Elected Regional Assemblies (Hansard, 24 February 2003)

§ Lord Rooker

In the White PaperYour Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions (Cm 5511) the Government invited views by the end of August 2002 on the question of how prescriptive we should be about the involvement of stakeholders in elected regional assemblies in England. In particular, the White Paper asked whether any requirements or principles should be specified and, if so, whether this should be done through legislation, guidance, or some other means.

By November 2002, 207 responses had been received on the involvement of stakeholders, of which most expressed views ranging more widely than these questions. The Government have today published an analysis of the responses received on my office's website at www.odpm.gov.uk, and I am placing a copy of this document in the House Library.

As we stated in the White Paper (paragraph 7.8), the Government are very keen that key regional stakeholders and their representatives should be involved within the structure of an elected assembly. I am therefore pleased to be able to announce today our proposed policy framework for the involvement of 4WA stakeholders in the work of elected regional assemblies. This framework will form the basis of the statutory provisions on stakeholder involvement in the legislation we intend to bring forward to establish elected regional assemblies when parliamentary time allows and after at least one region has voted for an elected assembly in a referendum.

The Government want to strike a balance between safeguarding the meaningful involvement of stakeholders in all relevant aspects of an elected assembly's work and allowing for regional flexibility to reflect regional priorities and build on existing working relationships. We also want to ensure that a wide diversity of regional stakeholders can be engaged. We therefore intend to make the following requirements and restrictions clear in the legislation:

each elected regional assembly will be required actively to engage stakeholders in the development and implementation of both the assembly's overall strategic vision for the region and the various specific regional strategies for which it is responsible;
each assembly should publish and make accessible an annual 'state of the region' report in a way which facilitates scrutiny and debate in the region;
only those elected may be full members of an assembly and thus eligible to sit on an assembly's executive.

In order to enable assemblies to fulfil these requirements, the Government intend to provide in the legislation for a non-prescriptive approach to additional forms of stakeholder involvement which assemblies may wish to adopt. This would give assemblies discretion to:

involve all of the stakeholders they consider appropriate—with particular emphasis on ensuring that business, local government, the voluntary sector, and community groups are properly involved;
co-opt stakeholders to serve on scrutiny committees, with the same rights and duties as elected members, including voting rights—although elected members should be in the majority and chair scrutiny committees;
co-opt stakeholders to serve on policy development committees, appoint particular stakeholders to act as policy advisors in specific cases, or involve stakeholder groups in the preparation of specific strategies;
establish a regional partnership forum to bring stakeholder organisations together;
establish consultative groups with specific sectors or on specific issues to facilitate consultation and/ or the provision of advice; and
spend money to support the involvement of stakeholders in assemblies' work through these or any other reasonable means, and to develop stakeholders' capacity to participate.

5WA

We envisage that this legislative framework would need to be supplemented by statutory guidance in order to safeguard the effective involvement of stakeholders while avoiding over-prescription. The Government will ensure that a draft of any such guidance is provided for consultation at the appropriate stage.