DEVOLUTION

HC Deb 18 December 1975 vol 902 cc1832-52

12.43 a.m.

Mr. David Penhaligon (Truro)

I wish to talk about devolution policies in England. I represent the county that considers that it has been near England for a long time and not part of it, but at least for the sake of this debate we shall consider Cornwall as being part of England.

In Cornwall there is enormous pressure for anti-centralisation. There is a great rejection of the basic philosophy that bigger is necessarily better. My election was living proof of that rejection of the central influence. Anybody who wins a seat from third place and 16,000 votes behind must have had something happen in his area. In my case, it was that Cornwall wanted greater ability to influence its future.

An incident which occurred the very first day I came to Parliament in many ways summed up the feeling that existed in Cornwall. I was asked by a member of the Press what I thought of Westminster. I assured him that I had never been in the place before in my life and that I had visited London on only about eight or nine occasions.

The next day I had a bigger Press about the fact that it was possible for somebody to get elected to Parliament, never having visited it, than I have had about anything that I have done since. The man was amazed that somebody interested in politics could have become involved to the extent of becoming a Member and yet had never been sucked into the centre at Westminster. I had to tell him that there were millions of people who lived a long way from London and who rejected a great deal of London's influence on their lives.

This pressure is felt not just by the Cornish in Cornwall. Many of our new arrivals recognise it. Indeed, that is the very reason why many of them came to the county. They recognise the Cornish identity, and in many cases they work hard to preserve it. The real reason for the pressure that exists in areas such as mine, and, I suspect, for some of the pressure in Scotland, is the rejection of what is seen in the regions as the power-grabbing nature of Westminster. It is a feeling that has evolved and increased even in my period of being interested in politics.

This feeling has bred two nationalist movements in Cornwall. Indeed we have the third group of nationalist movements in Britain and one of its members stood against me in the last two elections. There is an increase in interest in the Cornish language, although I cannot say that I speak it. It is an indication of the feeling in the area. It is an indication of independence and a rejection of many of the standards of life in this place. It is an indication of the feeling and pressure that exist.

I have never been sure whether it was for administrative convenience or because the Government recognised the regional pressures but in recent years we have had a proliferation of regional bodies set up that affect policy-making in Cornwall. We have the South-Western Economic Planning Council, the South-Western Water Authority, the regional health authority, the Road Construction Unit and our regional electricity and gas boards. Not one of those bodies is elected by anybody. What is far more serious is that they appear to be accountable to nobody, and yet they make decisions that affect our lives.

Let me consider first the South-Western Economic Planning Council. I regard this as the most ludicrous body ever to be set up. It covers an area comprising Gloucester, Bristol, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon and, of course, Cornwall. If someone were to stand at the north end of the area covered by this authority, he would be 10 miles nearer to the border of Scotland than to Land's End. In terms of time, he would be far nearer to Scotland than to Land's End, because the roads to the North are infinitely better.

Bristol, which the Government have apparently decided is the headquarters of the South-Western Region, has far more to do with the Midlands, both geographically and economically, than with the South-West Region. Indeed, in speeches in Cornwall I have called it one of the Birmingham suburbs, because economically it seems to many in Cornwall to be precisely that.

Fortunately for Cornwall, the reports produced by the South-Western Economic Planning Council appear to have very little effect and hardly anybody takes any great notice of them. One of the two reports that the Council has produced recently said that in the Council's opinion second homes and what are locally known as "summer lets" have no bad effect in Cornwall. I wish that one or two of the people who wrote the report would come to my "surgeries" to see whether they had any effect.

Recently the Council has said, probably with more truth than previously, that the number of people coming to the South-West to retire is a good thing, and I agree that it is not a particularly bad thing. That is one body.

Then we have the South-Western Water Authority. To be fair to that authority —and it is not very often that many of us in the South-West are—there is little doubt that it was presented with enormous problems when it was set up. Clearly, every local authority in the country and every local water board, on hearing that someone else was to take over responsibility, stopped all progress on its schemes and employed a large number of architects to draw up magnificent new schemes. They had them costed and then, the moment the new authority took over, they sent them to it by post—first-class mail, no doubt.

However, this body has unbelievable power over my region. If the country authority wants to develop a village or town at A and the regional water authority decides that it would rather put in a sewerage scheme at B, that is the end of the matter as far as Cornwall County Council is concerned. We develop at B, because it is difficult to develop where there is no sewerage scheme.

I have never understood and still do not understand the logic of not making this body responsible to the local county authority, especially considering our geo graphical position. I am not knowledgeable enough about other county authorities to know whether this would make sense elsewhere. But certainly in Cornwall, why that authority, or at least part of it, was not made the Cornwall Water Authority and then put under some democratic control is totally beyond me.

Another body that has been set up in Exeter is the Road Construction Unit. I hope that the Minister will be able to educate me a little about this body—by whom it is appointed, to whom it is resonsible, and what it is supposed to do My ability to influence it has been a little less than zero since I was elected a Member of Parliament. I can only believe that it is merely London's agent. It has made some incredible decisions.

Before I was elected to Parliament I used to work in Camborne, some 12 or 13 miles from my home. Camborne has an enormous traffic problem. No one would deny that, certainly not at five o'clock on the way home from work. It now has a bypass. That is certainly worth a visit by the Minister if he ever visits Cornwall during his summer holidays. It is a dual carriageway, with many bridges over it to make sure that progress is not impeded. Something over half of its length is lit with innumerable lamps—the standard distance apart and with the standard intensity bulbs. The cost was £5 million. It was built to exactly the same standard as any other bypass, whether at Salisbury, Andover, or elsewhere. The one great difference is that Camborne is 21 miles from Land's End, and quite where all these cars that can roar down the Camborne bypass will go I do not know.

One of the most interesting things that have seen recently was the development of a new basis of currency for Cornwall. The new currency is yards-of-the-Camborne-bypass. It is certainly interesting to compare expenditure on various items in Cornwall with the cost of yards of this bypass. For example, in 1969–70 on hospitals we spent 160 yards. That was the expenditure on capital projects of hospital building in Cornwall. In 1971–72 we increased that expenditure to 1,080 yards. In the last year for which I have figures, 1973–74, we managed to spend on building hospitals in Cornwall—which has probably one of the worst health facility records in the country—1,400 yards of the Camborne bypass. If there were far more power in our area, we should just not have considered that bypass to be the priority for expenditure that it was made.

In another constituency in the region there is a new scheme to build a bypass for Hayle, which has the distinction of being about 12 miles from Lands End. The figure mentioned for building this particular monstrosity varies, but I have heard suggestions of £12 million or £13 million—for building a town bypass about 12 miles from Land's End. Somebody suggested that during the summer we should build a shute at Land's End, because there would not be room for the cars anywhere else.

There is talk of abolishing the whole railway structure in Cornwall, which admittedly loses £500,000 a year. For the cost of the Camborne bypass we could keep the railway line for 10 years, and I believe that if we were allowed to invest the £5 million, we could keep it going for ever. Those who understand the local economy know that the Cam-borne bypass does not compare in importance with keeping the railway line for ever. Government standards which may make sense in some parts of the country do not make sense when applied to a peninsula at the end of the country.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office (Mr. William Price)

As one who spends his holidays on Hayle beach, may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is arguing that there should not be a Hayle bypass?

Mr. Penhaligon

I am not arguing that there should not be some sort of road improvement. I am not arguing that we do not want a road improvement in Cam-borne. I am saying that the basic problems could have been overcome with much less grand schemes. It is Government standards that I am having a go at. For example, an extension to the Redruth bypass would have overcome the Camborne problem. It would be possible to build a normal two-way road to overcome the difficulty in the Hayle area.

The hon. Gentleman knows of the problems in Hayle when he visits it in the summer. Those of us who live there all the year round know that the population is somewhat smaller for the rest of the year. There are those in Cornwall who think that perhaps there are too many visitors in the peak weeks.

Mr. William Price

My wife's people live in Troon, at the top of Camborne Hill, so I visit Camborne at all times of the year, as well as Redruth, Hayle and Land's End. I am well aware of the problems the hon. Gentleman mentions. It may be that other hon. Members go to Cornwall only in the summer, but I go all the year round, and I love going there.

Mr. Penhaligon

I am lucky that the debate is to be answered by a Minister who is so well informed. When the hon. Gentleman goes to Troon, the village cricketing centre of England, which won the Haig cup for two out of the last three years, he will be told that the people there are fed up with the men in London ordering and organising all our lives. Many of us think that we could handle things better ourselves.

I can give a recent example. Two road improvements have been carried out at a village in my constituency called Mitchell, which nobody here has ever heard of. To the south we now have a very wide road—admittedly not dual carriageway, but wide enough for four lanes, though marked out for three. On the other side of Mitchell a great deal of money has been spent on straightening out a dangerous bend. There are the inevitable lights—whenever a road is improved, the Government's good work has to be illuminated.

But I have been unable to have one street light provided for Mitchell itself that the villagers may dodge the inevitable flow of traffic. I have written letters to the responsible body in Exeter, which keeps tell me that Mitchell's accident record is not bad enough. It is saying that the death of one person was not a big enough sacrifice. If only I could find another volunteer, we should probably get street lights. The lights on the corner would be better in Mitchell, and if it were up to the local people, that is where they would be.

I am in favour of a different structure of government and a different attitude by the Government. For many years the Liberal Party has proposed a federal system. That is one of the reasons that led me to join the party some 10 years ago.

There is an obvious case to be made for substantial regions, but Cornwall is very much a special case. The decision that we made would affect no one else. There is no county further on, only the Isle of Scilly. The local feeling is that we could do very much better on our own.

I believe that many of the county councils in England should be abolished and their powers transferred to the district councils. The regional body in Cornwall which I should like to see would have the same boundaries as the old county authority. But it would have to have far more power over the road structure, industrial development, water supply, sewerage schemes and health. It would need to maintain a general county control over police and eduction.

The most urgent requirement is not so much a different structure of Government, but a change of Government attitude. We at Westminster must stop continually grabbing power for ourselves. Indeed, we should help ourselves in this place if we were able to concentrate on some of the real issues affecting the British people.

Many of my constituents are amazed when I tell them of the months we had to wait for a debate on unemployment because there was always something else—at times there were two or three some-things else that needed to be debated before unemployment. Having spent 15 months in this place, I believe even more firmly that central government will never solve the problems that lie in my county. That fact is that the Government here do not understand them.

Let us consider some of the results of the decisions that have been made by the Government over the years. Low incomes are probably Cornwall's greatest problem. Everyone thinks that its greatest problem is unemployment, but, with the exception of the past six months, the greater problem has been low incomes. According to the most recent survey of January 1975, a wage of under £40 a week is earned by 39 per cent. of the United Kingdom work force. In Cornwall that wage is earned by 63 per cent. of the work force. In the £40–£60 bracket the United Kingdom average for full-time workers is 44 per cent. while the average in Cornwall is 29 per cent. For wages in excess of £60 a week the national average is 17 per cent. but in Cornwall it is a miserable 8 per cent. Even in Scotland, where there has recently been an enormous amount of complaint about the terrible treatment that it has received in the past, 15½ per cent. of the work force is earning in excess of £60 a week. The earnings that I have mentioned are before income tax deductions.

We all know about the unemployment that exists throughout the country, but in Cornwall unemployment has risen to 10.3 per cent. The figure is always slightly exaggerated because many people go to Cornwall to retire. Many people go to Cornwall and register as retired bank managers. We seem to run out of jobs for retired bank managers. The basic level of unemployment is 10.3 per cent., but, because Cornwall has a smaller percentage of women workers than any other county in England, the real level of unemployed is a genuine 10 per cent. The women who are not working make up for the people who do not want to work.

In the past few years we have built up a satellite-type economy. Recently some friends helped me to do a survey. One of our findings was that 131 of the 184 largest firms in Cornwall—and when we get down to the 184th we are dealing with nothing very large—are controlled from headquarters outside the county.

For example, Rank Radio is controlled from Plymouth; Heathcoat's from Glasgow, Harvey's from Bristol, Devenish-Redruth Breweries—which sounds a Cornish concern—from Weymouth, Morland's from Glastonbury, and Marathon from Taunton. That is bad enough in the private sector, but in the public sector the system is worse. The South-Western Electricity Board accounts are centralised at Plymouth, with a training centre at Taunton, the regional water authority is based in Exeter, the regional health authority is in Bristol, with its training centre at Taunton; and British Rail is based at Plymouth. Indeed most Government services are based at Plymouth if we are lucky, and at Bristol if we are not.

I believe that attempts over the years—and they have been substantial—by the Government to attract industry to Cornwall have gone wrong at least in part because they have gone in for the wrong sort of industry. I would rather see in Cornwall 20 factories with 2,000 square feet of factory space apiece than one large factory with 40,000 square feet. In a low-population economy when one becomes that dependent on one factory, one knows that its collapse can have disastrous effects on the local economy. All too often we see our towns growing but our villages static and often becoming little more than suburbs of the towns. I believe that we are in danger of changing Cornwall into a mini-version of anywhere else.

If we had the power to influence events in Cornwall, we should not approach the matter in that way. Cornwall suffers from an exaggeration on any recession that takes place. If the system is based on companies with a centre and branches flowing from it, the branches bear a larger proportion of any recession and that causes problems, the problems of which we are only to well aware.

I recently obtained some figure relating to the Civil Service Council for Further Education and the number of day-release students in the South-West. The figure in Gloucester was 60, in Cheltenham 69, in Bath 149—an extraordinary figure—in Plymouth 69, and in Bristol 58. But in Cornwall the figure was only six.

Cornwall is suffering from an acute form of the national tendency—the concentration of brain and the decentralisation of brawn. There is only one hope for regions such as mine—namely, quick and powerful decentralisation of government. I believe that Cornwall will get its fair share only if it becomes a unit of real authority on its own. I would advocating working towards a different industrial policy in the county. I should like to see the encouragement of bodies to run co-operatives to market many of the products from the craft industries and to sell those goods in Paris, New York, or wherever it may be. We should do far more to encourage secondary industry based on our natural industries, whether they be tin, china clay, agriculture, or some form of food processing. They are our basic industries, and if we were given power locally, we should do far more to expand those activities.

My county does not want independence. I tend to regard those who want independence for our area as living in cloud-cuckoo-land. But we want an effective way of influencing our future. That patently does not exist at present.

My reason for drawing attention to this subject in this debate is that I am desperately concerned about the Government's White Paper on devolution in Britain. I think that this debate will serve to put over Cornwall's view before that document sees the light of day.

1.10 a.m.

Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley)

I am very glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon). He and I have long agreed that our presence in the House is fairly firm evidence of the existence of strong regional feelings at different ends of the country. He has a thoroughly Cornish name and tells me that he is a total Cornishman. I have a Yorkshire name and am proud to be a total Yorkshire-man. If my name had been Vere de Vere, or if I had come from anywhere south of Sheffield or north of Middlesbrough, I should not have been allowed to win the famous Socialist stronghold of Colne Valley.

What my hon. Friend has said about Cornwall made the point that I should like to stress to the Minister. In the Liberals' view, there is no reason for the scheme of devolution to the provinces of England to provide identical patterns for each province. So strong are different regional characteristics and topographical characteristics of the English regions that it would be very foolish to present a scheme for identical arrangements for regions which differ so much. Cornwall has the great advantage of leading to nowhere else, which makes it very much master of its own communications and so on. The industrial regions of the North do not have that advantage—we must not stop traffic to and from Scotland—but we have the compensating advantage of a strong economic and industrial base. I hope that this is being borne in mind by the devolution unit, for which the Liberal Party has a high regard and great expectations.

My main purpose in speaking on the eve of the preparation of the White Paper is to try to demolish three very silly fairy tales that vested interests and lazy minds have put about on the subject of English regional devolution. First, there is the absurd myth that there is no great desire for devolution in the regions. This is a tempting argument for big business and the bureaucracy to believe, because they are outraged by the trouble caused by having to accommodate different feelings and different market responses in different parts of the country. Many national newspapers are trying to get out of the bother of printing in Manchester as well as London by saying that the people of England are now all alike and there is no longer a need for a northern edition. This is the product of laziness and a narrow commercial view. It has no genuine base in fact.

One has only to turn to the memorandum of dissent submitted by Lord Crowther-Hunt, who is now a member of the Government, and Professor Alan Peacock to the Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution. They commissioned an attitudes survey, with the agreement of the Commission, and it pointed out: A major finding is that feelings of regional identification are fairly strong throughout the country. Although they are particularly strong in Wales and Scotland, they are almost as marked in the South West and Yorkshire… It therefore seems that the sentiments which exist in Scotland and Wales are not unique; they are held to almost the same extent in the country as a whole and there are some regions of England where regional feeling is almost as strong. To bear that out, the report continues on page 27: The people in Wales were less interested in more devolution than the average for Britain as a whole—and less even than in most English regions. Thus, for example, while in Britain as a whole 61 per cent. favoured more devolution, in Wales the figure was 59 per cent.; and the Welsh figure compares with 69 per cent. in the North West of England, 66 per cent. in the South, 65 per cent. in the East Midlands and 62 per cent. in Yorkshire. Even now, in discouraging circumstances, people in local government have more than enough to do to cope with the changes. The four new counties into which Yorkshire has, unhappily, been split under the 1972 Act have lost no time in establishing a firm arrangement by which every quarter representatives from the four counties meet to establish an all-Yorkshire position to confront Whitehall and Brussels.

The few people who genuinely believe that they do not detect signs of strong regional feeling for a measure of independence in England are not looking for the right signs. The nationalist movement in Scotland is associated with flags, strange costumes, weird music and extravagant ceremonial. When such people go to Yorkshire and find that we have no time for dressing up, waving flags and playing strange instruments—in other words, we are not a lot of Presbyterians in Yorkshire—they should not assume that we do not have the same feelings underneath the skin. Independence in Yorkshire expresses itself in a markedly increasing determination to establish self-reliance.

It is regrettable from the point of view of the House that the trend in recent years has been for Yorkshire people, who have a great personal motive for public service, not to offer themselves to serve in the House—as did Wilberforce and so many other great Yorkshiremen in the past—but to concentrate on county and provincial matters where they can have a real impact and see some result from their public service. It is the same in industry. Yorkshire worked hard in the last decade to build up decent centres of financial power. It insisted that if merchant banks wanted to deal with Yorkshire money, they must set up, not kiosks, but substantial offices in the great Yorkshire cities.

We are handicapped in that, unlike the Scots, we do not have a central focus for our regional feeling. Whitehall has been clever on the principle of divide and rule, and it is easy to set Leeds against Bradford, Sheffield against both and Hull against the lot. We have suffered in that way, but the existence of regional feeling cannot be in doubt.

The second fairy story I wish to demolish is the purely political gimmick that English regional feeling is a novelty recently introduced by the Liberal Party. That is easily demolished, because Liberal policy on English regional devolution goes back at least to Mr. Gladstone. I content myself with two brief quotations. In 1885 to the electors of Midlothian—what lucky people they were, although of considerable endurance—he said: every grant to portions of our country of enlarged powers for the management of their own affairs is, in my view, not a source of danger, but a means of averting it, and is in the nature of a new guarantee for increased cohesion, happiness, and strength. In 1897, 12 years later, when he was pre-occupied with the problems of Ireland, he said: If we can make arrangements under which Ireland, Scotland, Wales and portions of Eng land can deal with questions of local and special interest themselves more efficiently than Parliament now can… I will consent to give Ireland on principle nothing that is not upon equal terms offered to Scotland and to the different parts of the United Kingdom. We were all taught at school about Gladstone's great objective of conferring home rule upon Ireland, so it is significant to note that at the very time he was fighting so hard to do that, he was also saying that in principle—the devolution unit in the Government should note this—he was not prepared to offer anything to Ireland that was not to be offered at the same time to all the other parts of the United Kingdom.

The third fairy story—this is really assuming dangerous proportions in the argument—is that, however desirable to the English regions devolution may be and however great may be the demand for it, we shall have to suffer for a long time under the evils of the Local Government Act 1972, and we must not add more tiers of government. Of course we must not add more tiers of government. Liberals would be the last people to suggest adding to the appalling weight of bureaucracy, interference and control.

From the administrative point of view, the great virtue of a regional structure, democratically elected, is that it would enable us to scrap many tiers of government, some of which were mentionel by my hon. Friend the Member for Truro. From the point of view of those living and suffering in metropolitan authorities under the new Act we could get rid of the new metropolitan county councils straight away. No one, except perhaps some of the senior employees, would care a button. These bodies are regarded as having virtually no function. They spend their time trying to find jobs, very often sending huge glossy booklets to Members of Parliament.

Moreover, they are run at great expense. They are all dressed up and have nowhere to go. If we had regional government, we could get rid of not only the metropolitan county councils, but the health authorities, the water authorities, the regional parts of the gas boards, the electricity boards, the Post Office, the Civil Airports Authority and, as my hon. Friend called it, the extraordinary structure of economic planning councils. Of course, some of their staffs could remain, but the controlling bodies could be merged into the regional authority and have the great virtue of being democratically elected.

As a Member of Parliament I find it appalling to have to reply to constituents who are worked up about the compulsory introduction of fluoride into the water supply. It is appalling to tell them that this decision, by law, will have to be taken by a group of people who never have to face the electors—namely, the water authority. A decision which affects the daily water supply to every home should be taken by a regional body democratically elected, a body wich has to account for its actions at the polls. The huge regional outposts of the Departments of Employment, Industry, Trade, Environment, Health and Social Security, the Home Office and Agriculture, Fisheries and Food could all be brought under the control of an elected regional body.

Some people ask what there is to show for a measure of regional independence. I shall briefly point out some of the benefits which the Scots have enjoyed for years as a result of the relatively small measure of devolution which they have already got at St. Andrew's House in Edinburgh. For years Aberdeen has had a gold rush of its own. Even the bureaucracy could not stop the gold rush to Aberdeen because of North Sea oil.

Yet, being in Scotland, under the devolved powers which Scotland has, Aberdeen is able to offer in Government grants to incoming industries rather more than twice the grants which are available to a new industry coming into Yorkshire. Therefore, to those who have shall be given—so long as they have some devolved power. The grants are available per head of the population. It is a matter of simple arithmetic to work them out. It means dividing the money by the population.

Taking 1974 figures, social service cash benefits for each Scot in the population amount to £82.40 compared with £78 in Yorkshire. Public investment in housing is £31 in Scotland, £16 in Yorkshire; education building, £9 per head in Scotland, £6 per head in Yorkshire; passenger transport and communication, £5.50 per head in Scotland, £2.60 per head in Yorkshire. That is what happens when a province or a nation has some degree of devolution. We believe that both the nations and the provinces should have a great deal more.

How should the whole idea be set up in England? I should like to put two alternative proposals to the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not ask him to comment on them off the cuff, because I did not have an oportunity of giving him notice of them.

The first, as a working principle for the Government's White Paper on devolution within England, is that English regions should not be content with any less devolved powers than those accorded to Wales. I think that most Liberals go along with the view that Scotland, with its own intricate legislative system and established Church, has certain grounds for having additional devolved powers. But we on the Liberal Bench cannot see why any English region should put up with any whit less powers than are and ought to be accorded in generous measure to the people of Wales.

Alternatively, if the Government are determined to be sceptical, let there be democratically elected conventions for the regions—the regions to be defined by the Government—and let those regional conventions debate, consider and conclude what powers they should have as a start. That device has been used in many countries. It is something new for the mainland of Great Britain, but we have an educated public and the advantage of the media for generating interest in this matter, and I believe that there is a strong argument for allowing the people of each region to propose, at any rate, the powers they would wish to have. Certainly the demand is there. We fervently hope that the Government's White Paper on devolution to the English regions will come both promptly and in a generous spirit.

1.28 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office (Mr. William Price)

I apologise for the absence of the Lord President of the Council and the Minister of State, Privy Council Office, one of whom would normally have replied to this debate. Unfortunately, both have been unwell. I am beginning to wish that the bug had taken me, too, although just who would have replied to the debate in that event, God alone knows.

I listened with great fascination to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon). I have family connections with Camborne and Troon. I am from the West Country. The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire is right on the Welsh border and there are no more independent people in the whole of Europe.

I have been an ardent pro-Marketeer all my adult life. Just before the referendum in June my mother said to me "I cannot quite understand why you are so keen to take us into Brussels, Strasbourg and all the other places when we do not even want anything to do with those buggers in Gloucester, and that is only 11 miles up the road."

I understand the delightful West Country independence. I was born in and shall go back to it. In the meantime, although I represent a West Midlands constituency, I have a lot of faith and a great deal in common with people from the West. Indeed, I have probably drunk as much Devenish beer in Cornwall as anybody in this House.

The subject tonight is the English regions and I am delighted that I have not had to take on the Scottish nationalists. I think the Minister of State might have gone sick because he thought he might have to take them on. The Lord President has already told the House that we are preparing a consultative document which we expect to issue fairly soon in the New Year. I can give hon. Members the assurance that there is no final draft yet, and all the views expressed tonight will, therefore, be considered. Clearly that would be right.

The purpose of that document will be to stimulate a wide debate about regional arrangements in England. It will not advocate any particular changes. Whether changes are needed and, if so, what form they should take can be decided only after much fuller public debate.

If tonight's debate has helped to arouse public interest ahead of publication—and I find very little interest in the West Midlands—it will have served a useful purpose. The possibility of new regional institutions has been an active issue at least since Redcliffe-Maud reported on local government in England in 1969. The Kilbrandon Report in 1973 carried things further.

One of the first actions of the 1974 Labour Government was to prepare a consultative document about the various Kilbrandon proposals, including those for England. Preliminary consultations took place with many bodies, and there is no secret that there was little enthusiasm for radical change. I know the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) will dispute that, but I can tell the hon. Member for Truro that I checked tonight and I have been advised that we received five letters from the whole of Cornwall—and three of those from the same man. That is a fact and the evidence is there. I do not know who the man is, but I should not be surprised if he is the person who placed those delightful advertisements in the Redruth Packet and if he were a Liberal—I prefer them rather than us to have him.

In September 1974 we published our outline devolution proposals for Scotland and Wales and it was emphasised that we attached the same importance to democratic accountability of government in England. It was pointed out that the consultative process in England was not complete. We said that it would be wrong to go further until it was clear what the people of England wanted—and that is still our view.

Mr. Richard Wainwright

Could not this scarcity of letters, no doubt from all parts of England, be due to people's rising contempt for central Government, no matter which party is in power, and the feeling that writing to London is not going to achieve anything?

Mr. Price

I think that there is some truth in that, although whoever prepared my brief would not wish me to say so. I have 5,000 Chrysler workers in my constituency and I have had two letters about that matter. I am always suspicious of hon. Members who claim that they have had tens of thousands of letters from all over the world. I never believe them and they never produce the letters.

The response was not quite what we expected, and we are hoping that the further round of consultations will produce the evidence that we want from the English people. Members of the Liberal Party will agree that it is right that we should go to the people and ask them what they want instead of inflicting it upon them.

A number of suggestions have been made about changes in the organisation of government in England. These will be raised again and examined further in the consultative process. But it is important to make a number of general points.

In dealing with these matters we are not in an entirely open situation. The Government have made clear their adherence to economic and political unity within the United Kingdom and their proposals for Scotland and Wales were drawn up with the firm continuing framework of the United Kingdom. The implications have been spelled out in the White Paper. There is a need to safeguard the sovereignty of Parliament, to maintain a national framework of law and order, to secure fair and competitive balance for industry and trade, to enable the Government to manage the demand in the economy as a whole, to control national taxation and total public expenditure, to devise regional and industrial policies for the United Kingdom and so on. These factors clearly apply also in England. We suggest that the onus is on anyone proposing radical changes to demonstrate that they do not conflict with those basic objectives—which we believe are accepted by the great majority of people—not only in England but in Great Britain as a whole.

In local government, there are problems about the timing of any major institutional changes. I agree that there are far too many tiers and that the form of government advocated tonight would not necessarily lead to more. The worrying thing from our point of view is that local authorities are still trying to recover from the last major reorganisation—and so are the ratepayers.

We were critical of the changes, but they have taken place and our first priority must be to make the system work as efficiently as possible. The Prime Minister, addressing the conference of local authorities at Eastbourne last month, said: … no one sees a further major change in local government in the years immediately ahead. I repeat, local government has enough on its plate without adding the prospect of another reorganisation. This all means that there must be serious doubts about the possible timing of any major changes in the English regions which would affect the structure of local government. Of course we need to discuss these matters, but there are no simple answers which can be readily applied.

We know that there are those who believe that federation is the answer to all our ills. Kilbrandon considered it but decided that it would not work in the conditions in the United Kingdom today. The Government share that view. Federalism means allocating sovereignty between federal and provincial governments. Each level is sovereign within its own allotted fields. This is essentially a concept devised in days when government played a much smaller part in people's lives.

Nowadays people expect Governments to secure a large measure of equality in public services and general standards of living. A federal constitution makes that more difficult. In almost all existing federations, power is gravitating towards the centre. A federation consisting of four units—England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—would, as Kilbrandon pointed out, be so unbalanced as to be unworkable.

Attempts to get around this by splitting up England overlook the fact that there is no evidence that people in England want to be governed by regional governments with independent sovereign powers and the divergencies in policies and priorities within relatively small areas that that would imply. A system of this kind would add immensely to the complexity of everyday life and to the cost of administration. I find it strange that most of those who advocate federalism rarely make any attempt to answer the real practical objections involved.

Having said that, I repeat that the Government, while not having an entirely open mind—we have made it clear in the White Paper that there are certain guidelines within which we would wish to operate—are prepared, and want, to consider all the views of any body or individual who wants to submit them.

We have had a good debate. We shall resume at least parts of it when the House discusses Scotland and Wales, and we shall continue the main point of tonight when the document about England is published.

These are complex matters affecting the daily life of every citizen. The Government are determined to have effective public debate in which all the problems are fully ventilated. It would be facile to suggest that there are simple answers waiting to be adopted which will produce an efficient and acceptable system of government overnight.

In view of the major debate in three weeks' time, and the fact that the consultative document will not be long delayed, I think that it would be advisable tonight to leave it there, with the repeated assurance that careful attention will be paid to everything that has been said.

Mr. Richard Wainwright

Does the Minister agree that there could be at least two views about interfering with the new system of local government? The Government are not in love with the Conservative Local Government Act 1972. Is there not a case for saying that it would be unkind—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)

Order. The hon. Member has already made his speech. He may not repeat his argument.

Mr. Price

I do not want my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to accuse me of talking codswallop. This is a matter for him rather than me. It must be dealt with at a higher level than mine. I have my personal views, but the general view of the Government is that it would be extremely difficult at this stage to inflict another round of reorganisation on local government. However, the hon. Gentleman's point will be put to my right hon. Friend the Lord President when he gets off his deathbed.