HC Deb 19 January 1994 vol 235 cc875-6
2. Mr. Mans

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when a single regional office for all Government Departments in London will be established.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer)

The new regional office for London will come into being in April.

Mr. Mans

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the new regional offices will be widely welcomed as bringing decisions closer to the community, not only in London but elsewhere, and will be particularly welcomed in Lancashire, where they will provide better liaison with the new unitary authorities, which we hope will come about sooner rather than later so that we can get rid of that high-spending county council as quickly as possible?

Mr. Gummer

Bringing together the various offices of government in London and elsewhere will enable decisions to be made in a much more holistic way, rather than individual decisions being on made matters that should be considered together. Advice will, therefore, come in that unitary manner. It will be for the commission to make its proposals for Lancashire, but I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will have views that he will want to make clearly.

Mr. Vaz

Although the House will welcome better co-ordination between Government Departments—for many years, the Labour party has put forward that policy and it has now been accepted by the Government—does the Secretary of State realise that his plans are fatally flawed in two respects? First, not one extra penny of resources will be allocated to London to deal with the problems that Londoners face and to enable our capital city to compete with the best cities in the world. Secondly, his plans do not go one step towards creating what the people of London really want—a properly elected and democratically accountable government for London. Why are the right hon. Gentleman and the Government so afraid of democracy?

Mr. Gummer

First, I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has forgotten the curmudgeonly way in which his more senior colleague welcomed the change when it was introduced. Indeed, he did as much as he could to attack it as being unsatisfactory. I see that Labour Members have already changed their minds about whether we are right.

Secondly, I was surprised that, on that occasion, I was accused of hiding cuts in London's budgets in that I was not going to deliver the amount of money which was proposed. In fact, I have delivered every penny of it, so Labour Members were entirely wrong in that slur.

Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman says that we are not spending the money in comparison with other countries. Interestingly, in a recent survey, French voters in Paris nominated London as one of the finest cities in Europe providing services better than those provided in Paris—the city in which they live.

The fourth point that the hon. Gentleman dares to raise is the suggestion that anyone in his right mind would want the Greater London council back again. If we ask people in London—even those who believe in a Greater London council—what they want, none of them put this at the top of the list; they want a lot of more sensible things first. There will always be some people who forget that billions more pounds would have been wasted if we had continued to have the GLC, whose stewardship of London, especially London transport, was a disgrace that none of us will forget.

Mr. Harry Greenway

Following my right hon. Friend's robust and welcome remarks, will he assure my constituents that under no circumstances will there be a repeat of the Greater London council or anything like it under this or any other Conservative Government? We cannot afford it.

Mr. Gummer

The Government will continue to deal with the real problems in London and leave it to Labour Members to hide the absence of a policy with a continuous nostalgia for one of the worst systems of local government that we have seen.