Phil Davis (Birmingham, CFER): Four years on from the North East's rejection of a regional elected assembly, those of us who back devolution for England via the eight English regions see a shift in the political landscape. With Gordon Brown actively seeking debate on constitutional renewal and a Lords reform white paper expected this year, new opportunities arise to drive forward the English regions as democratic building blocks for a new UK constitutional settlement. Above all, this settlement needs to strengthen the Union, while bringing a genuine increase in democratic control to local communities.
In England, at the local level, distance from Westminster government has increased and is increasing. In this context an English parliament would not just be a fifth wheel on the constitutional chariot, but a dangerous excursion into both divisiveness and greater centralisation.
Britain in 2008 is littered with monuments to centralism that failed to answer the needs of the nation. High rise council flats mushroomed across the UK from the 1950s to the 70s, but are now regarded as a major failure of public policy. Is it likely this policy would have been implemented on such a scale in a devolved system where UK home countries and English regions had strategic housing and planning powers - plus democratic autonomy to seek alternative solutions? An English parliament would be a route to similar public policy errors and waste.
Devolution is about bringing decisions on public services and community life to the appropriate local level. In some contexts (e.g. education and social care) the best level will usually be a unitary local authority; in other contexts (e.g. strategic planning, regeneration and transport) major service and investment decisions require oversight by much larger elected bodies. The missing link in England (unlike EU states of similar size) is this second tier between Westminster and local councils.
An English parliament would simply be another centralist body failing to connect with the English regions north and west of Watford. In contrast electing boards or councils for whole English regions and vesting in them control of regional development agencies, transport (pace Transport Scotland or Transport for London) plus other region-wide responsibilities, would bring key decisions closer to the people. It would also be more efficient.
Lords reform offers us a way forward in both the modernisation of Parliament and better governmental links to England's diverse rural and urban regions. The election of all or much of the second chamber should be via English multi member whole-region constituencies, on the MEP model. Thirty or so persons could be elected per region. They would have a dual mandate acting as both members of the Westminster parliament and constituting a board or council for their region. The appropriate powers for the new regional boards could be as set out in the English Regional Assemblies Act. Their putative regional "civil services" already exist in the plethora of quangos and regional administrative agencies we already have in our regions but which are accountable currently to Ministers rather than directly to regional tax payers and voters.
The proposal to unite second chamber reform with the creation of democratic regional government creates neither another tier of politicians or new regional bureaucracies. Instead, in the best traditions of British constitutional change, it would use what we have already have to create a more localised and empowered form of English government. It would also finish the job of re-moulding the United Kingdom in a way that respected both the diversity and common interests of the British people.
