Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid and excellent point. Long ago, almost every large private company gave up trying to control everything from the centre, because such an approach is inefficient and ineffective. My second point—let me move on to new clause 15 —concerns my right hon. Friend the Minister's answer to my question about why non-elected people on RDAs should be taking decisions over and above those taken by elected people on local councils, in some ways distorting what might be national priorities. In a subsequent statement, she gave the real answer: the Government are still wedded to the idea of regional government, which the people in the north-east threw out completely. I do not understand why the Government are still wedded to the non-democratic and inefficient part of that process, when the electorate—in a part of the country that was chosen because it was most likely to support regional government—threw it out. I can base the argument around a statement made by the newly appointed chairman of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, a man called Robert Hough whom I would class as a friend. He has done excellent work on the Commonwealth games in Manchester and I was a colleague of his on the Manchester ship canal. As a capitalist, he has put a great deal of effort into the community. On his appointment to the board, he said, "We have to be the referee between local government and central Government." That is completely silly. He is an excellent man, but I think he was looking for justification for a job and position that have no justification. People who are elected do not need someone to referee between them and Government. As a leader of a council, I was quite capable of agreeing or disagreeing with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). That is the way it should be. Local government should speak directly to central Government, because both have a mandate from the people. It might be a different mandate, but that is part of the glory of democracy. I am not simply making an artificial argument. In the north-west, the RDA has produced policies that are economically indefensible and I do not believe that a Government of any political colour would have followed them, and neither would local government in the north-west. They are capricious policies that are damaging the economy of the north-west. That is a simplification—in detail, it is worse. Rather than putting money where it is most likely to generate most jobs—the economic hub of the north-west is Manchester, the second economic hub is Liverpool and the third is probably Preston and Chester—the greatest amount of money per head of population has gone to Cumbria. There is another justification for spending money, and that is the relief of poverty, but that has not been the justification that has been given. I do not want to make a Third Reading speech; I just wanted to talk about the two new clauses, but the Bill does not do what it says on the tin. It is not about improving local democracy. Increasingly, as the debate goes on, it is clear that there is no proper justification for RDAs to continue. For this country to function at its best, local government needs to be set free. Giving it a general power of competence would be one way of doing that.