Well Done John Taylor, Leader of Alnwick Council

Christopher Booker's Notebook(Filed: 05/09/2004)
Sunday Telegraph

The battle for the government of England

Only now is the realisation dawning that John Prescott's forthcoming referendum on an elected regional assembly for the North-East could presage a mighty earthquake in England's local government.

If the North-East's voters approve his plans on November 4, they will also in effect be voting to abolish 13 district councils and the county councils for Durham and Northumberland, employing 40,000 people.

At a cost which could total hundreds of millions of pounds (Mr Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has produced no figures), these local councils would be replaced by just two or three huge and remote "unitary authorities".

Mr Prescott's plan, completing a process that has progressed piecemeal over the past 30 years, is that this should be the prototype for the greatest-ever revolution in England's local government.Hundreds of district and county councils would disappear, to be replaced by a two-tier system of nine regional governments with, below them, a few dozen "unitaries", administering areas much larger than those now run by district councils.

So stealthily has Mr Prescott's blueprint been taking shape that the first time most of the North-East's 1.9 million voters were aware of it was when they saw the leaflet sent to every household about the referendum.

This includes maps showing the 15 councils that will go if voters say Yes to an elected regional assembly.

The first local authority to blow the whistle on these plans was Alnwick district council. Earlier this year, on the initiative of itsleader, John Taylor, the council chose Mr Prescott's scheme as the theme of its annual "state of the district" debate.Alan Beith, the local Lib Dem MP, and John McCormack, a North-East Labour luminary, argued the case for a Yes vote, opposed by two members of the "North-East No" campaign, Archie Turnbull, a custodian for English Heritage, and Ian Riddell, who runs a local engineering company.Speakers for both sides deplored the fact that Mr Prescott had linked an elected assembly with the reorganisation of local government, which they argued should have been kept as separate issues.

The linkage was made, it is believed, on the personal insistence of Tony Blair, himself a North-East MP.

Following a victory in the debate by 71 to 25 for the No camp, Alnwick council became the first in the North-East formally to register its opposition to an elected assembly.Councillor Taylor, an independent, says: "It is vital that, in the short time remaining, people realise what an immense constitutional change is being proposed. We are being asked to vote not just on an elected assembly, but on a completely new system of local government.The provision of services will be taken away from genuinely local councils, and given to a remote authority which cannot be properly accountable to local people."

In Newcastle last week Mr Prescott's deputy, Nick Raynsford, attended the highest-profile public debate so far in the referendum campaign.In front of more than 200 people, the debate was led for the Yes camp by Professor John Tomaney, an expert on EU regional government, and for the No side by Neil Herron, the former Sunderland market trader, now director of the North-East No campaign.

Although no vote was taken, after the discussion, in which members of the public, councillors and leaders of local organisations also spoke, Mr Raynsford could have been left in no doubt that persuading voters to back Mr Prescott's plans will be a uphill struggle.

Meanwhile, Mr Prescott's plans were in deeper trouble in Yorkshire and Humberside, when East Yorkshire council last week became the first to pull out of one of his unelected regional assemblies, saying that it was not "giving value for money".

Other councils seem set to follow