from them to regional level, particularly in relation to strategic land use and transportation, planning and housing." What evidence has your Council to put forward that view, and in what way do you think that the regional level of governance has been ineffective in those topics?

Councillor Campbell: We did a bit of clear blue-sky thinking on this one when asked if there was a future for regional government, which is why we looked at it right from the beginning. There were various elements to your question, which I think will probably come up later on. We did talk for a long time on it in the last part, which says, "Where do you think regional government is failing the system?" - so I do not know how long you want me to go on about that.

Q127 Chair: Not too long!

Councillor Campbell: Quite! We feel that however you work the regional government, if there is going to be a regional government, then it should work on geographical boundaries, which are geographical based socially and economically, and historically if they can be; so that they are recognised by the people. We also recognise that the move - and quite rightly - is bottom-up as far as connecting with communities and the whole community planning drive is concerned, so that it has some connection which the people at the grass roots can connect to, as well as having a strategic focus, being big enough to have a strategic focus and being able to deliver. We think they all meet at the county council level.

Q128 Chair: Can I ask the other witnesses whether they agree or disagree with that view, and whether they perceive there to be any role for regional government either in service delivery or strategic planning.

Mr Lloyd: I sit here representing County Durham in the north-east of England and of course we have the experience of having been through a referendum on 4 November 2004 to judge whether the people of the North East wished to see an elected regional assembly put into place. My council supported that policy, but the people of the North East rejected an elected assembly on the basis of four to one, as John Cummings, Member for Easington, will know well. In that light, we do have a legitimacy problem with regional governments, but I have to say in a small region like the north-east of England there are a number of policy areas where it does make sense for us to come together with a view to having a coherent approach to governance perhaps or administration but not government; and we are working at the moment, as you will appreciate, on issues like spatial planning, transport and housing, and making some progress through the collaboration across different councils representing the constituents in the North East. I think, Chair, that we are different because of scale.

Councillor Thornber: One of the problems for assemblies is that they lack capacity at the moment. The capacity in the South East, where I come from, has been provided by the county councils. As my colleague said, we are large strategic authorities and we are delivering locally. There is a problem of accountability too, Madam Chairman: 30 per cent of the members of our assembly are non-elected, and the others are not elected, they are nominated - so there is that problem. There is also a problem of identification with a region on the part of people locally, and in the south east 8 million people are encompassed from Banbury down to Dover, almost to Bournemouth and so on; so there are those difficulties. There is tension between government officers and regional assemblies, and I am aware of those. All told, therefore, regional assemblies have not, in my view, added value to the process; they have added a bureaucratic level.

Q129 Chair: Before bringing in Dr Pugh, are you speaking against regional assemblies or regional governance, and are you speaking in your role as Chairman of the County Council Network or as the Leader of Hampshire County Council?

Councillor Thornber: I am afraid the two have overlapped in my reply, Madam Chairman, but I am speaking on behalf of the CCN. The CNN speaks for our delegation collectively. I was inevitably focusing on the present, and that is regional assemblies, but with great respect I would advance similar arguments in terms of not being in favour of regional government. It is hardly the topic in our pubs and clubs, Madam Chairman, is it? The people intuitively in the North East set their minds against it.

Q130 Dr Pugh: Would you not acknowledge that there is scope for regional decision-making? In fact, would you not actually welcome a degree of regional decision-making? Take for example a transport scheme that is wholly beneficial to a particular area that uses an enormous amount of available resources for that region, that will be validated and put forward or not: would you not sooner that was done by the region agreeing that that should happen, and that that project should be prioritised over others; or would you prefer the traditional method, when you get a big project emerging that spans many county councils, like a large road improvement? It used to be done by the Department for Transport looking at everybody's individual transport plans and saying, "this year we will do this rather than that". Would you not, as a group of county councils, or representatives of people in those areas, want to decide some things as a region for yourselves, with some resources, which you could not decide and do not normally decide in unitaries as things currently stand?

Councillor Thornber: Madam Chairman, I think there is a difference between regional government and regional governance and partnerships. For example, forgive me drawing from the south-east, but all of the county leaders meet with their chief executives, and we operate almost as a virtual regional assembly, and it is that sort of co-operation which will involve unitaries too, which I think is the way ahead.

Mr Lloyd: Post the North East referendum, 25 councils in the North East realised that we needed to bring in a different form of partnership to the way we worked together, and we have revitalised our Association of North East Councils. That is not just about county councils but also about the unitary and district councils in the North East. We are well able, as a collective, to make decisions on behalf of the North East, involving other partners. The advantage that that body has is its legitimacy. The council leaders sitting there are all elected, representing the people of the North East.

Mr Howes: Certainly very much the view in Nottinghamshire is that regional organisations of any sort have to add value, and perhaps at times decision-making has been passed to the regional level more as a matter of, "it is time something else moved to the regional level". I am conscious that at the moment our police authority is meeting with Charles Clarke today, and they are expecting to be told that things will go regional as far as the police are concerned, when I think probably they would say - whether it needs to be said - it should be left at county level. Why should it go regional? What is the added value for that particular level? A point was made earlier about regional funding, and the question was asked whether it would be a better idea that things passed down to the regional level to assess priorities. We have got an example in the East Midlands whereby through the process that has been established, it has worked against us because we have the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool, which is Nottinghamshire; it has a dual carriageway in Lincolnshire on the A46, and then in Leicestershire we have this awful part in between of single carriageway, with a horrific road accident toll. It was at the stage of being ready to go forward under the old system, and designs were sorted; now it is going under regional funding procedures and because of its cost it would take up three years' funding of this regional funding.

Q131 Dr Pugh: Is there a distinction between a regional partnership and a regional decision-making body? Could you not say a regional decision-making body is intrinsically more dynamic because if all the partners do not agree to something in a partnership it does not happen; on the other hand, if you have a body of some kind that has to make decisions it has to make decisions at the end of the day and things do happen? A partnership moves as slow as the slowest member of it, does it not?

Mr Howes: I can see where you are coming from, but with the regional assemblies at the moment you have two-thirds local government and one-third of other members of different stakeholders. Then you can have issues where in fact if, for instance, the local government side may be split for one reason or another - you could be talking about key strategic planning decisions even coming down to levels of housing and so on - the stakeholders who have not got any form of political accountability will be effectively making the decision.

Q132 Mr Olner: The title of our inquiry is: Is there a future for Regional Government? Mr Lloyd has very aptly said that in the North East a huge question mark has been answered, and since then it has not gone forward. What I want to tease out of you is this. In that regional network is there now a formal role for sub-regional government? I understand what Dr Pugh said about the partnership issue, but should we not be putting on the table something for strategic sub-regions within regions? If that strategic sub-region is based on the city region, how wide should they be, and how all-embracing should they be in relation to peripheral towns to the city?

Councillor Thornber: The sub-regional authority certainly within shire counties is legitimately and democratically the county council. So far as city regions are concerned, I do not have a great deal of experience apart from certain suggestions in Hampshire; but I know intuitively that people living in what we might call the hinterland around a city would not want to be absorbed within the city region. I do think there are ways of increasing productivity without going to the level of city regions. I do not think productivity is addressed by taking in the hinterland. There are, after all, social responsibilities which districts and indeed counties have - not just economic ones. I really ought to invite Durham to comment on this through you, Madam Chairman.

Mr Lloyd: The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister believes that in the North East there are two city regions - Tyne & Wear and Tees Valley - so following the logic through that has been promoted you would suggest therefore two forms of local government in the north-east of England. I would contend that the city regions of the North East overlap, and it is not as simple as to draw an administrative line on a map. If we take, for instance, Durham City in County Durham, it is a key component of both the Tees Valley and the Tyne & Wear Economic Development Plans, because it contributes to both, in the light of the fact that it has a world-class university. City regions are not new initiative constructs, and I would argue, and I think many of the academics that have looked at the issue would argue, that city regions have fuzzy boundaries, dynamic boundaries that change depending on the issue you are looking at. If we are concerned with job growth in a particular urban area, then the travel-to-work pattern would determine the geography. If we are looking at shopping, it would be a different geography, and recreation would be another again. I do not think city regions provide a new form of government, but they do provide helpful development tools for us.

Q133 John Cummings: Do you see cities like Durham being disadvantaged if city regions are implemented widely because of the geographic location and the dynamics of the county?

Mr Lloyd: Indeed. The short answer is that I do see towns that are not at the core of this urban policy being disadvantaged. Indeed, the original question talked about peripheral towns, and that is just what they would be, which is why I have some reservations about the notion of building government on city regions.

Q134 John Cummings: Do you believe in general that the needs of small towns on the periphery of cities get enough attention under the present system?

Mr Lloyd: Chairman, if we pursue the notion of urban-focused policy, the answer to Mr Cummings' question is "no"; the peripheral towns will not get the attention that they need. What we need is to make sure that we have got a combination of urban and rural policy that ensures the success of our cities - which we all welcome - and which is not at the expense of other places. We need a balanced portfolio of development.

Q135 John Cummings: Are you saying that the present conception of the city region is basically flawed in relation to the attention it gives to more rural communities?

Mr Lloyd: I share a concern about the policy development, yes.

Q136 John Cummings: Is that view shared by the County Councils Association and other members?

Mr Howes: I have just had an example, which we gave in our submission. For instance, our area of central and north Nottinghamshire, a former mining and textile area that is going through a lot of regeneration, is between the Nottingham city area and the Sheffield city area. If you were to have city regions, the danger is that there would be a policy vacuum between the two. In other words, they would not be fully part of one, not fully part of another; and needing their own particular policies to regenerate it. At the moment this is happening through sub-regional partnerships, but a sub-regional partnership specifically for that area trying to drive forward regeneration. I would also add, as a separate but linked point, that when you go further south in Nottinghamshire around the Nottingham area itself, you then come up against overlapping hinterlands of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester - as mentioned by Durham. We recognise that and we are taking a positive approach to that, the strategic authorities of the three cities of Leicester, Derby and Nottingham; and the three counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire are driving forward initiatives where there is added value for looking at the three cities as a whole.

Q137 John Cummings: Have you conveyed these concerns to the ODPM; and, if you have, what sort of response have you received?

Mr Howes: We certainly conveyed the fears. I think they are at the stage where they are taking in a lot of information. We had the Minister around, and we made points to him about the advantages and the difficulties that would need to be overcome. They are at the stage of listening.

Councillor Thornber: I understand, Madam Chairman, that we have not had a response.

Q138 Mr Hands: It sounds that the four of you are all opposed to city regions, or the concept of them, but possibly for slightly different reasons: Durham because they would prefer to have the north-east region; and the other three of you because you prefer the current status quo, county councils and so on. Most of the arguments that you have come up with against city regions sounded like, so far, ones of definition and practicality - how you define a city region, and whether you could define it in different ways for different issues, whether you are talking about housing transport or whatever else in terms of infrastructure. Do you see any major constitutional or other issues that in your view militate against the concept of city regions? What are the other arguments against them?

Councillor Thornber: I would say that perceptions are very important in the acceptance of new structures, and those people living in what we have termed the hinterland would regard their legitimate democratic accountabilities as being diluted, and their interests almost therefore not sufficiently taken into account. There is the dilution argument for the present structure, which would inevitably be impacted upon, whether it is county or whether it is boroughs or district.

Councillor Campbell: Can I go back to the first question?

Q139 Chair: If you are brief.

Councillor Campbell: It is all connected. Most of these things are connected. The point about how authorities would need to get together anyway to make decisions - I can see where it is coming from, but the problem we have particularly in the South West, which is the biggest region anyway, is that every region like that has edges on it, however arbitrary or non-arbitrary it is. The people we would need to communicate with are not necessarily the ones that are in our region anyway. That is one reason that led Dorset to the conclusion that it did; that it should start off at county, unitary level, and then move out, working with its neighbours, because it makes more sense, both historically and socially as far as the geography is concerned, to getting something done.

Q140 Mr Betts: There is a contradiction here. We have Mr Howes from Nottingham talking about this problem of areas that fall between two regions in north Nottinghamshire, between Nottingham and Sheffield, and he puts that as a reason why perhaps they are not a good idea. Then we had the issue from Councillor Thornber about diminution of links and the problems at the periphery. Councillor Campbell has drawn attention to the fact that there is this problem sometimes of areas that do not have an affinity in some way being in different regions. That surely leads back to the point that Mr Howes made; for example, taking a place like Worksop, which is in Nottinghamshire. All its links are with Nottingham County Council, but in terms of its economic links it will probably have far more in common with Sheffield but never has a say in what happens in Sheffield or any decisions there. It is a completely different region, let alone a different county. Have we not got to find some way of addressing those sorts of issues?

Mr Lloyd: I cannot comment on Worksop specifically but we have a similar example with North Yorkshire and its affiliations with Tees Valley in the south of the North East, and yet it is in a different region. We are trying to construct a partnership that allows areas outside of current governance structures to play a full part; so North Yorkshire County Council are joining Durham County Council in discussions with all of the unitary authorities that make up Tees Valley. That approach is working well. We have moved away from a fixation with the government structures and asked what we are trying to achieve and the issues we are trying to address. What is the commonality of purpose; what is the shared ambition; and how can we collaborate around that? Rather than worry about how many seats we have around a table, we are saying, "we want to create more jobs, do we not; we want to improve transport, do we not?" We are focusing on the specifics.

Q141 Mr Betts: It seems there that while you would not call that a city region because Tees Valley might not be a city, the concept you are trying to address is very similar to the work say that Manchester is doing in terms of collaboration on a city region there. It may be a different brand name, but the process does not seem that different to me.

Councillor Thornber: The construct has to be almost amoeba-like. I know Worksop - I come from Nottinghamshire originally - and they will look to Nottinghamshire on certain issues, and they will be drawn to certain issues in south Yorkshire. Ideally, through regional governance and partnership you can embrace the different issues as they arise through a flexible structure, an amoeba-like shape, in order to be able to take in the particular issue. Regional boundaries are pretty hard and fast, are they not, sir? They are laid down by government. There will be problems across regional boundary co-operation, which can best be addressed voluntarily rather than - forgive me using the term - by diktat.

Q142 Anne Main: You talked quite a lot about influence. In the Dorset County Council's submission there were claims that the government offices and regional development associations had undue influence over regional assembly officers, and yet at the same time local authorities and the public at large had little or no influence. Can you expand on that somewhat? In what ways do you believe that is the case?

Councillor Campbell: The whole set-up, particularly I guess in a big region, is that you are relying on 60 per cent of the people who are elected members to various authorities having to get to Exeter - some come from Gloucester, some come from Christchurch and some come from the end of Cornwall - to a lot of meetings, not necessarily there - Taunton for things like the RSPDG meeting. There are a whole plethora of meetings, particularly when we have the Regional Spatial Strategy going through - about two years' worth. Our impression is - and quite rightly up to a point, I guess - is that they are under constant pressure, certainly from government office of South West and the RDA, but particularly government offices of the south west. So a small number of offices, which run the regional assembly - and they are quite small - have to produce an awful lot of paperwork and administer a lot of meetings, but a lot of the continuity that you would get in an ordinary authority cannot be there as far as the elected element is concerned anyway, because they are not there with the officers as they would be at the district or at the county level - but also it is quite difficult to get people there all the time because they have other duties. You therefore get perhaps a third of people who do not get to some of these meetings because of their other duties; whereas the constant pressure on the officers of the regional assembly is constant. One tends to worry sometimes about how things are moved on. For instance, it took us two years on the regional spatial strategy; there were arguments over big issues like housing numbers and infrastructure for instance - and particularly with the housing numbers because you naturally pick it out - trying to get an answer to that which the local authorities could understand was proven with the evidence that they had to give to that too and the top-down stance that was taken from the regional assembly end. It took an awful long time and we probably did not get there in the end. I feel that if was closer to the people who are democratically elected to it, you would get a quicker answer. It takes us back to the 30 per cent who are unelected; and, clearly, having seats - social, economic and environmental partners involved, with a vote now, is useful as far as the advice you get from them is concerned, but they can form a voting bloc and vote as a bloc, which seems undemocratic at the time. I have split my answer into two areas.

Q143 Anne Main: You have not really touched on the public apart from, obviously, through their democratically elected representatives. What steps do you think would need to be taken so that the public has greater influence over any regional decision-making - because you have mentioned housing, which obviously affects many people? You also noted that a project has been established to improve accountability. I would like you to expand a little bit on the project that you refer to in paragraph 5.3 - public influence in this project.

Councillor Campbell: Yes. Clearly, you have to get it closer to the public. You mentioned the democratic factor - if the public can actually elect people! From the point of view of most elected members I should imagine -certainly our experience in Dorset, when we go to our parish town council meetings, which we do regularly, people at first are quite astounded that there is a regional assembly because they felt that it had gone - such is the way the public works. Then they are worried about where the money is coming from, and how the decisions are made. Clearly, they are at the moment separated from it, and it would take an awful lot of education to get them into an area where they would fully understand why it is there at all. One move would be to have a fully - at least the people who went there would be elected somewhere. Dorset's idea, clearly from our submission, is to bring it closer to the people, to bring it down to smaller units, which have the advantage of being both strategic and local. The project is a different one. The chief executive, as is in the evidence, went to a meeting where there seemed to be a great deal of disquiet about the number of regional organisations that were springing up. I think the number was exaggerated at the time, but it was whittled down to about 57. Then they were particularly interested in improvement and centres of excellence for improvement, because that was the interest that our chief executive had with it, and they whittled that down to 18 that are to do with improvement. Now, they are going to get together to try to arrow-like point that so that all the effort goes into one place rather than spread on a common front. If you want more detail, there can get a lot more detail if you get in touch with the Chief Executive of Dorset.

Q144 Anne Main: You mentioned that if you went to a parish council people were unhappy and did not know such a thing existed and so on and so forth; so do you think that regional government is becoming less and less accountable? You have just mentioned this large number of colleagues; do you believe it is becoming more remote and less accountable, less democratic?

Councillor Thornber: They are costly, and they are bureaucratic. They have capacity problems. They have been given more and more powers that people are unaware of, and my experience tells me that people intuitively are against regional assemblies. I hesitate to answer your question directly because you invite me to contemplate regional assemblies that are powerful; and the only way to do that would be to make them specifically accountable to the people through the ballot box, as elected regional assembly members.

Q145 Anne Main: Fully elected.

Councillor Thornber: Fully.

Q146 Mr Olner: Do you all agree with Councillor Thornber? If you are opposed to regional government having those powers, do you think central government should keep them?

Mr Lloyd: We have been through the question in the North East of having an elected regional assembly and people said "no", so I cannot sit here, representing people, and say, "let us have an elected regional assembly". That would be foolhardy of me. We do need to find a way of drawing upon democratically elected individuals to bring legitimacy to decisions, and through councillors in a region - not just county councillors but elected councillors across the piece, we have that legitimacy that we should try and find new ways of employing, either on a regional basis or through delegating more decision-making to a local level.

Q147 Chair: So you would not want those powers to go back to central government.

Mr Lloyd: That is right.

Councillor Thornber: For the record, Madam Chairman, I am not advocating elected regional assemblies; I was responding to the question.

Q148 Chair: No, I understand that. Do you want the powers to go back to central government?

Councillor Thornber: I want powers from central government to sub-regional areas. Certainly there may be some arguments for some of the regional assembly powers to go back to government.

Mr Howes: I agree there. Perhaps it is best to leave it at that particular point.

Q149 Anne Main: Councillor Thornber said - the sub-regional area you referred to is that the model would be the county council.

Mr Howes: Yes.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed gentlemen. We will move on to another tier.

Memoranda submitted by Reading Borough Council, Stoke-on-Trent Borough Council, Hull City Council

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Ms Trish Haines, Chief Executive, Reading Borough Council, Mr Ken Foote, Assistant Chief Executive (Sustainable Communities), Hull City Council, and Mr Laird Ryan, Corporate Policy Officer, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, gave evidence.

Q150 Mr Betts: I have quite a few comments on the evidence we received about the accountability or lack of accountability at regional government level. Do you think there is a crisis in the lack of accountability that exists?

Mr Foote: I certainly would not use the word "crisis". There are concerns around democratic deficit, duplication; issues around accountability; but I would not say it was a crisis. What we are doing in the Humber - and it is what you discussed earlier in the afternoon - is looking at how we make the best use of opportunities around city regions and sub-regional agendas, and how we use those as the driving forces to lift the economic regeneration of an area of the country that badly needs it.

Ms Haines: The comment that I would add is that in the South East the region is not a very homogenous one; there is very little sense of regional identity. That is reflected in the way in which the regional assembly works. There is very little sense that I get of a clear way forward for the South East as a whole. As a consequence, the assembly has some difficulty in agreeing a coherent strategic overview.

Mr Ryan: I very much echo what my colleagues have said. The West Midlands, again, is not a homogenous region. The fact that the two regional development agencies have come together to create a Midlands way as almost a riposte to the northern way, reflects the fact that the quality of decision-making that flows from bodies albeit accountable - they are perhaps not delivering the goods fairly and demonstrably throughout the regions.

Q151 Mr Betts: It is also a problem in terms of public perception of the numerous different bodies at regional level. One might use the words "public engagement" but I think that is too strong - and public understanding probably does not exist. Do you feel that is an issue?

Ms Haines: I think they are very remote from the public. They are not directly elected; they are indirectly elected. There is very little knowledge of them, and even those who know of their existence have very little understanding of what they do.

Q152 Chair: Do you think that applies to all regional bodies? Is there any regional body that is a bit more accountable than the others?

Ms Haines: I do not know. I can only speak for the ones that I work with, I am sorry.

Mr Foote: I totally agree with what Trish has just said. What the public are interested in are outcomes. They are interested in how the quality of their lives will change, whether economically or in relation to education and skills. The public I do not think would be interested in the process, in a sense, but would very much be interested in the outcome. We have a real window of opportunity in Hull and Humber to change the quality of life of local people but they will be holding us to account primarily through the councils.

Q153 Mr Betts: Let us come back to that. They will hold you to account - and that comes up under the next point. Assuming that we are not now going to have elected regional assemblies and assuming that none of the regional bodies currently are accountable through a democratic process, do you see the possibility, or would you be arguing for, many of the powers that are currently exercised by the various regional bodies actually being decentralised back to local government? If so, which?

Mr Ryan: I very much agree with that particular perspective. There are those functions that are most identifiable with results on the ground - things like strategic transportation, the skills agenda, and environmental management. At a regional level the issues are too broad and too diverse to be anything more than depicted at the lowest common denominator, if you like.

Q154 Dr Pugh: Councillor Thornber in the previous session sketched this attractive model of democratically accountable bodies, with local councils merging, joining into partnerships, breaking out of partnerships when it suits them and not really being bound by regional boundaries or, for that matter, sub-regional boundaries. It struck me for a while that this might be a reasonably workable model of how things should be done. However, I have a residual concern that somebody needs to have a view of the regional picture because obviously all these various exciting relationships that are formed and unformed may not necessarily deliver the wider objectives. Would you be comfortable with a regional body that simply set strategy and direction and left the decision-making and expenditure commitments to local authorities primarily? Is that the kind of model you would like to see?

Ms Haines: I think there is a problem with that. I come from Reading. It is a very small urban area and is at the core of a much wider urban area, a lot of which falls outside the administrative boundaries of the council. The issue that I am most concerned about in terms of regional assemblies is that I do not see them providing the leadership for the way forward for either the region as a whole or the various parts of the sub-region. Thames Valley is one of the most successful sub-regions of the UK, economically successful; and Reading has the highest gross-value-added growth in the UK over and above London. Those issues are not being dealt with by a regional assembly effectively. My concern is that there are lots and lots of powers that exist at regional government level that could effectively come down to local government; however, that works really well where there are shared interests across neighbouring councils - and I am sure all of us sitting at this table could give you lots of examples where neighbouring councils have been able to come together to work on cross-boundary issues, where there are shared interests and common concerns. It is a problem however when there are issues where there are conflicting interests, and that is primarily around things like transport infrastructure, economic growth and housing numbers.

Q155 Dr Pugh: That slightly missed the point I wanted to make - and maybe I am not explaining my position clearly. You could imagine Reading paddling their own canoe and doing everything Reading wants to do, forming the liaisons it wants, the partnerships it wants, and getting things done as Reading wishes it to be done in collaboration with other partners with similar intentions. But even where that happens, and happens to the total satisfaction of Reading, might there still not be something more required for the wider area that somebody needs to do, and it is probably not going to be Reading?

Ms Haines: Yes, I think there is. Sorry, that is the point that I was rather long-windedly trying to get round to! There are some areas, and it is one of the reasons why I am so interested in the city region ideas - there are some issues that affect bigger areas than administrative council boundaries. Where there are common interests it is possible to deal with those through voluntary arrangements. Where there are not common interests, then we are not making the kind of progress that needs to be made. It is that kind of issue; it is not everything that regional government does at the moment, but it is some of the core things that regional government should be doing at the moment and is not doing very effectively.

Q156 Chair: Can we put the city region idea on the side for the moment? Briefly, do either of the two of you want to add anything different to that particular question before I go to Anne?

Mr Foote: In terms of local authorities and local councils, clearly they have a leadership role, but that is very much in partnership with other stakeholders, and certainly within our city region or sub-region the role of the private sector and the role of the voluntary community sector are absolutely key, and they should play a full part.

Mr Ryan: As local authorities, we have to manage the interface between top-down and bottom-up agendas, and there are some issues that regions are well placed to deliver, and that is in setting overall standards, setting the gold standard across the West Midlands. That needs to be tempered by what local authorities do as championing other interests in that area.

Q157 Anne Main: Ms Haines mentioned conflict and lack of vision and common purpose within the regional structure. We have heard other people say to us that, for example, in relation to housing it is not democratic; that some things have been plonked or put somewhere else. Do you have this concern at all about this lack of vision and conflict? Which are the issues that you feel could give rise to the conflict and lack of vision? You mentioned houses and roads and think that those things should be kept locally. Do you think they are a source of conflict and are undemocratically decided at the moment?

Ms Haines: I am sorry, I did not say - I am not sure I heard you right. At the moment housing and transport is largely dealt with within council boundaries. I think that that is an insufficient and ineffective way to do it.

Q158 Anne Main: How do you think it should be done - so that I get the right feeling for it?

Ms Haines: There are a number of ways that you could look at it, which range in spectrum from local government reorganisation at one end to doing it co-operatively on a voluntary basis. You can do it co-operatively on a required basis. For example, Reading together with two of our neighbouring authorities until very recently ran a Reading Urban Area Package for Transport, which was a deal done with the regional officers, which was backed by funding in return for co-operation between the three authorities, that allowed us to look at strategic planning issues. That worked very well. It was voluntary but there was a stick and a carrot to help it along. Sadly, that joint package arrangement has been withdrawn now and is not available to us any more, and the arrangements have fallen apart. But I think there is spectrum of ways in which you could begin to deal with the areas where it is difficult to get the planning co-operation on strategic issues.

Q159 Mr Olner: Both the witnesses before and yourselves, it seems to me, want to pick and choose what you want on a regional basis. Are you fairly happy about some of the creep of regionalisation that is happening with the police authorities, the ambulance services and the fire and rescue services? Surely this is a form of regionalisation that is going to affect your areas! Are you happy with it happening like that, or do we need it on a more formal basis?

Mr Foote: Our view is that on process we felt the consultation process both for the police reorganisation and the ambulance service was just too quick and too pushed. We did not feel that we had sufficient time to give evidence back. There are real concerns about the size of footprints of both those organisations. We are still yet to be convinced.

Q160 Mr Olner: The footprint is not wrong - it is too big?

Mr Foote: We are yet to be convinced with the proposed footprints of the ambulance service and the police service, in regard to sensitivity to local issues.

Q161 Mr Olner: I know that Staffordshire is well in love with the West Midlands on all of these issues - are you not?

Mr Ryan: The new localism, if you like, is putting increased pressure on those services to link in to local demands and identities; and yet at the same time they are trying to create a regional perspective for them, so the two definitely run counter to each other.

Mr Foote: I thought that was a really important point because at the same time we are having this debate about regions, sub-regions and city regions, most town halls are now devolving lots of powers and governance to neighbourhood levels, and so we have to see this in some kind of continuum and not have too big gaps opening up in terms of accountability and strategy.

Q162 Mr Olner: Mr Foote, at one stage you are saying you are going to devolve things to a lower level locally, and it is moving in other regions the other way, to make things bigger. Does the one in the middle disappear?

Mr Foote: That is why we are very interested, particularly where we are because of the geography of the north, in the sub-regional, city regional agenda, because we see that as the real opportunity to connect both to the street and to the region; and because of where the Humber is, we have as much interest in what is happening in Rotterdam as we do other parts of the country, so we are wanting to try and connect all those places with some kind of strategic thread.

Q163 Mr Betts: To Hull and Stoke; you have obviously large parts of severe deprivation and low activity in your areas. How do you think city regions would address that particular issue?

Mr Ryan: I think that they would create a wider perspective for the strengths and weaknesses and opportunities that we can use to address the issue. Over the past twenty years or so there has been a whole series of initiatives like SRBs, derelict land grants, a housing market renewable partnership and so forth, which have tended to focus on the weaknesses of the area, and allow the area in a sense to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. The reality is that a city regional perspective widens the economic opportunities. For example, the zone of influence of Stoke-on-Trent extends across three regions, into the North West and then to the East Midlands; but because the regional economic strategies collect the data region by region, we cannot see the benefits of what is going on in the city in terms of the wider area. We also have, for example, am automotive corridor that runs along the A50 and the A500 from Bentley and Crewe, through Stoke, through JCB at Uttoxeter and to the west side of Derby. It enables us to identify the way that labour and housing markets operate, and the environmental perspective and the way that that operates. If we just look at it in terms of our city boundaries, we do not do full justice to the processes that go on.

Q164 Mr Betts: Was not one of the problems of trying to do it through almost loose working relationships that Hull and East Anglia had a bit of a problem, did they not, on housing market renewal, in getting its act together and getting funds? If you had been in an athletics race, you would have been lapped by one or two of the other contestants.

Mr Foote: No, the baton has been handed down. What I was going to say- funnily enough before you asked that question was that if you had East Riding giving evidence to you, they would be saying that it is absolutely crucial for the sustainability of the East Riding that Hull works as a city and vice versa; and that the relationships and the interconnectivity between Hull and the East Riding is properly understood between the two councils. There is an enormous amount of cross-boundary activity going on. That perhaps was not the case back when there was the break-up of Humberside and the two or three years that followed that; those days have gone now. We actually see that we have got a shared agenda.

Q165 Mr Betts: Concern has been expressed in relation to city regions that those authorities, those small towns that may be on the periphery of a city region - and indeed might be in an overlapping area between two city regions - that they somehow lost out in the loose federations that get formed. Is that an issue of concern that has been raised and you are trying to address that?

Mr Ryan: No, not at all. If you look at our own example in south Cheshire, there are two contrasting authorities: Crewe and Nantwich, and Congleton. Crewe and Nantwich have a very successful engineering sector and a number of chemical industry research establishments, and it has a very high-quality living environment. However, they are not recognised as being part of the Manchester city region. They tried to join and they were rejected. Congleton is an area that falls between Manchester and ourselves. They have an image as being a commuter centre both northwards and southwards. The whole idea of the city regional approach that we are trying to adopt is one based around governance and the strengths of the areas. It is trying to complement what is going on in the city centre with the opportunities of small towns and rural areas so that there is, if you like, a fair exchange between them.

Mr Betts: Clearly, there may be a division of opinion about how city regions should be governed, whether it is this loose coming-together of a number of existing authorities which pool their efforts on a slightly wider area - but equally can look out if they get nasty decisions that they do not want to be part of; or having something that is more formalised with directly-elected councillors or a mayor - as the RPPR has just come out in favour of - for a city region, with a more formal structure with the hope that central government would recognise that and target resources at it. Do you have views on that?

Q166 Chair: Can we have a brief view from each of you - a "yes" or "no" really?

Mr Ryan: Yes, as long as it is not the one-size-fits-all approach.

Q167 Chair: So either, but depending on which city.

Mr Ryan: Yes.

Mr Foote: Local communities have lots of experience through local strategic partnerships of being able to manage areas through governance arrangements, which are not necessarily governmental arrangements.

Ms Haines: Voluntary arrangements work up to a point. They do not work as soon as you start getting conflicting local priorities in different areas, and you have to have some other mechanism for dealing with that. The tried and tested one, in a sense, is LGR, which has some significant downsides. There are a couple of other options, one of which is the elected mayors that you talked about; and another would be loading funding arrangements into strategic planning, to require it to be done on a joint basis, which has been done in a very limited way.

Q168 Alison Seabeck: Ms Haines, you have already covered some of the benefits that you feel Reading could gain from becoming a city region, and in a sense some of those are also clear from your submission in which you comment that Reading Council is restricted in its ability to take a whole range of decisions because it does not have a wider remit outside its own boundaries. How do the other five authorities within your urban area feel about that - your expansion, if you like?

Ms Haines: They have different views. Some of the views are different from ours and from each other, so there is not a consensus on this, and that is part of the problem; that there is no clear way forward coming out of the councils working together.

Q169 Alison Seabeck: What are their concerns? Can you pinpoint any specific concerns, or is it across a range of issues that they just feel that your political clout will simply subsume them?

Ms Haines: The concerns are around two specific things, and they both relate to economic growth: for those on the outside ring of a city region gaining the benefit from economic growth without having to carry many of the costs of it; and those on the inside of the city region carrying many of the costs and having to bear them disproportionately. The voluntary arrangements around things like key-worker housing, the voluntary sector, et cetera are not a problem because everybody thinks those are a good thing to do. As soon as it comes to crucial things like housing numbers to facilitate economic growth or road-building schemes or other transport infrastructure arrangements that might lead to more congestion, or traffic being routed differently, then each authority looks to the interests of its own local area, quite legitimately obviously. What we have not got is a view across that wider region that transcends administrative boundaries. It is stifling strategic planning.

Q170 Alison Seabeck: You are suggesting that you need to have some form of city regional government rather than just purely voluntary governance for structures if you are to make those decisions on a broader basis.

Ms Haines: Yes, Chair. The current governance arrangements are insufficient for the strategic view that needs to be taken on some things. It is sufficient in lots of ways, but there are some specific areas, specifically around strategic planning, where they are insufficient. I think there are several routes that could provide that - as I say, a spectrum from required joint strategic planning backed up by allocation of funding at one end to local government reorganisation or elected mayors or whatever at the other end. There are different routes that lead to that.

Q171 Alison Seabeck: Let us move forward and assume there is a greater Reading, a city region around Reading: how do you envisage that functioning with the London city region and the Mayor and his powers, because there will undoubtedly be overlaps?

Ms Haines: The overlaps are there at the moment, so in discussions with London around things like Crossrail those discussions go on, and I do not think that that would be any different. It might be a slightly more equal discussion because London is not only very large and powerful but it is very well organised in the way that the rest of the councils in the South East do not speak with as coherent a voice as they might do.

Q172 Alison Seabeck: You raised rail as one of the overlaps. Scenario: Reading signal box needs to be upgraded - very, very expensive; Mayor decides he does not want to spend the money there, given that he is going to potentially have powers over overground lines going into London, and he wants to upgrade Paddington Station for the same amount: who do you see acting as a broker in that position?

Ms Haines: Reading Station is an interesting example because it is not a regional scheme, it is a national one, because it is not Reading it primarily affects; it is the South West -----

Q173 Alison Seabeck: It was an example, but if you had that clash?

Ms Haines: I would say that one goes back to the Department for Transport, not to the Mayor for London. However, I take your point and there are other examples, and that is a real issue. I have to be honest and say I have not thought about a region with London at the head of it because London administratively is so separate from the rest of the South East, so I am not sure how else to answer your question.

Chair: Thank you all very much for helping us to explore city regions in an amoeba-like way!

Memorandum submitted by North East Assembly

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Ms Jo Boaden, Chief Executive, Councillor Dave Ledger, Vice Chair, Mr Rob Worrall, Assistant Director, Scrutiny and Policy Development including European Issues, and Mr Kevin Rowan, Member (Trade Unions) and Regional Secretary TUC, North East Assembly, gave evidence.

Q174 Chair: Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Mr Worrall: I am Rob Worrall and I am the Assistant Chief Executive of the North East Assembly.

Councillor Ledger: I am Councillor Dave Ledger, Vice Chairman Local Government and District Councillor Wansbeck County Council.

Ms Boaden: I am Jo Boaden, Chief Executive of the North East Regional Assembly.

Mr Rowan: I am Kevin Rowan; I am regional secretary of the TUC and one of the social partners on the North East Assembly.

Q175 Chair: Regional assemblies have been getting a rather poor press, so to speak, in the beginning part of the evidence session. What evidence do you have that there is public understanding of the role of the North East Assembly?

Ms Boaden: I will start off with the obvious point that the North East went through a very difficult time with the referendum and the "no" vote, and obviously there was a lot of public perception and misperception at that time. Prior to that election there was a regional assembly with powers that it had then continuing through that process; and it continues with those powers now. That has made it particularly difficult for the North East in terms of public perception because there was a confusion of roles between what might have been an elected regional assembly and what is the regional assembly. We have tried very hard, and continue to try very hard, to improve public perceptions. If I could give you a small example of that, our regional spatial strategy started its examination in public two weeks ago and that, as I am sure as you all around the table know, is a very dry document and one with a very long time horizon. It is quite difficult to get people engaged and involved in it. With the help of a local journalist for The Journal in the North East, he devised and provided an article that showed how regional spatial strategy would impact on the life of a child at two, as they grew up, and as they went through their life in terms of what schools they would go to, what education they might attain and what jobs they might attain; and where they might live and work in the future. That made that much more relevant and understandable for local people, and that was quite widely acclaimed. If we could concentrate on the example of the regional spatial strategy, it is very pertinent for us because we are going through the examination in public right now. There was a whole host of different methods of consultation at a variety of different levels. There was a website that had over 150 hits to it over a 12-week period. People downloaded documents - over 60,000 documents. Even on Christmas day people were downloading documents from it. Ninety people downloaded the regional spatial strategy on Christmas Day! We thought it might have been presents, but we are not sure! We had focus groups and went right out across the region and consulted very widely on that document. Rob will speak more about what happens in terms of our scrutiny role, how we take that right across the region and involve local people within that, and local businesses where that is appropriate. We are devising a new communication strategy. We have had separation from AMEC. We have not had communications for some time now but we have just employed a communications manager to advise on communications strategy, and that will concentrate on things like making sure that information is timely and relevant. We cover two and a half million people in a very wide area. We need to make sure that people understand what we do and how it impacts on their lives at different times. It is not easy in relation to how the public perceive us at this moment in time; but that perception is growing and we have had a difficult time with misperception but the air is beginning to clear and settle; and we have that at the heart of what we do, to make sure that people do understand the value that we give to the life of the region.

Q176 John Cummings: In your evidence you stated that you have taken steps to maximise the involvement of stakeholders in the Assembly - and you put great emphasis on that issue. You also hope that the stakeholders will add to and enhance the community's capacity for engagement with the Assembly. You are, I imagine, reaching out to embrace as many groups as possible.

Ms Boaden: Yes.

Q177 John Cummings: Can you tell the Committee precisely what you have done, and can you give some practical examples of what has been changed as a result of this exercise?

Ms Boaden: Can I start with Rob, who has done some scrutiny work through the stakeholders where things have changed quite considerably? Kevin, as our stakeholder that is here today, would want to speak on that.

Mr Worrall: It is important to know that whilst we are not a directly elected regional assembly, we do represent the region and we are representing communities of interest. That is important - it is not just a big community. In terms of our scrutiny role I can point to clear examples of where we have had change and influence in terms of what happened at the regional level. We recently carried out an assessment of the scrutiny inquiry that had gone on over the past few years, and we were able to know that there had been a positive impact on the promotion of entrepreneurship through regional economic strategy. Also, in terms of the strategy's success, we made several recommendations and we were able to clearly show that we had influenced the promotion of science and also the development of an action plan to raise regional aspirations in terms of their strategy for success. In terms of the communities of interest, one clear example was in terms of SME creation and survival. In that scrutiny exercise we were able to bring in to the assembly failed entrepreneurs who were able to talk about how the business support system did not actually support them. This is quite innovative in so far as one would not usually get this public debate and access about how business had been affected by the business support system not supporting them. They talked about this, and this influenced quite heavily the business brokerage model that had since been developed by the regional development agency.

Q178 Chair: Were those examples before or after the referendum?

Mr Worrall: They were before the referendum.

Q179 John Cummings: After this particular exercise had been completed you have told us what you have done to try and engage people, but what has been achieved as a result of this exercise? What kind of measures can we look at and embrace to understand what has been achieved?

Mr Worrall: What has been achieved as a result of this exercise has been that we have managed to influence the development of the business support models. It is something that happens over the longer term; it is not always something that instantly changes.

Councillor Ledger: One of the key things that the Assembly tries to recognise is that in order to engage in a scrutiny role it does not necessarily possess the expertise within its immediate staffing. One of the things that the economic and social partners bring to the table is that actual experience of policy implementation and delivery. For instance, when we look at the sustainable development framework, it is organisations that are specialising in sustainable development that are engaged as social partners that contribute directly to it. When Rob was talking about the SME scrutiny role, he was talking to SMEs that are part of the economic social partnership group that talk about their experience of business support and services. That practical experience helped to inform the scrutiny role, which led to changes in business support services. That was a practical outcome as a result of that. We did some work in the run-up to the referendum which was about trying to establish economic principles for stakeholder engagement of an elected regional assembly, should that come to pass. The work that the Assembly did was commended by the ODPM for developing excellence in principles of social partner stakeholder engagement. As you have pointed out, John, it highlighted some gaps within the engagement of social partners within the current North East Assembly, and led the Assembly to do some work in terms of developing networks and groups that currently are not participating as much as they should, particularly in the voluntary sector groups. That work is ongoing and is partly supported by DTI initiatives in the region.

Q180 John Cummings: Could you tell the Committee what value the social and economic partners bring to the work of the Assembly directly?

Mr Rowan: It is perhaps not for me to say as one of the social partners. I think there are different things. There is the particular expertise and experience of their own particular role, so there is a direct voice for the business community in terms of their experiences, whether it is their experience of what the RDA delivers or the impact of the Regional Spatial Strategy which the Regional Assembly is responsible for. I think there is a general sense that the economic and social partners add a degree of breadth and depth to the Assembly within the Assembly's principles of stakeholder engagement where each of the social partners is asked to demonstrate transparency and accountability and its own representative credibility, if you like. It helps to add some sense of legitimacy to the Assembly in addition to the local authority.

Q181 Dr Pugh: There is always a danger though, is there not, in defending the status quo? After the failure of the regional government vote, the North East vote, there is really still work to be done in the North East. There was a strategy, there was work to be done and there were spending commitments to be made. You got the strategy, the Regional Development Agencies kept the spending, and there is obviously a relationship there with scrutiny. We scrutinise the Government but we do not necessarily change its policy very much. What is the argument against you controlling both the strategy and the spending?

Ms Boaden: We need checks and balances. The RDA has a huge budget across the region.

Q182 Dr Pugh: Why?

Ms Boaden: Why? Because the RDA is an arm of Government ---

Q183 Dr Pugh: I quite accept the RDA needs checks and balances, I agree with that wholeheartedly, but what I am trying to say is why, as a Regional Assembly body, given you have the strategy, you do the thinking, you do the scrutinising and you try to have some little influence here and there, why should not the Regional Development Agency budget be put in your hands and you be asked to administer it rather than the RDA? What does the RDA bring to the feast that a Regional Assembly cannot?

Ms Boaden: There are some obvious practical questions about capacity and scale and the understanding they have of the economic development ---

Q184 Dr Pugh: You could import that.

Ms Boaden: We could import that. My personal view on this, and my colleagues may wish to shout me down, is that it is an important thing to have that separation; to have a separation from some of the key strategic roles and from that huge amount of spending.

Q185 Dr Pugh: Why? We try our best to influence Government policy here by scrutinising it from time to time, but I think the evidence shows that our influence is not as great as we would like to believe. You scrutinise the Regional Development Agency on a very local and particular basis and clearly from time to time you advise them on what they should do. They do not have to do it; they can go off and do something different, they can run quite counter to your instruction from time to time, what is the merit in that?

Ms Boaden: The merit in the scrutiny?

Q186 Dr Pugh: No, not the merit in the scrutiny, you are misunderstanding me. What is the merit in letting them get away with disregarding the strategy and advice you offer them?

Ms Boaden: One of the ways we use the stakeholders and economic and social partners in the Assembly is precisely to help give gravitas and weight to that accountability we have to have for the RDA. The scrutiny role which Rob and Kevin have a very direct interest in is very pertinent and the RDA in the North East do take account of what the Assembly says. Because we have partners from the trades unions, from the business community, from a very broad breadth, as well as elected members from all 25 local authorities across the Region, it gives that great weight in terms of the inability, in my view, for the RDA to totally ignore what we say.

Q187 Dr Pugh: You are a kind of democratic fig leaf that persuades people the RDA are somehow answerable to somebody. Are you aware of any episodes where the RDA have done one thing and you have said, "Do not do that. That is a bad thing", and they have subsequently stopped it?

Mr Worrall: I would like to step back and say that what we do in the north east in terms of scrutiny is not just scrutiny. We do scrutiny and policy development. There are some key areas where in terms of scrutiny it is very worthwhile scrutinising what has gone on but there are other areas where we try and work with the RDA to influence how their policy is developed. The regional economic strategy which is about to be agreed by government hopefully has a number of policy areas within that, some of which are areas which have been developed that we can look back on. There are other areas where we want to work with the RDA and our partners and help them develop their policy and help to say how they should want to influence their programmes. The key area at the moment that we are working on with them is regional leadership. We are working on how we can work with them to implement programmes on that. We do carry out scrutiny but we also carry out policy development.

Q188 Anne Main: Several written submissions to our inquiry have criticised regional government for its unquestioning acceptance and implementation of central government policy. Would you describe the Government Office for the North East and ONE NorthEast as being primarily top down or bottom up in their approach to policy?

Ms Boaden: The Government Office is the arm of central government in the north east so they are bound to take the government's view and we have to be able to interpret that at a regional level with the sensitivities that we need at a regional level. We have done some of that through the regional funding allocations and working with the Government Office and with the RDA.

Mr Rowan: I do not necessarily accept the premise of the question. It is difficult for either organisation to be one or the other. They need to be both. The fact that the Assembly scrutinises the RDA means that it has to have some cognisance of regional partners' views and regional stakeholders' views of its actions. That includes in setting strategy as well as in establishing the implementation plan to set that. The RDA is one of the elements of the Department of Trade and Industry and it has to get its economic strategy past that body too so it is in a difficult position which I am sure none of us would envy. It has to face both a local audience with local priorities and national PSA targets which the government sets. It is a difficult balancing act and in some aspects of its work it could be accused of being top down and in other aspects of its work it has some good lessons for regional priorities.

Q189 Anne Main: You would not accept this unquestioning acceptance and implementation?

Councillor Ledger: With regard to the Government Office and the RDA, I am sure behind closed doors they will have had many discussions that have been rather heated and they shall remain there. Having a place to assist the process of regional development is very important, whether it be top down or bottom up. From a Regional Assembly perspective, we have tried in the last two years to change, to get a better bottom up approach to the way we worked. That was developed with the New Horizons Working Group. After the no vote, we went in a path of travel not really knowing what to do properly and that was examined. The most important ingredient in the Assembly make-up is the economic and social partners alongside local government members who are working to the same end. One of the things we do is deliver by consensus. People, if they want to disagree, have the opportunity to disagree. We are working towards delivering in the region, for the region and speaking on behalf of the region.

Q190 Anne Main: In your submission you say that you have successfully lobbied central government on issues such as the rationalisation of Regional Development Agency funding. How difficult was it to make yourself heard and should mechanisms for communication be made more open and accountable?

Ms Boaden: There are a lot of different ways in which we attempt to make ourselves heard. Going back to the point you made earlier, it is not unquestioning. We might finally agree but there will have been questions asked within that agreement. I can use the example of the regional funding allocation across the region. That inevitably held many tensions from the views of central government, the Government Office and the partners within it but the Assembly was able to mitigate those views and help provide the response with our partners to government on that. There were a lot of questions asked prior to that going in and a lot of debate but eventually there was a consensus around the key strategies for us as a region. It is important to remember that we are able to do that and carry on in that role. Going back to your second point in terms of being heard, we lobby, we speak to different organisations of government, the Highways Agency. Representatives came to us at our last plenary meeting and we had a very open debate from a number of key stakeholders who were able to explain their position in terms of business et cetera and the impact of some of the actions of the Highways Agency within the region. We were able to do that very openly right across. Those messages went out regionally to the Government Office and beyond. We lobby; we respond to consultation and we responded to the Barker Report. We responded to David Miliband's request regarding the Housing Board so we do have a lot of dialogue in lots of different ways at lots of different levels.

Q191 Chair: To what extent does what the Assembly says add to what everybody else in the region is already saying anyway?

Mr Rowan: In terms of the question of other relations with central government, it is more difficult for the RDA to say that things within central government do not work as well as they would work because it is a government agency and the Assembly brings with it a degree of independence. The argument about persuading the government that a single pot would work better than the funding silos as were originally initiated was welcomed by the government. I do not think it was a difficult negotiation that was experienced. It was simply saying, "We think a certain degree of flexibility within the region would work better." Those arguments are welcomed by government. The difficulty for government agencies in telling government that what it is doing is not working should be obvious to anybody.

Q192 Mr Betts: We have the concept of the Northern Way around and the idea that it is built on the growth and potential for growth of a number of cities in the north. To what extent do you think that is a matter of importance to the functioning of local and regional government in the north east, this concept of city regions and their potential to act as a focal point for the development of the Northern Way in the future?

Ms Boaden: The initial concept of development of city regions as economic drivers and for areas of growth, particularly in terms of the Northern Way, is very important for the region. We need to grow as a region. There is a lot of evidence to say that that is the way to do it, to look at those dynamics in terms of economic growth. When you go beyond that, I am not sure how that impacts on the value of all of the region. We have a lot of hinterland and rural areas. We need to be careful not to leave those behind in the drive for city regions completely.

Q193 Mr Betts: Do you see city regions as a threat to your own existence?

Ms Boaden: We have to see how these things unwind. My own opinion is that, particularly in the north east, the rush to form new structures would be counterproductive. The Regional Assembly as it sits at the moment has a lot if importance, a lot of value that it could bring to knitting together the economic drivers of city regions for a better outcome for all the people of the region, so that we do not leave the rural areas behind. I think it would be unwise to go for different structures but the concept of city regions within the broader structure and the Regional Assembly in the north east helping to knit that together would be very powerful.

Q194 Mr Betts: We end up with district councils, county councils, city regions, the Regional Assembly.

Mr Rowan: There is a difference between governance and effective delivery of public policy. The evidence on the value of city regions in delivering economic regeneration as independent entities is, at best, vague. The strongest evidence suggests that city regions are most effective within a strong regional strategic framework. The application of the theory applies most questionably in lagging regional cities. Whether the global city/regional agenda works best in the north east the jury is still out on. What is clear from recent experience is that most economic development will take place within those city regions. What we need to do to make sure that that works most effectively is make sure that is embedded within a strong regional framework within a strong national framework.

Q195 Anne Main: In which case, is there any tier that you would remove, if you are going to add in a city region? Is there anything you think you need not have?

Mr Rowan: The challenge is to embed complementarity and cohesion rather than rush to structures of governance. There is a fairly clear understanding that we need very clear regional economic strategies but that regions ----

Q196 Anne Main: That leaves specific counties, city regions and regions.

Mr Rowan: There is a difference between governance which is the question of district councils, county councils or elected regional government, which has already been rejected, and delivering economic growth.

Q197 Chair: I think we are back to amoebae again.

Mr Rowan: Possibly that is a model; I do not know.

Chair: Thank you all very much.

Witnesses: Councillor Tony Newman, Vice-Chair of the ALG and Leader of Croydon Council, Councillor Edward Lister, Vice-Chair of the ALG (Conservative), and Councillor Steve Hitchens, Vice-Chair of the ALG (Liberal Democrat) gave evidence.

Q198 Chair: Would you introduce yourselves, starting with Councillor Lister?

Councillor Lister: Edward Lister. I am one of the vice-chairmen of the Association of London Government. I am also the leader of Wandsworth Council. I also lead the Conservative Group on the ALG.

Councillor Hitchens: I am Steve Hitchens. I am leader of Islington Council and the Liberal Democrat vice-chair of the ALG. The Council are members of the Commission on London Governance and I am one of the Mayor's local government representatives on the London Development Agency.

Councillor Newman: Councillor Tony Newman, leader of Croydon Council and vice-chair for Labour at the ALG.

Q199 Alison Seabeck: You broadly support the proposals to extend the Mayor of London's powers. What additional powers do you think should be held at the regional level and what powers that the Mayor covets should firmly remain with the boroughs?

Councillor Newman: One of the strengths of the ALG has been the amount of cross-party support there has been. In terms of housing - I am just picking some examples - there has been a lot of support in terms of seeing a greater role for the Mayor. One of the areas where we have seen ongoing discussions has been around planning where there is a clear tension between how much of that should be a regional role and how much of it should be a local role. You can go through this issue by issue if you like but those are two examples where we have some broad agreement and some further discussions still ongoing.

Councillor Hitchens: The Act of Parliament that set up the Mayor and the GLA was very clear that the Mayor's role should be strategic and not involved with the delivery of services. The extension powers we would seek are to clarify that, to introduce some transparency and to increase the accountability so that the boroughs retain the delivery role and the Mayor retains the strategic role. The area of contention principally at the moment seems to be around planning where the Mayor is seeking to be able to grant permission when the boroughs refuse it. At the moment, he can always refuse permission and intervene there but his ability to grant planning and retain planning gain through 106 agreements is of some concern for local authorities.

Councillor Lister: There is a division between operational and strategic functions. It is an important division. We have all been very supportive of the Mayor fulfilling strategic functions. It is when he tends to try and move away from that into operational areas that the friction arises. The fact that you can have three leaders, three councils and three political parties all pretty much giving the same message shows you where the tensions exist there. It is very important that the role of the Mayor remains a strategic one. There is a number of powers in London, things that are taking place, which we believe would be better run by the Mayor but better run on a strategic basis. As soon as they become operational, that should immediately pass down to the boroughs or to some other body. They should not go through the Mayor.

Q200 Alison Seabeck: Broadly, what you are saying is the Act as established has generally worked pretty well in terms of the boroughs' interests?

Councillor Newman: There is almost a unique level of support in terms of that but there is a quite legitimate tension. That is what the ALG represents in all the boroughs. That is very much our role, to represent the boroughs in precisely those issues that are being teased out. The waste strategy is another one. There should be a strategic role in terms of how London addresses the waste strategy for London but it is precisely at the point that becomes an operational function and strategic policy that the boroughs work very well together. The areas' agreement is that the Mayor has been a success in terms of the structures. The boroughs' role within that is something we are constantly teasing out and the role of individual boroughs is separate from the ALG and the relationship they have with the Mayor as well. London government is working pretty well but that is not to say there are not areas that we need to constantly review.

Alison Seabeck: Taking you out of London is probably a little unfair but you all have very wide experience in local government. You say in your submission that increasing powers for regional government might make it more difficult for local authorities to make independent decisions on spending and to use their own powers. What formal mechanisms do you feel, given the London experience, ought to be in place to safeguard the separation between the regional and local government powers in England?

Q201 Chair: Can you use your experience to comment on what you think it should be for the English regions?

Councillor Hitchens: One of the experiences that we have had in London is perhaps the limited accountability that the Mayor has to the Greater London Assembly. The Greater London Assembly has one power which is to overturn the Mayor's budget by a two thirds majority. It has no say in the Mayor's strategies. It can comment upon them; it can scrutinise them but it does not hold them to democratic accountability. What we would like to see just does not work in London. There is not any legislative requirement on the Mayor to consult with the boroughs. We can chip in if we like but he never comes to us and says, "What is your view on this strategy?" Strengthening those things would be important. The other thing that works in London's favour and which I think should extend and may be worth considering is the coterminosity of the services and their delivery. The London boroughs have fire, police and PCTs which makes the partnership working very much easier and also makes the delivery enshrined at that level. That transparency is something that would work elsewhere very effectively.

Councillor Lister: This coterminosity is very powerful in London. It is the area where we as boroughs are constantly seeking to try and get more influence on the Mayor or on central government, whichever. In the case of the police we are looking for greater powers in appointments of borough commanders and things like this. We are constantly pushing at the edges in those sorts of areas because that is where we are working together so well. That is where the success is. That alone has contributed enormously to the success of the London scene.

Councillor Newman: I absolutely support those comments. In terms of layers of governance and the role of Assembly members in London, where do they sit in that relationship between the boroughs and the Mayor? I know the Mayor himself has suggested that the Assembly members could be replaced by a senate of borough leaders, which caused a lively discussion.

Q202 Chair: Could I ask you to expand your views on the Government Office for London? You have suggested that it should be reduced in size and scope. Would you like to briefly explain why?

Councillor Lister: When the GLA and the Mayor were first set up, it was generally assumed that the size and scope of the Government Office for London would reduce commensurately. Instead, we have seen the opposite. We have seen a Mayor's office which has grown and grown. We have seen a Government Office for London that has grown and grown. I would suggest to you that there is not a lot of benefit out of these two massive bureaucracies growing at this rate. We should have seen a reduction. We already recognise that the Government Office for London has to be the vehicle of government and has to be their representative and all the rest of it, but many of the powers of the Government Office for London have in part moved over to the Mayor or to other places and we should have been seeing a reduction of the powers of the Government Office for London as the mayoral powers have grown.

Q203 Chair: Can you be specific about a specific area where you can get rid of people in the Government Office for London?

Councillor Lister: One that really gets up my nose in a big way is the Government Office for London sets the crime targets in my borough. I can understand if that was being done by the Metropolitan Police or the Mayor. I fail to understand why it has to be done by the Government Office for London.

Q204 John Cummings: If it is working it does not matter who sets the targets.

Councillor Lister: The Mayor has been established as the man in charge of the Metropolitan Police and therefore these targets should be set by him.

John Cummings: It does not matter who sets the targets as long as the targets are being met, there is a reduction in crime and people feel more confident and safer.

Q205 Chair: The point is that there is more than one person setting the target and setting the target does not deliver it. Is there another example?

Councillor Hitchens: The best example came when Rhodri Morgan came to the London Governance Commission and gave evidence on behalf of Wales and their experience. We asked him about the Welsh Office and he said, "It had just been reduced dramatically." It was to answer the requirements of the House of Commons, Members of Parliament, and also to brief ministers about what was going on in Wales. He also took the view, which is what we would expect the Mayor to do when we are negotiating for London's financial settlement, that the Government Office for London is sitting on the other side of the table from London. They are sitting with the minister instead of arguing our case and we would welcome the Mayor's office doing that with the boroughs.

Q206 Mr Betts: You probably see the Mayor in a quite high profile way, where he has from time to time been the key driving force behind what happens in London. At the same time, you are trying to indicate that the collaboration between boroughs is very important as well. What weight do you place on those two facts in terms of delivering good governance to London? How far do you think the Mayor relies on boroughs working together, providing a basis and framework within which he can act?

Councillor Newman: The Mayor or any mayor can only benefit from the boroughs working closely together and that is in the interests of good governance in London. Returning to the earlier discussion about the operational delivery, it is the boroughs that rightly have operational responsibility for delivering the overwhelming amount of services in London. The reputation of a local government, as we all know, starts with the bins being emptied and goes through to the crime statistics in their borough, whoever is setting them. Getting that balance will never be right. There will be a constant tension, but we have a greater understanding now. I would not want to put a figure on where that balance is but I think the boroughs are absolutely critical to government in London and the reputation of any mayor.

Q207 Mr Betts: One thing we have heard in terms of evidence about other parts of the country is that they are looking at the concept of city regions. Some are saying to us, "You did not need a formal structure - i.e., a mayor or similar arrangements - to pull the thing together. You can have the existing local authorities working together in collaboration as a way of delivering governance for the city regions."

Councillor Hitchens: That is a fair argument if you come from a place like Liverpool where there is a city council at the centre of that region. The boroughs see themselves as independent and equally as relevant to their area. In London, we have to admit that the mayoral structure has worked because there is someone who represents the whole of London. It must be questionable whether we would have got the Olympics without a mayoral structure in place. Where the boroughs are showing increasing maturity in government is that we are now defining the boundaries for delivery of service by what that service requires rather than every borough having to have an individual service. We are combining in some areas increasingly to deliver services without delegating them up to the Mayor.

Councillor Lister: That is right. The other great strength has been that the boroughs have become used to working together for a long period of time. That is also important. There is a bit of a legacy of working together, not in conflict. That has helped us to try and identify those services which we can do better together. We also recognise that the Mayor does add a little bit extra to the whole thing. The Mayor does act as a focal point for certain campaigns, such as the Olympics, which was a good example, where you can bring together all those London services, where one person represents them. We also have the same true of other cross-London services. We are currently arguing very strongly, for example, that the Mayor should have a greater say in learning and skills because there is a big problem in London with Learning and Skills Councils. We all feel quite strongly that that is where the Mayor should be leading, albeit the boroughs will be working with the Mayor.

Q208 Mr Betts: In London's case you need an elected mayor to pull it together?

Councillor Lister: I think you need something there, yes.

Q209 Chair: Can I ask you about the public perception of the government structure within London with the Mayor, the Assembly and the boroughs? Do you feel that the complexity of that structure is understood by members of the public and they know where to get their voice heard? Do you think it undermines the effectiveness of London?

Councillor Hitchens: I sometimes wonder if we understand it. It is extremely complex and some of the diagrams of the governance of London are complete obfuscation and very unclear. One of the things that we try to do in the Commission is introduce some transparency and some clarification. That is why we are looking for the GLA family of the London Development Agency, Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority. That family needs to have a better, more consistent model of representation. LFEPA has a good model with representatives from the boroughs and from the GLA. That works as a model which we would like to see extended across the other GLA families. If the Learning and Skills Council comes in, as we hope, there will be greater public understanding of the accountabilities and that is very important because government has to be transparent.

Councillor Newman: There is a good understanding by the public in terms of most boroughs representing people at that borough level and the Olympics and other issues, the role of the Mayor and the strategic role with transport and the rest of it. There are still questions whether the public have a great recognition of the role of other parts of the GLA. Part of the way to bring the Mayor and the boroughs even closer together is to make sure that, in terms of the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London and others, the role boroughs play there in partnership with the Mayor is greatly reinforced. That will cement it closer together. It does get a little bit abstract when you have other bodies with public representation from perhaps the Assembly or elsewhere.

Q210 Chair: Do you think there is a difference in people's view of the effectiveness of London governance, whether you come from a borough that is central or peripheral? I speak merely geographically.

Councillor Lister: We have talked about the things that have been successful. Things that have failed, for example, have been main roads, red routes across London. These are Mayor's roads. To think that any member of the public can understand that because a road happens to be called a red route it is a Mayor's road and a few yards in on any side road it becomes a borough road is the total confusion that exists out there. It is that kind of thing that we need to get rid of because it is unnecessary confusion. If the boroughs managed the roads as an agent for the Mayor or some such arrangement you clear away that confusion. Things like that have to be taken out of the frame. With regard to inner and outer London, there is always a little bit of a problem with London because those on the very edges of London sometimes think they are in Kent, Surrey, Sussex or wherever because that is where those boroughs may have come from in the distant past. There is a little bit more of a disconnect as you get to the very edges. That has to be part of the selling job of the Mayor and it has to be part of the job of the boroughs as well, to try and make sure people understand that London needs to hold together. At the end of the day, most of those people will have their jobs linked into the centre in one way or another. Their route to work is to that centre so there is a bit of a selling job there and indeed the Mayor has been arguing that there are one or two boroughs on the edges of London which are not in London but should be. There may indeed be a case for that.

Q211 Chair: Would any of you agree with that?

Councillor Lister: I think there is probably a case in the Thames Gateway for the boundary to move.

Q212 Chair: Is that a view shared by the other two of you?

Councillor Newman: Yes.

Councillor Hitchens: I am less convinced that drawling lines on maps improves the quality of government. We have had far too much reorganisation and restructuring. It is the quality of the government that counts.

Q213 John Cummings: If we wish to ensure accountability in a meaningful way, what do you believe could be done to tackle the lack of accountability for powers currently held by quangos in London?

Councillor Newman: It is looking at whether those powers at a strategic level can sit with the Mayor. There is a direct democratic accountability there. We have discussed the ongoing housing and how there should be greater accountability perhaps at a strategic level, but also at the more operational level in terms of ensuring there are borough representatives, elected councillors sitting on some of the bodies like the Metropolitan Police Authority, so there is a direct democratic accountability the public can see that is transparent.

Q214 John Cummings: You do not seem very enthused about what can be done to strip these unelected bodies of authority.

Councillor Hitchens: We think there is a very strong case.

Q215 John Cummings: That was not coming forward.

Councillor Hitchens: We have argued that the Housing Corporation's pot for London should go to the Mayor. We have argued that the Learning and Skills Council should go to the Mayor and we have even considered the Arts Councils funding in London and how that could come through the Mayor's office. We are quite enthusiastic about that. We already have the London Development Agency which is the only RDA that comes under the Mayor directly and so therefore has different ways of doing things. What we are also concerned about is that those have the right degree of democratic accountability when they come across, so that there is a consistency and borough representation, because all those services get delivered in the boroughs, as well as regional representation so that the Mayor is held to account for his strategic direction of those bodies. We are very enthusiastic about abolishing quangos and making them democratically accountable.

Councillor Lister: The one we have perhaps made the most comment about is the Strategic Health Authority. There is a very strong view in London that that should be a body where the Mayor should be on it and have some influence on it. It would therefore follow that the PCTs, which are also borough linked, should have some influence from boroughs as well. I am not saying they should be taken over by the boroughs but there should be borough councillors on them and representatives of the Mayor on the Strategic Health Authority. It is a meshing together of these bodies which can produce so much. Just using that as an example, we need to get social services working closer together with health. That could be achieved by those linkages. We need much better cross-London working in areas of health and again that is where the Mayor can come into it. We are very keen on those quangos fading away and the existing structures taking their place.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed.