Liberal Democrats veto unrepresentative Regional Select Committees in protest

5.09.00pm GMT Wed 4th Mar 2009

Liberal Democrat MPs angry at government plans to ignore the democratic will of the regions

The Government's plans to introduce Regional Select Committees that ignore the representation of parties in each region have been strongly condemned in a parliamentary debate.

Lib Dem Shadow Leader of the House, David Heath, expressed the disappointment of Lib Dem Members, stating "there is probably no idea, however sensible at the start and however valuable it may be, that this Government cannot turn into a dog's dinner with their cloth-eared intransigence, their inability to give up even a scintilla of power from the centre and their inability to grasp the concepts of parliamentary structures and accountability and the will of the electorate in the regions of this country."

The Government has insisted that the Regional Select Committees will not reflect the democratic will of the regions. Instead the political composition of the national Parliament will be imposed upon the Committees. Each will contain 5 Labour Members, 3 Conservatives and 1 Lib Dem.

David Heath explained how this would work: "the government propose having five Labour Members in order to give the Labour party a majority in the south-west region and the west country, but does Labour represent the majority of seats in the west country? No. Does it represent the second largest party in the region? No. It is the third party in the south-west with just 13 seats in comparison with the Liberal Democrats' 16 and the Conservatives' 22."

"If the composition of the south-west region were properly arrived at, there would be four Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats and two Labour Members, yet we are to have five Labour members, all serving mainly city constituencies, so they are not even capable of properly representing the different area in the south-west."

In protest, the Liberal Democrats have refused to nominate any MPs for the committees. The Conservatives and other opposition parties have joined them in this protest.

The Bill allows Members of Parliament to sit on the committees of regions they do not represent. Liberal Democrat Sir Alan Beith asked the Minister, "has it occurred to him how absurd it would be to draft in Conservative Members from the south of England to fill places on the Committee that is responsible for the north of England region, or, as the motions before us would, draft in Labour Members including Parliamentary Private Secretaries to fill places in regions where Labour has very few Members?"

Highlighting this latter point, Lib Dem Matthew Taylor referred to the possibility of an absurd situation where a Parliamentary Private Secretary could be "expected to scrutinise the work of, and possibly cross question, the Secretary of State for Transport, to whom she is PPS. Can that genuinely constitute adequate scrutiny?"

David Heath concluded, "it is simply unacceptable that we have these hole-and-corner Committees of Labour Members wandering around the country. They will be stuffed full of Government Members pretending to scrutinise our regional structures, but not doing so effectively - a cabal that will have no credibility, either in the House or outside, and no accountability, because it will not represent the wider region that it is purporting to represent."

The motion to select the Labour Members of the Regional Select Committees was passed by 257 votes to 190.

Click here to see the full text of the debate