For many people in my Skipton and Ripon constituency the election was a surrealistic event taking place on a distant planet. The reality, grimly present in the gunfire, the prevalence of Army vehicles and the processions of sheeted wagons, was the new onslaught of foot and mouth disease in the Settle area.
Nonetheless the shape of British politics for the next few years did, grudgingly emerge, and it is clear that businesses will have to cope with a new regional agenda. For the long on-off affair with directly-elected regional assemblies looks to be back on. John Prescott would have been seriously humiliated had he left the environment department without it.
Gordon Brown has become a convert, perhaps because it would be difficult to sustain the enlarged role of the Regional Development Agencies without any form of local accountability. And in parts of the country where the election cry of successful economic management had a hollow ring, like the North East, Labour needed to acknowledge the concerns of its battered supporters.
That said we still know precious little about the potential powers and processes of regional assemblies. Labour seems to have dropped the idea of a mixed nominated-elected chamber in favour of direct election of 30 or 35 members - half the size or less of a county council.
Election by proportional representation means that there will not even be the pretence that these members represent anything other than an institutional constituency - business, unions, the tertiary education sector, for example. If they are wise all parties will limit the numbers of the great and the good from local councils presently embalmed in those hopeful governments-in-exile, the regional chambers.
Prescott has used that wonderfully convenient concept of "strategic functions" to describe their role. Transport, land and development planning, and economic development seem to be the obvious candidates. This has two advantages.
The first is that it retains the sensitive in-your-face services like health and education in the hands of central government and its agencies. With health and social services already in the throes of re-organisation and the possibility of the creation of joint service boards in this sector the government will jealously guard this domain.
The second is that the assemblies' functions could be described as complementary to those of local government and not beg the questions about local government re-organisation.
How referenda on setting up assemblies will be prompted is not clear. Whitehall-watchers may recall that the general election was at one time intended to coincide with a "democracy day" in which the joyful citizens went to the polls to choose their new executive mayors. Despite needing only 5% of electors to demand a referendum practically nothing has happened. Perhaps the government will bypass the electorate altogether and simply ask the regional chambers to demand a poll? Given that the assemblies will have powers that don't begin to approach the competence of the Scottish Parliament any subsequent election might attract the turnout which would make the participation in a Euro-poll look positively torrential!
If the whole proposal is a move to buy peace on the regional front I have the cheerful expectation that the government will be disappointed. The dog that has begun to bark is the battle over the Barnett formula - the allocation to Scotland of cash for public services which builds in far higher levels of per capita spending north of the border than south of it. Hints from Prescott just before the election that this should be revisited were hastily repudiated, not least by Gordon Brown. But this was not before a jolly little skirmish had taken place with the Scots declaring that they contributed far more than they got once contribution to tax revenue was taken into account and the local authorities in the South East complaining that they were short-changed.
If the new assemblies have few powers they will inevitably end up talking about "resources" and this is a can of worms for the government. This issue will gain added bite as the succession of local elections in the coming parliament swings councils towards the Conservatives.
The government has said that assemblies will only be set up where they are wanted. We could end up with assemblies in some regions and not in others, and with different powers. Businesses will need to get to grips with a whole new political geometry - Brussels, Whitehall, region, local council in a changing kaleidoscope. Now what was that about finally setting up a public policy department…?
Source
Building Homes