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Parliaments, Estates and Representation
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rper20
‘Inevitably the package will be dismissed […]
as inadequate and grudging’: regionalism,
ambivalence and the road to the North East of
England referendum defeat in 2004
Adam Evans
To cite this article: Adam Evans (22 Jan 2025): ‘Inevitably the package will be dismissed
[…] as inadequate and grudging’: regionalism, ambivalence and the road to the North East
of England referendum defeat in 2004, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, DOI:
10.1080/02606755.2025.2450198
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02606755.2025.2450198
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‘Inevitably the package will be dismissed […] as inadequate
and grudging’: regionalism, ambivalence and the road to the
North East of England referendum defeat in 2004
Adam Evans
Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
ABSTRACT
The New Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 oversaw considerable
constitutional reforms, particularly in relation to the United
Kingdom’s territorial constitution. While devolution to Scotland
and Wales, and the peace process that saw the re-establishment
of devolved institutions to Northern Ireland (notwithstanding
their subsequent instability), will be familiar to any student of
British politics since 1997, there was also an English dimension to
this reform agenda. Labour’s 1997 election manifesto included a
commitment to, at an appropriate time and in areas where there
was sucient demand, legislate for referendums for regional
government. This commitment would play out in the 2004
referendum held in the North East of England when an
overwhelming majority of those voting rejected the proposed
local assembly. This article looks at the years leading up to that
referendum, drawing on the latest government papers from that
period which have been released, as well as contemporaneous
analyses. While the ambivalence felt by many within the UK
Government towards regional devolution has been discussed
before, this article sheds new light on the extent, and scale, of
those sentiments, as well as on the wariness and scepticism felt
by those at the very heart of Downing Street regarding the
Governments devolution agenda.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 11 September 2024
Accepted 30 December 2025
Introduction
The election of the New Labour government in 1997 ushered in a period of significant con-
stitutional reform. This was particularly true of the territorial constitution, with Labour
delivering a devolution programme that saw the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a
National Assembly for Wales and the restoration of devolved government in Northern
Ireland. Labour’s 1997 manifesto commitments also included extended to regional
policy in England. Their manifesto pledged to establish ‘regional chambers’ to provide a
more ‘coordinated regional voice’ in a number of policy areas (for example, transport
and planning), as well as ‘regional development agencies’ as a means of coordinating
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the
author(s) or with their consent.
CONTACT Adam Evans evansab1@cf.ac.uk Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES & REPRESENTATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/02606755.2025.2450198
regional economic development. The manifesto also suggested, however, that ‘in time’ a
Labour government would ‘introduce legislation to allow people, region by region, to
decide in a referendum, whether they want directly elected regional government.’
1
This article focuses on the internal discussions and debates that took place after 1997
on regional devolution in England.
2
While the story of English regional devolution’s ulti-
mate failure, following an ignominious electoral rejection of the policy in the 2004 North
East of England referendum is a familiar one, this article draws upon extensive, and
recently released, archival material to add new depth to our understanding of the
debates that went on within the Blair administration. These cabinet papers demonstrate
the breadth and length of Number Ten’s wariness and scepticism about the regional
devolution agenda, as well as of the levels of distrust and suspicion that existed
between the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, (and his aides) and his Deputy Prime Minister,
John Prescott, on the topic. As this article demonstrates, Number Ten’s ambivalence
towards regional devolution was such that senior aides expressly queried whether the
Prime Minister would even publicly support the policy at any referendum. After a
context setting section which outlines the development of regional policy in the 1990s,
this article will breakdown the development of New Labour’s regional governance
policy into two distinct phases. Phase one during occurred the first term of the Govern-
ment between 1997 and 2001 where attention was focussed on the creation of Regional
Development Agencies (RDAs) and a fierce defensive eort was made by senior aides in
Number Ten to prevent RDAs being used by the Deputy Prime Minister as a platform for
regional government. While Number Ten was able kick the issue into longer grass during
the first phase, the second phase (the Government’s second term in oce, 2001–2005)
saw the Government grudgingly accept that it would need to put forward a detailed
policy oer on regional assemblies. During this phase, regional assemblies went from
being a manifesto item to an oer put to the voters of the North East of England at a
referendum, but only after a long process of negotiations which extracted a weak and
minimalistic model of devolution from an ambivalent and wary Government.
Context
As was noted by the academics John Mawson and Ken Spencer in a 1997 article, interest
in regional administration and decentralization in England has uctuated over the
decades in the period after the Second World War.
3
By the late 1980s, a proliferation
of government agencies and programmes, alongside a drive at the European level for
more strategic planning in the distribution of European Regional Development Fund
spending, had resulted in increasing attention to the question of how greater
1
New Labour because Britain deserves better (London, 1997), https://www.ukpol.co.uk/general-election-manifestos-
1997-labour-party/)
2
While there are obvious linkages between the two, the regional devolution agenda was distinct from New Labour’s
manifesto commitment to, and delivery of, ‘elected city government’ for London (New Labour because Britain deserves
better (London, 1997), https://www.ukpol.co.uk/general-election-manifestos-1997-labour-party/). For more on the
establishment of the Greater London Authority (consisting of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly), see:
D. Sweeting, Leadership in Urban Governance: The Mayor of London, Local Government Studies 28, (2002), pp. 3–20;
J. Brown, T. Travers and R. Brown (eds), London’s Mayor at 20: Governing a global city in the 21st century (London, 2020).
3
J. Mawson and K. Spencer, ‘The Government Offices for the English Regions: towards regional governance?’, Policy and
Politics 25, (1997), pp. 72–3.
2 A. EVANS
coordination and coherence could be brought to how central government policies were
delivered at the regional level in England.
4
This would eventually result in the creation in
1994 of the Government Oces for the Regions (GORs). There were ten English GORs,
with civil servants from parts of the Departments for Employment, Environment, Trans-
port and Trade and Industry and who were based within the regions all made accounta-
ble to their local Regional Director (each GOR was headed by a Regional Director). The
Regional Directors were ‘responsible for all sta and expenditure routed through their
oces and for ensuring that the necessary coordination and links are established
between main programmes and other public monies’. The establishment of GORs
took place at the same that the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB), drawing together
twenty dierent programmes from five departments, was set up and made available
within each region – GORs were responsible for nominating a proportion of the funds
allocated by the SRB.
5
In the 1970s, while Harold Wilson’s and Jim Callaghan’s Labour governments
struggled to navigate devolution for Scotland and Wales through the UK Parliament,
6
the Labour Party produced two papers looking at regional governance in England.
The first, in 1976, was a Green Paper, Devolution: the English Dimension, a consultation
exercise which noted the potential implications for England of devolution to Scotland
and Wales, and set out some proposals for an English devolution agenda.
7
A year
later, in 1977, the Labour Party’s National Executive published a paper entitled Regional
Authorities and Local Government Reform which included a discussion of regional gov-
ernment in England. The paper resulted in proposals being put forward for elected
regional authorities for the North of England and Yorkshire and Humberside to the
Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). The NEC rejected these proposals.
8
During Labour’s eighteen years in opposition after the 1979 General Election, devolu-
tion to Scotland and Wales eventually returned onto the political agenda. By the time of
the 1992 election, Labour was committed to the establishment of a Scottish Parliament
and a Welsh Assembly. In the 1992 manifesto, Labour also committed to establish
Regional Development Agencies for the English regions. By 1995, Labour’s thinking
on the English regions had deepened further. That year, the party published its policy
paper, A Choice for England. A Choice for England proposed the establishment of
indirectly elected regional chambers of local authority representatives to provide for
‘strategic coordination and democratic oversight’ of public bodies in their respective
regions.
9
Where public demand existed (and a unitary system of local government was
ready to be put in place), the party proposed that the indirectly elected regional chambers
could eventually be replaced by regional assemblies. These proposals formed the basis of
4
Mawson and Spencer, ‘The Government Offices for the English Regions’, pp. 73–5; G.J. Pearce, J. Mawson and S. Ayres,
‘Regional Governance in England: a Changing Role for the Government’s Regional Offices’, Public Administration 86,
(2008), pp. 445–6.
5
Mawson and Spencer, The Government Offices for the English Regions, p. 75.
6
For more on the background to, and struggles that occurred during, the Wilson and Callaghan governments commit-
ment to Scottish and Welsh devolution, see: A. Evans, ‘Far reaching and perhaps destructive’? The 1974–79 Labour Gov-
ernment, devolution and the emergence, and failure, of the Scotland and Wales Bill, Parliaments, Estates and
Representation 41, (2021), pp. 42-61; A. Evans, ‘Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland
and Wales Bill, 1976–7’, Parliamentary History 37, (2018), pp. 274–92.
7
E. Wood, (13 January 1998), Regional Government in England, House of Commons Library: Research Paper 98/9, p. 7.
8
Wood, Regional Government in England, p. 7-8.
9
Wood, Regional Government in England, p. 9.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 3
Labour’s 1996 paper, A New Voice for England’s Regions and the party’s 1997 General
Election manifesto, both of which made clear that assemblies would only follow success-
ful referendums in their respective regions.
10
The first term 1997–2001
Regional development agencies and the ‘first step’: regional chambers
At the 1997 General Election, Labour secured a historic landslide majority of 179 seats,
winning 418 MPs in the House of Commons. Number Ten’s concerns about, and conser-
vative attitude, towards directly elected regional assemblies would manifest themselves
shortly after Labour took oce following the Election. The new Government’s Queen’s
Speech, delivered on 14 May 1997 made clear legislation to establish Regional Development
Agencies in England would be a priority for that first session of parliament.
11
Attention therefore turned to the drafting of the Government’s White Paper (in which
its specific proposals would be made public). From the outset it became clear that the ques-
tion regional devolution would loom ominously over this process. On 22 May 1997, the
Prime Minister met with the Ministerial team from the Department for the Environment,
Transport and the Regions, an unusually wide-ranging (some might say unwieldy) ‘super
Department’ created for the Deputy Prime Minister.
12
During a discussion of regional
policy, attention briey turned to regional devolved assemblies, prompting the Prime Min-
ister to state that that they were realistically not likely to happen during that parliament,
before warning that ‘in this area it was […] essential to proceed with immense care’.
13
The Prime Minister’s remarks did little to dampen the Deputy Prime Minister’s focus
on the larger question of how England should be governed. As his department’s prep-
arations of the White Paper on RDAs progressed, there arose the question of which
Cabinet Committee should be responsible for considering it. For those Ministers, such
as Margaret Beckett and Alistair Darling, who saw RDAs as simply economic agencies,
the obvious answer was the Economic Aairs (EA) Cabinet Committee.
14
For others,
it was clear that the paper should be discussed by the Devolution to Scotland Wales
and the Regions (DSWR) Committee. In making the case for his committee, the Lord
Chancellor and DSWR Chair, Lord Derry Irvine, for example, noted that the Deputy
Prime Minister had ‘from the outset been concerned to emphasize the links between
the establishment of the agencies (RDAs) and our policies on regional government’.
15
Lord Irvine also noted that when it was published the White Paper would ‘have a
good deal to say about regional government’, indeed he was told by the Deputy Prime
Minister in correspondence the previous day that the White Paper ‘will need to
explain in some detail our position on regional governance issues’.
16
10
Wood, Regional Government in England, p. 10.
11
House of Lords Debates [hereafter HL Deb], (Hansard) 14 May 1997, vol. 580, c.7.
12
E. Lowther, The John Prescott story, BBC News [online] (16 November 2012), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-
20346012
13
The National Archives [hereafter TNA], Richmond, England, PREM 49/157. Summary of Prime Minister’s Ministerial Team
meeting: Environment, Regions and Transport, dated 22 May 1997.
14
TNA. PREM 49/157. Letter from A. Darling to M. Beckett, dated 8 July 1997.
15
TNA. PREM 49/157. Letter from D. Irvine to J. Prescott, dated 22 July 1997.
16
TNA. PREM 49/157. Letter from J. Prescott to D. Irvine, dated 21 July 1997; Letter from D. Irvine to J. Prescott, dated 22
July 1997.
4 A. EVANS
Unsurprisingly, the Deputy Prime Minister agreed strongly with Lord Irvine’s claim.
In a meeting with the Chancellor to settle the issue, the Deputy Prime Minister argued
that it was ‘important that the constitutional aspects of the Government’s regional
policy should be considered by the constitutional committee of the Cabinet – DSWR’
and that RDAs were ‘properly part of the regional agenda’. Noting the work that was
ongoing to deliver devolution to Scotland and Wales, the Deputy Prime Minister went
on to stress that ‘it was very important not to lose momentum on the English regions’.
In the end, the two men agreed that DSWR and EA should meet jointly to consider
the paper, with Lord Irvine chairing the DSWR part of the discussion and the Chancellor
chairing the ‘discussion of the economic implications of RDAs’.
17
While the Prime Minister had previously approved letting DSWR take the lead, the
proposed arrangement whereby both DSWR and EA would lead on the White paper
received from a scornful response from his senior aides. Writing to the Prime Minister,
Pat McFadden and Georey Norris, described the policy as ‘entirely economic’ and
warned that the only case for giving it to DSWR would be ‘to associate RDAs with devo-
lution’. As a result, there would be a ‘pretty awkward’ joint DSWR-EA meeting, begin-
ning with Lord Irvine in the chair to ‘discuss the constitutional implications – of
which there are none other than a possible future association with regional Chambers
and regional assemblies’, to be followed by the Chancellor chairing the second part of
the meeting which will ‘discuss the detailed contents of the paper’.
18
The tensions underneath the government’s consideration of RDAs were brought to
the surface in the handling briefs prepared for Lord Irvine and Gordon Brown. In the
brief prepared for the Lord Chancellor, it was suggested that the main ‘constitutional’
question posed by the paper was ‘how far do Ministers wish to present the RDAS as
the first step in their proposals for strengthening English Regional Governance’. While
the brief noted that the Committee would be ‘unlikely’ to ‘want to reach firm conclusions’
at that stage, it was suggested that Lord Irvine might wish to ‘bear in mind the Govern-
ment’s manifesto commitments on the one hand [i.e. regional assembly referendums in
due course] and the Prime Minister’s views – insofar as we know what they are – on the
other’. If that wasn’t clear enough, the brief went on to warn the Lord Chancellor that ‘the
Prime Minister is likely to be cautious about going too far or too fast down the road
towards regional chambers or assemblies’ and as a result would want to avoid RDAs
having ‘too wide a range of functions at the outset’.
19
The brief for the Chancellor was
much more explicit in terms of Number Ten’s views of the policy. Prepared by the Econ-
omic and Domestic Secretariat serving the Cabinet Oce and Number Ten, the Chan-
cellor was warned that the more important the package of powers for RDAs ‘the
stronger the case for elected assemblies’ and that he should therefore call Alistair
Darling, Margaret Beckett and David Blunkett to speak ‘in favour of small strategic
bodies’. The Chancellor was advised that RDAs ‘should not add to the pressures for
regional assemblies in England’ and just in case absolute clarity was needed, he was
told that ‘this is also the Prime Minister’s view’.
20
17
TNA. PREM 49/157. Letter from R. Mortimer to P. Reilly, dated 25 July 1997.
18
TNA. PREM 49/157. Letter from P. McFadden and G. Norris to T. Blair, dated 25 July 1997.
19
TNA. PREM 49/157. P. Britton to D. Irvine: DSWR Tuesday 29 July, Chairman’s Brief, dated 28 July 1997.
20
TNA. PREM 49/157. J. M. Durning to G. Brown: Chairman’s Brief for Joint Meeting of EA and DSWR – Tuesday 29 July,
dated 28 July 1997.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 5
In a remarkably blunt memorandum to the Prime Minister, to which the two handling
briefs were attached, Jonathan Powell warned that by letting DSWR get involved there
was now a danger ‘we will end up with widely drawn RDAs’. Accusing the Deputy
Prime Minister of being ‘disingenuous’, Powell warned that if DSWR-EA did not ‘turn
over his ideas tomorrow you will be faced with a widely drawn bill and white paper’,
unless the Prime Minister made his case to the Chancellor.
21
In the end, the Prime Min-
ister discussed the issue with the Chancellor and, as a result, the EA committee was able
to agree that further scrutiny of RDA functions was necessary. The outcome was cele-
brated in Number Ten as a means of keeping the RDA proposals ‘under control’.
22
As the year dragged on, there remained distinct uneasiness within Number Ten about
their Deputy Prime Minister’s approach to RDAs and, in particular, how he might choose
to use what they considered to be an economic policy to progress the broader, and thor-
nier, constitutional issue of regional governance in England. On 15 September 1997,
Georey Norris, a Special Adviser in Number Ten wrote to the Prime Minister’s Chief
of Sta, Jonathan Powell to warn that the Deputy Prime Minister’s draft RDA White
Paper’s proposed chapter headings suggested that the paper’s ‘scope goes beyond
RDAs and includes Chambers and Assemblies’.
23
While the Deputy Prime Minister and his Department continued to develop their
plans for the RDAs, they faced scrutiny from colleagues other than those in Number
Ten. The Deputy Prime Minister, according to Norris in a memo to the Prime Minister,
was on the back foot having tried to ‘mount a smash and grab raid on Whitehall’, with
Ministers resisting handing over powers and money to the Deputy Prime Minister’s
Department and RDAs.
24
In one example and in the face of some scepticism from Mar-
garet Beckett at the Department for Trade and Industry, the Deputy Prime Minister was
forced to write to her confirming that RDAs would not ‘takeover existing policy respon-
sibilities from Whitehall Departments’ but would ‘ensure better coordination of our
current eort, with the exibility to take account of regional needs’.
25
In reply, Beckett
welcomed the Deputy Prime Minister’s assurances and, for good measure, made clear
her position that there was ‘no need for RDAs to be dependent on the establishment
of either elected assemblies or regional chambers’.
26
The idea of regional chambers would become soon attract considerable attention
within Government, and it would become a proxy for the wider division between the
pro-regional government sympathies of the Deputy Prime Minister and the much
more sceptical and small c conservative approach adopted by the Prime Minister, a
number of senior Cabinet ministers and aides in Number Ten. By way of definition,
regional chambers were bodies consisting of local representatives which could ‘provide
a regional voice’.
27
In November 1997, the Deputy Prime Minister wrote to the Lord
Chancellor to seek Ministerial sign-o for his department’s proposals for RDA account-
ability. While seeking to reassure colleagues that RDAs would be accountable to UK Gov-
ernment Ministers, he sought to provide for RDAs to ‘work in ways that take account of
21
TNA. PREM 49/157, Memorandum from J. Powell to T. Blair, dated 28 July 1997.
22
TNA. PREM 49/157. Memorandum from G. Norris to T. Blair, dated 30 July 1997.
23
TNA. PREM 49/158. Memorandum from G. Norris to J. Powell, dated 15 September 1997.
24
TNA. PREM 49/158. Memorandum from G. Norris to T. Blair, dated 26 September 1997.
25
TNA. PREM 49/158. Letter from J. Prescott to M. Beckett, dated 22 September 1997.
26
TNA. PREM 49/158. Letter from M. Beckett to J. Prescott, dated 13 October 1997.
27
TNA. PREM 49/158. Letter from J. Prescott to D. Irvine, dated 4 November 1997.
6 A. EVANS
regional views and opinions’ and should consult what he described as ‘the emerging
regional groupings of local authorities and their private sector partners where such
groupings meet set criteria’. For the sake of convenience, the Deputy Prime Minister
banded these groupings under the label of ‘voluntary regional chambers’. According to
the Deputy Prime Minister, these chambers would ‘include representatives of the main
regional stakeholders’, and they would play an important role in developing a regional
framework and economic strategy for the RDAs to operate within.
The Deputy Prime Minister’s proposal triggered an agitated response from those in
Number Ten who feared that regional chambers in any guise would become a slippery
slope to directly elected bodies. In an annotated note left on a copy of the Deputy
Prime Minister’s letter, Rob Read, a Private Secretary in Number Ten, commented
that he was ‘not sure I like this at all’ before querying whether Number Ten needed to
‘quash’ the policy.
28
Quashing, however, seemed out of the equation. In an email to
Georey Norris a few days later, David Miliband, the-then Head of the Number Ten
Policy Unit, summed up the bind that the Prime Minister and other devo-cautious
members of the Government had been put into by the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposal.
The Prime Minister, Miliband was certain, ‘would get the shivers’ about regional
chambers. However, Miliband acknowledged that chambers had been a manifesto com-
mitment and by proposing them as voluntary and non-statutory entities the Deputy
Prime Minister had been ‘tricky and clever.’ Miliband judged that it ‘would be odd to
argue that RDAs should not take account of the views of regional stakeholders.’
29
A few days after this email from David Miliband, Georey Norris wrote to the Prime
Minister on the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals. Norris suggested that the Deputy
Prime Minister’s suggestion of voluntary regional chambers, ‘puts us on the spot.’
While, Norris recalled, they had been able to successfully resist a statutory network of
regional chambers, this new proposal was a ‘dierent proposition’. Summing up the
general apprehension of the Prime Minister’s aides to this policy agenda, Norris noted
that ‘on the one hand they (voluntary regional chambers) are potentially, and in the
Deputy Prime Minister’s mind certainly, the first smallish step to statutory regional
chambers and regional government’. However, Norris conceded that similar bodies to
those oated by the Deputy Prime Minister ‘already exist in some areas and a consultative
body being able to give ‘‘regional views’’ to the RDAs is hard to object to in itself’.
30
It was
this latter perspective which seemed to win the day with Norris informing the Prime
Minister that the consensus within the Policy Unit was that it was ‘hard to say no to
the Deputy Prime Minister’s proposals’, indeed Norris counselled that if the Prime
Minster wished to reject them he would need to ‘say so direct to the Deputy Prime Min-
ister’ as aside from the Treasury ‘the rest of Whitehall is giving the Deputy Prime Min-
ister the nod on this.’
31
While Margaret Beckett continued to fight against the DETR proposals (she suggested
that shareholder style meetings with the public be adopted as an alternative to regional
chambers),
32
the Deputy Prime Minister would prevail on this occasion and voluntary
28
TNA. PREM 49/158. (Comment left by R. Read) Letter from J. Prescott to D. Irvine, dated 4 November 1997.
29
TNA. PREM 49/158. Email from D. Miliband to G. Norris, dated 6 November 1997.
30
TNA. PREM 49/158. Memorandum from G. Norris to T. Blair, dated 12 November 1997.
31
TNA. PREM 49/158. Memorandum from G. Norris to T. Blair, dated 12 November 1997.
32
TNA. PREM 49/158. Letter from M. Beckett to J. Prescott, dated 13 November 1997.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 7
non-statutory Regional Chambers would form an important part of the RDA account-
ability structure envisaged by the Government in its White Paper, Building Partnerships
for Prosperity.
33
As feared by those in Number Ten, the White Paper situated the Regional Chambers
as ‘a first step’ towards a stronger, and directly elected, system of regional government,
although it also noted that demand for such a system was variable across England and
that ‘it would be wrong to impose a uniform system or timetable.’
34
The Regional
Chambers would provide a mechanism ‘through which RDAs can take account of
regional views and give an account of themselves for their activities’. While it was
intended, and indeed expected, that RDAs would need to consult a full range of local sta-
keholders in the course of its activities, the White Paper made clear that there would be a
specific set of requirements in relation to Regional Chambers (where they existed).
35
Accordingly, RDAs would be required to ‘have regard to the regional viewpoint of the
chamber in preparing its own economic strategy’, consult the chamber on its corporate
plan and ‘be open to scrutiny by the chamber; perhaps in the form of an annual hearing
to discuss its corporate plan’.
36
Legislation to implement the Government’s RDA propo-
sals was brought before parliament that same month and the following year passed
through parliament and entered the statute book as the Regional Development Agencies
Act 1998.
1999: Lords reform as a ‘catalyst’ for regional government?
As 1998 rolled into 1999, the Deputy Prime Minister would resume his regional devolu-
tion campaign within Government. His eorts would occur in the context of broader
constitutional reform discussions, particularly in relation to reform of the House of
Lords. The Labour Party’s 1997 election manifesto had pledged that ‘the right of heredi-
tary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute’ and that this
would ‘be the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more demo-
cratic and representative’. The Labour Party also pledged that a ‘committee of both
Houses of Parliament will be appointed to undertake a wide-ranging review of possible
further change and then to bring forward proposals for reform’.
37
On 14 October 1998, the Government announced that it would establish a Royal Com-
mission to consider options for longer-term reform of the House of Lords. At a bilateral
meeting between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister on 14 October 1998,
this was discussed alongside the recently reported Independent Commission on the
Voting System (otherwise known as the Jenkins Commission). Talk of constitutional
commissions prompted the Deputy Prime Minister to suggest that he ‘was considering
suggesting a Royal Commission to look at regional government.’ He then, according
33
HM Government, Building Partnerships for Prosperity (December 1997), Cm 3814, pp. 52–3.
34
HM Government, Building Partnerships for Prosperity, p. 52.
35
As a concession to Margaret Beckett’s shareholder style meeting proposal, the White Paper also specified that RDAs
should ‘also be directly answerable to the people of their region’ and that the Government therefore intended to
‘require each RDA to hold an annual public meeting, open to all, with the chair and chief executive giving an
account of their annual performance’ (HM Government, Building Partnerships for Prosperity, p. 54).
36
HM Government, Building Partnerships for Prosperity, p. 53.
37
New Labour because Britain deserves better (London, 1997), https://www.ukpol.co.uk/general-election-manifestos-
1997-labour-party/
8 A. EVANS
to a write-up of the bilateral, linked the regional governance agenda to reform of the
House of Lords and ‘enthusiastically ran into a description of how new tiers of elected
regional government could provide a basis for a representative second chamber’. The
Prime Minister ‘was neither encouraging nor discouraging about all of this.’
38
Having, crucially, not been explicitly dissuaded from connecting the two issues, the
Deputy Prime Minister would continue to emphasize the regional dimension to Lords
reform during discussions on the topic in January 1999. Ahead of the introduction of
the House of Lords Bill to the House of Commons later that month, the Deputy
Prime Minister wrote to the Prime Minister on the topic of a Lords Reform White
Paper that was due to accompany the Government’s legislation.
The Deputy Prime Minister welcomed the draft White Paper and the inclusion of a
discussion on how a reformed Lords could include indirect election by regional
bodies, an option that he felt could allow peers to be appointed ‘who had some legitimacy
but without creating an undue threat to the primary of the House of Commons.’ Further,
he suggested, such an approach could ‘help in binding the parts of the UK together’ and
‘could help to head o any backlash’ in England arising from devolution to Scotland and
Wales. However, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that indirect elections should be
from ‘the right type of body.’ Crucially, in his opinion, local government in England
was currently ‘not fit for that purpose’, while RDAs and the voluntary regional chambers
were also inappropriate.
39
True to form, the Deputy Prime Minister instead suggested
that Regional Assemblies would be an appropriate means of indirectly electing the
Lords and ‘would be entirely consistent with – and indeed would help – our manifesto
commitment to legislate to establish elected regional assemblies.’
While the Deputy Prime Minister conceded that ‘realistically, legislation on this issue
is for the next Parliament’, he had asked his ocials to start preparing some options and
wanted their work to feed into the work of the Royal Commission on the reform of the
House of Lords. At the very least, the Deputy Prime Minister wanted to give a firm steer
that, subject to popular support, ‘there will be elected regional government and the Royal
Commission’s proposals should be based on that assumption.’
40
The Deputy Prime Minister’s missive prompted a wary response within Number Ten.
In a memorandum to the Prime Minister summarizing recent developments on English
regional policy, Pat McFadden noted that the Deputy Prime Minister was keen to
announce something on regional government at a forthcoming local government confer-
ence. He also warned the Prime Minister that the Deputy Prime Minister had told his
departmental ministers that he was ‘attracted to the idea of reorganising local govern-
ment to help facilitate regional assemblies.’ This sentence attracted an annotated
comment from Robert Hill, cautioning the Prime Minister that any such reorganization
‘would be very costly, divert councils from concentrating on delivery and be very, very
divisive’.
41
McFadden told the Prime Minister that it ‘would be useful to have a view from you on
how we handle all this’. While McFadden noted that that it would be fair for the Deputy
38
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from R. Read to J. Powell, dated 15 October 1998.
39
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Letter from J. Prescott to T. Blair, dated 15 January 1999.
40
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Letter from J. Prescott to T. Blair, dated 15 January 1999.
41
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from P. McFadden to T. Blair (including annotated comments from R. Hill), dated 22
January 1999.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 9
Prime Minister to say that a question of how England was represented in the Lords might
arise if there was some form of appointment or indirect election from the devolved
nations, he argued that it seemed a ‘very odd logic to propose regional assemblies in
England in order to make Lords reform plans stack up properly.’ Or, as he put it more
bluntly, ‘how could we explain to someone in Yorkshire that the reason they were
getting an elected Assembly was so it in turn could elect people to the House of Lords?’
42
While that particular line of argument lacked credibility for McFadden, he nonetheless
warned that the broader question of regional assemblies ‘could easily develop momen-
tum in the party’ if it were pushed by the Deputy Prime Minister at the local government
conference and in the ocial Labour submission to the Royal Commission on the Lords.
Noting the Prime Minister’s longstanding scepticism on this topic, McFadden recalled
that ‘in the past you have been very cautious about all this’. However, he warned that
the Deputy Prime Minister clearly ‘believes he has a mandate for some kind of announce-
ment’ at the conference, and asked if the Prime Minister wanted to let the Deputy Prime
Minister ‘run with this’? The Prime Minister, in a scrawled annotated message left on the
memo responded that while he did not ‘mind signalling greater support for Regional
Ass[emblies]’ he ‘did mind actually doing something that gets the ball rolling irrevoc-
ably.’ Reiterating his longstanding position that this was not a matter for the current par-
liament, the Prime Minister concluded by stating that while ‘in the longer-term I am not
opposed’ he just did not think it was a ‘present priority and meantime think there are
more pressing things’.
43
The Prime Minister’s comments were clearly insuciently
direct for the comfort of his aides. On 25 January, Rob Read wrote to Pat McFadden.
After recalling that they had both spoken and ‘agreed that we needed a clearer position
than this from the PM if we are to send the right signals to the DPM’, Read informed
McFadden that they would try to arrange an internal meeting to secure such clarity
from the Prime Minister before his next meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister.
44
Their attempts to hold a private meeting with the Prime Minister on this topic,
however, proved fruitless. On 28 January, ahead of a bilateral later that day with the
Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister was sent a briefing memorandum from
Rob Read. Noting that they had wanted to meet with the Prime Minister beforehand
to discuss the topic of regional government, Read stressed that it was important that
the Prime Minister made a clear intervention to arrest any premature momentum for
regionalism. Read urged the Prime Minister to ‘make clear to DPM that you do not
want things now being set up which move irrevocably towards regional government,
and that there are much more important priorities to focus on’. ‘If nothing else’, the
Prime Minister, Read suggested, should ‘insist that you see the terms in which he pro-
poses to say anything on this at the Local Government conference’. In an attempt to
extract a more committed response and attitude on this topic from the Prime Minister,
Read challenged him as to whether he was prepared for the Deputy Prime Minister’s
‘speech to be a big boost towards regional government’.
45
As one might expect, the approach taken by the Prime Minister at that day’s bilateral
with the Deputy Prime Minister appears to have been more emollient in nature. Yet the
42
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from P. McFadden to T. Blair, dated 22 January 1999.
43
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from P. McFadden to T. Blair, dated 22 January 1999.
44
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from R. Read to P. McFadden, dated 25 January 1999.
45
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Memorandum from R. Read to T. Blair, dated 28 January 1999.
10 A. EVANS
meeting nonetheless made clear that regionalism would not be happening in the short
term. The Prime Minister told the Deputy Prime Minister that they would both need
‘to think through now where they wanted to end up on this in the next couple of
years’ and that such planning and consideration was important to do ‘before we set
things in motion.’ This approach seemed to do the necessary trick, with the Deputy
Prime Minister agreeing to provide the Prime Minister’s oce the work his Department
had been doing on scoping out regional government ahead of his forthcoming local gov-
ernment speech.
46
Far-reaching House of Lords reform, beyond the removal of all bar ninety-two of the
hereditary peers, never materialized. Nor, during the remainder of the 1997–2001 Parlia-
ment, did regionalism make any further progress. As a report from the UCL Constitution
Unit noted in 2001, while the Labour Government had delivered RDAs, John Prescott,
the architect of the regionalism agenda, ‘received no support from his colleagues to go
further’.
47
While, the party reiterated its commitment to regional government in 2000
and at the 2001 General Election, there was, according to the 2001 Constitution Unit
report noted, ‘considerable ambivalence’ within Government and the wider Labour
Party, although crucially the 2001 election campaign saw the Deputy Prime Minister
publicly commit a second term Labour Government to the publication of a White
Paper on regional government.
48
A genuinely second term issue: the 2001–05 parliament and the road to
the North East referendum
With a second term secured, and again with a landslide majority of MPs, Number Ten’s
ability to play the long game with regards to regional government had run out of road.
Over the next couple of years, regional devolution would become a recurring agenda item
for the Government and manifest itself as a firm policy programme.
2002: developing the White Paper
At the beginning of 2002, preparations were firmly underway for the long awaited White
Paper on Regional Government in England. On 28 February, Alasdair McGowan, a
Special Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister, wrote to Jeremy Heywood, the Principal
Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, advising that he had received a full first draft
of the White Paper. At first glance, the draft White Paper appeared to contain ‘no
major surprises’ and the ‘functions that are proposed are pretty minimal.’
49
Indeed,
McGowan pondered whether the White Paper was at risk of overselling the proposals,
arguing ‘that language about an ‘‘historic turning point in British politics’’’, the ‘new con-
stitutional settlement for England’, and regions ‘‘‘taking control of their destiny’’ […]
needs to be toned down’. McGowan also worried that the Paper did not fully reect
46
TNA. PREM 49/1018. Letter from R. Read to P. Unwin: Prime Minister Bilateral With the Deputy Prime Minister: 28
January, dated 28 January 1999.
47
M. Sandford and P. McQuail, Unexplored Territory: Elected Regional Assemblies in England, (UCL Constitution Unit:
London, 2001), p. 12.
48
Sandford and McQuail, Unexplored Territory: Elected Regional Assemblies in England, pp. 12–13.
49
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to J. Heywood, dated 28 February 2002.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 11
the ‘choice’ aspect of the government’s regional devolution proposals, claiming that ‘too
often the drafting implies that regional assemblies will definitely happen when in reality
they are simply on oer.’
50
As one might expect, the fact that regional assemblies were further up the institutional
agenda did not mean they attracted any less scepticism within Government. On 28 March
2002, for example, the then Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt wrote to the
Deputy Prime Minister warning him of the business sector’s lack of enthusiasm for
regional government. According to Hewitt, the CBI (a prominent business representative
body) was opposed to Regional Assemblies, while even in the North East, which was
among the forerunners for a referendum on regional government to be held, opinion
was ‘distinctly mixed.’ Hewitt oered Prescott a blunt assessment of the challenges he
would face going forward in making the case for regionalism, warning that it was
‘going to be extremely dicult to secure positive responses to the White Paper from
business.’
51
A few days later, on 4 April 2002, Alasdair McGowan wrote to the Prime Minister with
his thoughts on the draft White Paper. As trailed in his exchange with Jeremy Heywood,
McGowan argued that the White Paper was ‘a fairly minimalist package’ that ‘we can live
with’. According to McGowan, this minimalistic oering would include a ‘pretty small’
amount of funding under the control of regional assemblies. However, while on the one
hand acknowledging that the proposed assemblies functions were in some areas (for
example, transport), ‘very weak’, McGowan nonetheless pushed for a clawback of
certain proposed powers. In particular, he expressed his, and Jeremy Heywood’s, opposi-
tion to the Assembly having a scrutiny role in relation to health services in their respect-
ive regions, arguing that such a function would increase red tape and force health
providers to spend their time dealing with ‘a body that has no power in relation to
health policy anyway.’
52
McGowan was keenly aware of the criticisms that the Government might take for
adopting such a limited devolution policy, advising the Prime Minister that the
package will be inevitably ‘dismissed by the constitutional reform lobby and sections
of the Parliamentary Labour Party as inadequate and grudging in terms of the powers
oered’. This did not, however, translate into any acceptance of a stronger package.
Indeed, McGowan seemed to question the bona fides of the plan’s likely critics within
the Labour Party at Westminster, suggesting that much of the PLP was ‘ambivalent
about regional government (even the Northern Group’ and questioned whether the
policy would have any popular appeal. In what might be seen in retrospect as an
almost prophetic comment, McGowan said it remained to be seen ‘whether there is
real support in the North East for an Assembly – once people focus on the downsides
(principally costs and the reorganisation of local government).’
53
McGowan then asked a question which oers a striking window into the ambivalence
(bordering on outright devo-scepticism) that pervaded Number Ten’s thinking on this
issue. Despite this being a government policy, contained originally in a General Election
manifesto pledge, McGowan nonetheless felt compelled to oat the ‘key crunch question’
50
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to J. Heywood, dated 28 February 2002.
51
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Letter from P. Hewitt to J. Prescott, dated 28 March 2002.
52
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 4 April 2002.
53
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 4 April 2002.
12 A. EVANS
of ‘whether you personally will campaign for a ‘‘Yes’’ vote in the North East’ and whether
the Labour Party would similarly declare, and work for, a Yes vote. Indeed, he pointedly
reminded the Prime Minister that Labour had ‘never said it supports regional assemblies’,
just ‘giving people the choice’.
54
As remarkable as the questions might seem, they were clearly grounded in McGowan’s
experiences of advising the Prime Minister. For example, in his concluding thoughts on
the draft White Paper, McGowan specifically recalls that the Prime Minister continues ‘to
have serious doubts about the wisdom of regional assemblies’. Nonetheless, these doubts
appeared to be counterbalanced by the acceptance ‘that we have to make progress on our
manifesto commitment’. When viewed against that objective, McGowan advised that the
White Paper was ‘about as good a deal as we will get with John Prescott an one we can live
with.’ The Prime Minister’s lack of enthusiasm was evident in his comments scrawled on
a copy of this memo, ‘if they [the North East] go for it [a referendum], I will have to
support.’
55
The Prime Minister wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister on 12 April to oer his
response to the draft White Paper. The Prime Minister welcomed the ‘right balance’
that the White Paper struck between those functions that should be retained at a national
level and those which would be ‘better situated at a regional level or below’ and said that
overall it was a ‘credible package’. Even then, the Prime Minister’s lack of enthusiasm for
the policy was apparent, with him urging the Deputy Prime Minister to stress the choice
aspect of the policy oering and to make it as clearly as possible in the White Paper ‘that
we expect interest in regional government to be confined, initially at least, to the North
East and to a lesser extent to the other Northern regions.’
56
The following week, on 19 April, McGowan wrote again to the Prime Minister on the
question of what support the Prime Minister might give to his own government’s
regional governance policy. In particular, McGowan wanted to clarify the comments
the Prime Minister had left on McGowan’s earlier memo and find out whether he
meant that if the Deputy Prime Minister went ahead with the White Paper’s proposals
he would find himself bound to support a Yes vote in any subsequent referendums
‘even if you don’t actively campaign’, or whether if people voted Yes in a North East
referendum he would accept the result. That these questions needed to be asked at all
are a testament to the levels of ambivalence that pervaded Number Ten on this
issue.
57
As indeed was the response the Prime Minister left in an annotated comment
on McGowan’s letter, the Prime Minister wrote that he would say ‘I can support Regional
Assemblies, but only if [there is] local government reorganisation. Otherwise another tier
of government’.
58
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the policy.
The next month, in May 2002, the UK Government published its Regional Govern-
ment White Paper, Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions.
59
54
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 4 April 2002.
55
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair (including annotated comments from T. Blair in
response), dated 4 April 2002.
56
TNA. PREM 49/2790. Letter from T. Blair to J. Prescott, dated 12 April 2002.
57
TNA. PREM 49/2790. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair (including annotated comments from T. Blair in
response), dated 19 April 2002.
58
TNA. PREM 49/2790. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair (including annotated comments from T. Blair in
response), dated 19 April 2002.
59
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English Regions (May 2002), Cm5511.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 13
Unsurprisingly, there was little danger of the Prime Minister failing to emphasize the
‘choice aspect’ of the policy in his foreword to the White Paper. The Prime Minister
used his foreword to repeatedly stress that point, indeed he wrote that the entire
White Paper was ‘about choice’, emphasizing that ‘no region will be forced to have an
elected assembly’ but that where was ‘public support for one’ the Government believed
that voters should have the chance ‘to demonstrate this in a referendum.’ Indeed, even
when he briey referred to his Government’s belief that devolution could oer potential
benefits to the English regions, he swiftly returned to his central theme that ‘in the end, it
is down to the people in each region to decide’ on the way forward.
60
The White Paper confirmed the Government’s intention to facilitate referendums on
regional assemblies in England where ‘the Government believes there to be sucient
interest in the region concerned to warrant it’. Such assemblies would not, the Govern-
ment insisted, be allowed to represent an additional tier of government, therefore where a
region had been identified as suitable for a referendum there would first be a ‘review of
local government structures which will deliver proposals for a wholly unitary local gov-
ernment structure for the region.’ On polling day, voters would therefore ‘be aware of the
implications for local government when deciding to have an elected regional assembly’.
61
The Government set out its expectation that there would be an opportunity for regions
with sucient interest to hold a referendum on an assembly during the lifetime of the
current parliament (2001–05) and that if there was a Yes vote in any such referendum
then that Assembly ‘could be up and running early in the next Parliament.’
62
The White Paper proposed that Assemblies would be based on the eight non-London
regions used as standard statistical regions by the Oce of National Statistics, as the
boundaries of the Government Oces for the regions and as the boundaries for the
Regional Development Agencies. Assemblies would have between 25 and 35 members
and each Assembly would be elected using the Additional Member System (a mixture
of first past the post constituencies and top-up list seats) that was in use in Scotland
and Wales. Two thirds of members would be elected via first-past-the-post and the
remainder would be elected from a top-up constituency that covered each region.
63
Each Assembly would adopt the leader and cabinet model of governance. There would
be a cap of six members in any given Assembly’s cabinet. The leader and cabinet
model would, according to the Government, provide a split between the executive and
scrutiny functions which would be ‘straightforward for people to understand and pro-
motes accountability’. The Government noted that this was in line with the model of par-
liamentary government seen at Westminster and in the Scottish Parliament and, despite
the de jure body corporate model which Welsh devolution had been established with, ‘the
way the system in Wales has worked in practice.’
64
Assemblies would be given the power to set regional strategies in a number of policy
areas, including economic development, housing, transport, skills and employment,
waste, culture and health improvement.
65
They would also have a number of executive
60
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 4.
61
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 11.
62
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 12.
63
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 48, 52.
64
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 52.
65
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 36.
14 A. EVANS
functions to assist with implementing those strategies, including having responsibility for
that region’s Regional Development Agency, having financial resources for functions
such as housing and regeneration, as well as having an ‘inuencing’ role in relation to
subjects such as having a role in scrutinising the impact of higher education on economic
development, advising the Government on the allocation of local transport funding and
being consulted by external bodies such as the Learning and Skills Council, and deliver-
ing rural regeneration programmes.
66
Assemblies would be mostly funded via a block
grant from the Treasury and would have some limited borrowing powers, while their
fiscal powers would be restricted to charging a precept on council tax bills.
67
The model of devolution on oer to regional assemblies was, thus, tepid at best. In one
contemporaneous analysis of the White Paper, the local government expert Mark Sand-
ford (then at University College London and now at the House of Commons Library)
described the White Paper as a ‘cautious document’ whose ‘limited’ proposals prompted
‘doubt whether electors will be willing to vote for such assemblies in regional referen-
dums, or to turn out for regional elections’. Although he felt that the Government and
the Deputy Prime Minister should be congratulated for persevering with the production
of a White Paper, not least given ‘the degree to which the concept of regional government
remains alien to Whitehall mandarins and Labour Party traditionalists’, Sandford none-
theless noted that the White Paper was replete with ‘reassurance to sceptical Ministers
and departments’, with little eort made instead ‘to build a rationale for the particular
basket of powers oered to elected regional assemblies.’
68
Sandford also highlighted
the Government’s insistence on unitarisation in aected regions, describing this as a
‘foolhardy’ obligation and ‘inexibility’ that was likely ‘at best, to restrict interest to
the three northern regions, and at worst obstruct the whole regional agenda’.
69
For the authors of another assessment of the White Paper, published in May 2002, ‘the
publication of the White Paper was significant if only because it demonstrated that pre-
vious reports of the death of the devolution project had been greatly exaggerated’. In what
was clearly a common theme for analysts of the regional governance agenda, the small c
conservatism of the heart of government towards regional assemblies featured promi-
nently. According to Tomaney and Hetherington (an academic and journalist respect-
ively who both specialized in English regional aairs), the White Paper had been the
fruits of a ‘subtle and patient campaign’ by the Deputy Prime Minister in a government
which had been ‘lukewarm’ and ‘reluctant’ on the issue and had clearly needed ‘convin-
cing.’ Notwithstanding the Deputy Prime Minister’s hard work, what this had managed
‘to extract’ from Whitehall was a ‘mixed bag of powers and responsibilities.’
70
Both the
Sandford and Tomaney and Hetherington analyses drew attention to the proposals con-
tained in the White Paper for Regional Assemblies to achieve a number of centrally set
targets as running against ‘the spirit of devolution.’
71
66
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 37, 42.
67
HM Government, Your Region, Your Choice, p. 44.
68
M. Sandford, A commentary on the Regional Government White Paper, Your Region, Your Choice: Revitalising the English
Regions Cm 5511, May 2002 (UCL Constitution Unit: London, June 2002), pp. 3–4.
69
Sandford, A Commentary on the Regional Government White Paper, pp. 4–5.
70
J. Tomaney and P. Hetherington, Nations and Regions: The Dynamics of Devolution, Quarterly Monitoring Programme, The
English Regions, Quarterly Report (UCL Constitution Unit: London, May 2002), pp. 1–2, 10–11.
71
Sandford, A Commentary on the Regional Government White Paper, p. 3; Tomaney and Hetherington, Nations and
Regions: The Dynamics of Devolution, Quarterly Monitoring Programme, The English Regions, p. 16.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 15
2002–03: road to the referendum
With the White Paper published, so attention turned to the next steps: preparing the
necessary legislation to facilitate referendums and laying the ground for at least one refer-
endum in the remainder of the Parliament. In July 2002, Nick Raynsford, the junior Min-
ister leading on the Government’s regional devolution programme, wrote to the Deputy
Prime Minister advising him that he would be making a speech later that month outlin-
ing how the process for identifying the first region to hold a referendum would be con-
ducted. Raynsford confirmed that, unsurprisingly, the level of interest in having a
referendum would ‘be the primary factor’. However, as a result of the political require-
ment that assemblies avoid creating an extra tier of government and would be linked to
unitarisation of that region’s existing local government structures, Raynsford suggested
that ‘an important secondary factor’ would be the level of disruption for local govern-
ment. On both counts, Raynsford confirmed that the odds looked ‘highest in the three
Northern regions, especially the North East.’
72
In November 2002, Raynsford wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister (and other minis-
terial colleagues) advising that the forthcoming Queen’s Speech would include a Regional
Assembly (Preparations) Bill. The Bill, Raynsford advised, would be introduced on 14
November and after the Bill’s Second Reading stage, the Government would ‘start
taking soundings’ from regions regarding potential interest in taking forward a referen-
dum.
73
On 13 November, the Queen delivered the Speech from the Throne at the State
Opening of Parliament, the Government’s Queen’s Speech included a commitment that
legislation would ‘be introduced to provide for the holding of referendums on the issue of
regional governance in England.’
74
By the spring of 2003, the Bill had cleared its Commons stages and was navigating its
way, albeit facing a number of potential obstacles, through the Lords.
75
With the Govern-
ment still hoping to secure Royal Assent by May 2003, attention had turned towards the
referendum(s) that might be forthcoming. It was within this wider context that, on 14
April 2003, Martin Hurst, an ocial within Number Ten, wrote to the Prime Minister.
Acknowledging the Prime Minister’s ‘scepticism’, Hurst noted that ‘for better or
worse, we are getting close to the final choice of regions in which to hold referenda on
whether to proceed to elected regional assemblies.’ According to Hurst, a decision on
which region(s) would go ahead would be needed by late May 2003 in order for a refer-
endum to be held in the autumn of 2004 and Assembly elections (assuming the referen-
dum was successful) to take place in May 2006. Hurst suggested that this was
‘predominantly a political judgement’ and noted that the ‘choice seems to be between
referenda in two regions – the North East and probably Yorkshire and Humber – and
one region – the North East’ and claimed that the Deputy Prime Minister would push
for the first of these options.
76
Hurst’s memo to the Prime Minister was accompanied by preliminary polling which
had been undertaken on regional assemblies by the Government. Summarizing the
72
TNA. PREM 49/2791. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 26 July 2002.
73
TNA. PREM 49.2792. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 11 November 2002.
74
HL Deb (Hansard) 13 November 2002, vol. 394, c. 4.
75
TNA. PREM 49/3294. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 31 March 2003.
76
TNA. PREM 49/3294. Letter from M. Hurst to T. Blair, dated 14 April 2003.
16 A. EVANS
findings, Hurst said that the poll did not ‘tell us anything we couldn’t have guessed.’ In
particular, the turnout in any referendum ‘seems likely to be low.’ Only in the North East,
Hurst argued, where there was strong media backing was there even a modest level of
understanding about regional assemblies (27 per cent compared to an England-wide
average of 18 per cent). As a result, Hurst warned that a Yes vote, albeit on a small min-
ority of the total electorate would seem to be ‘the most likely outcome.’ According to
Hurst, getting turnout to ‘respectable levels and a meaningful Yes vote’ would require
a ‘big party eort’, however he noted that Pat McFadden and Alistair Campbell had ques-
tioned whether the party had the ‘will or resources to do this in more than one area.’
77
Hurst briey mentioned a possibility that had been mentioned before – that the Gov-
ernment was not obligated to deliver on a Yes vote, although he conceded that ‘it could be
hard to avoid.’ However, his attention was more closely focussed on the ‘greater concern’
of the far right winning Assembly seats in a low turnout election, and on the Govern-
ment’s polling which should have rung some warning bells for Ministers. Discussing
the polling undertaken by ICM, Hurst claimed that ‘a key picture was emerging’,
namely that ‘the more people understand what is involved, the greater their concern
about the proposals’ and argued that, on the basis of the polling, ‘the opponents of
local government reform are likely to benefit more from any sustained campaign on
the matter.’ These concerns would prove highly prophetic.
78
In the end, the Bill received Royal Assent in May 2003 and became the Regional
Assembly (Preparations) Act. This prompted renewed focus on the potential next
steps. On 16 May 2003, McGowan wrote to the Prime Minister. McGowan’s memo
was full of warnings for the Prime Minister. According to McGowan, the turnout for
any referendum was likely to be low, ‘we will seriously struggle to break 30 per cent’,
and given the issues of who might be better at getting out the vote, he ‘could not guar-
antee winning any of them [the referendums]’. According to McGowan, even the North
East campaign lacked ‘real penetration, is narrowly based and currently lacks charismatic
leadership.’ However, he suggested that with the right media coverage and a stronger
campaign, ‘the North East is winnable’.
79
Certainly, the Deputy Prime Minister, McGowan warned was likely to argue that there
was ‘no way we can politically exclude the North East’, although he was also likely to push
for two or three referendums and argue that multiple referendums would heighten inter-
est and boost turnout. However, McGowan suggested that the Prime Minister could
‘quite reasonably argue that with only limited resources it makes sense to concentrate
them on the region which are most likely to win’.
80
This discussion about winnability
led McGowan to return to a familiar question among the Prime Minister’s aides,
namely how closely would he wish to be involved with any referendum. McGowan
suggested the Prime Minister might ‘wish to consider how far you will wish to associate
yourself with the campaign.’ Before even a region or regions had been selected and refer-
endum campaign(s) under way, there was clearly considerable concern about No votes
and what that might mean for the Prime Minister.
81
77
TNA. PREM 49/3294. Letter from M. Hurst to T. Blair, dated 14 April 2003.
78
TNA. PREM 49/3294. Letter from M. Hurst to T. Blair, dated 14 April 2003.
79
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 16 May 2003.
80
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 16 May 2003.
81
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 16 May 2003.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 17
A week later, on 23 May 2003, McGowan wrote once more to the Prime Minister and
reported that the Deputy Prime Minister believed that the Prime Minister was ‘resigned
to the need for three referenda’. McGowan urgently asked for confirmation from the
Prime Minister.
82
Scribbling on the memorandum from McGowan, the Prime Minister
wrote that he was ‘very unhappy about this’ but in a rather resigned tone asked, ‘what can
we do?’
83
In an almost synchronized twist of fate, the same day, Nick Raynsford wrote to
the Deputy Prime Minister and told him that he was minded to recommend that local
government reviews be directed for the North East, North West and Yorkshire and Hum-
berside. Raynsford recalled that the Government had made a ‘public commitment to hold
the first referendums this Parliament’ and that the Government had said it wished such
referendums to be held in the autumn of 2004.
84
With quite long lead times to deal with
(as a result of the boundary review requirement for local government in the region),
Raynsford argued that the Government needed to ‘move very quicky to decide and
announce which region or regions should have local government reviews.’ Referring to
the requirement that evidence of interest in a referendum was needed for each region,
Raynsford noted that the Government’ sounding board consultation exercise had
‘clearly shown that there is strong support for a referendum in only three regions’: the
North East, the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside.
85
Raynsford indicated
that he was minded to make clear that the Government proceeded with referendums
in each of those three regions, but at the same time he argued that the Government
should make clear that ‘we will not look again at levels of interest [in regional govern-
ment] until after the first referendums.’ Raynsford hoped that such an approach would
‘provide some comfort to Local Authorities in the other five regions.’
86
On 3 June 2003, Alasdair McGowan wrote once again on this subject to the Prime
Minister. McGowan summarized a recent bilateral with the Deputy Prime Minister at
which the Prime Minister had ‘promised to reect […] on which regions should have
referenda for regional assemblies.’ Referring to this commitment, McGowan sought to
push the Prime Minister to give a clearer steer. McGowan reported that that the Oce
of the Deputy Prime Minister’s sounding board ‘showed majority support in the three
Northern regions’ and warned that since the Deputy Prime Minister felt that ‘politically
he can’t say not the North East […] he has to say yes to all three’ while Ian McCartney
(the Party Chairman, Minister without Portfolio and a Greater Manchester MP) was also
pushing for all three northern regions to have referendums. Against this pressure,
McGowan noted that David Triesman (the Party’s General Secretary) was warning
that Labour, only two years after fighting a full UK General Election campaign, did
not have ‘any money to fight even one referendum.’ Noting that ‘realistically, no refer-
endum is not an option’, McGowan told the Prime Minister that the real choice was
between one referendum or fighting three.
Interestingly, McGowan highlighted that of the three regions, the sounding board
exercise had shown Yorkshire and Humber to have some of the highest support for a
referendum and that region would also, due to its local government make-up, represent
82
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 23 May 2003.
83
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 23 May 2003.
84
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 23 May 2003.
85
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 23 May 2003.
86
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from N. Raynsford to J. Prescott, dated 23 May 2003.
18 A. EVANS
the ‘least possible disruption.’ However, and despite the fact that this was the Deputy
Prime Minister’s home region, McGowan warned that picking Yorkshire and Humber
would only make the Deputy Prime Minister ‘push even harder for all three’ as he did
not want to say no to the North East. The alternative, according to McGowan would
be to ‘push for the North East only and dismiss the soundings exercise’. After all, he
reasoned, the exercise was ‘far from scientific’, lacked ‘the legal status of a formal consul-
tation’ and, more fundamentally, the decision to go ahead with a referendum should be
guided not just be a region’s support for holding a referendum, but by the region’s
demand for having a regional assembly – in short, winnability should be the decisive cri-
teria. And here, for McGowan, the road led back to the North East of England. ‘Virtually
everyone’, he argued, agreed that the North East was ‘the most winnable’ region.
Although he once again cautioned that ‘even here this would be hard to win given inevi-
tably low turnout.’ What was more certain, he claimed, was that the Government risked
‘losing all three if we try and spread resources too thinly.’ Moving forward, his instincts
were that ‘the path of least resistance would be to argue for the North East only.’
87
While there appeared to be much that commended a single referendum option, the
Government continued to progress plans for three referendums. That this should be
the case, despite the Prime Minister’s clear unhappiness at that prospect, suggests that,
facing bigger challenges at home and abroad, he had become largely disengaged from
a policy with which he had never been enthusiastic about, and was resigned to letting
the Deputy Prime Minister make the running on this agenda. On 13 June 2003, the
Deputy Prime Minister wrote to Raynsford and told his junior Minister that they now
had clearance to proceed with local government reviews for the North East, North
West and Yorkshire and Humberside.
88
This was ocially announced by the Deputy
Prime Minister on 16 June 2003.
89
By the autumn of 2003, the Government was taking steps to raise public awareness
of their devolution proposals across all three northern regions. On 16 September 2003,
Nick Raynsford wrote to colleagues on the Ministerial Committee on English Regional
Policy (ERP), advising that the Government was ‘considering what more can be done
to raise awareness of proposals for elected regional assemblies.’ Noting that the Gov-
ernment had made a commitment to parliament to publish a draft Regional Assem-
blies Bill in the summer of 2004 ahead of autumn referendums, he urged his
colleagues to ‘do their utmost to publicise the ‘‘Yes’’ campaign and to strongly advo-
cate the benefits of Assemblies when visiting the Northern regions.’
90
The next month,
Raynsford wrote again to ERP members to inform them that an information cam-
paign would be launched in the regions on 3 and 4 November. The aim of this cam-
paign, Raynsford explained, would be ‘to help raise awareness of the. referendums,
and of the powers and responsibilities which would be conferred [to the regional
assemblies].’
91
87
TNA PREM 49/3295. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 3 June 2003.
88
TNA. PREM 49/3295. Letter from J. Prescott to N. Raynsford, dated 13 June 2003.
89
House of Commons Debates [hereafter HC Deb], (Hansard) 16 June 2003 vol. 407, cc.21-3.
90
TNA. PREM 49/3296. Memorandum from N. Raynsford to Members of the Ministerial Committee on English Regional
Policy, dated 16 September 2003.
91
TNA. PREM 49/3296. Memorandum from N. Raynsford to Members of the Ministerial Committee on English Regional
Policy, dated 17 October 2003.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 19
Defeat: the 2004 referendum
On 21 July 2004, the House of Commons approved secondary legislation providing for
referendums in the three northern regions on 4 November 2004, and for those referen-
dums to be all-postal ballots.
92
However, a day later, to howls of derision from the Oppo-
sition benches, Nick Raynsford announced that due to concerns about postal voting in
the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside, the Government would not be proceed-
ing, at that time, with those referendums. Instead, the North East, where the Minister
argued that there was a ‘clear expectation’ of a referendum and where previous postal
ballot trials had been ‘consistently positive’, would be the only region where a referendum
would occur on 4 November.
93
Alongside this announcement, Raynsford announced
that the Government was that day publishing a draft Regional Assemblies Bill
94
to
‘help people in the north-east make their decision.’
95
The decision to postpone the planned referendums in the North West and Yorkshire
and Humberside was described by the BBC in 2004 as a ‘rather humiliating climbdown’
with suggestions that aside from concerns about postal ballots, the decision was taken for
fear that those ‘votes could not be won.’
96
In contrast, according to the BBC, ‘the refer-
endum in the North East was allowed to go ahead simply because planning was so far
forward, there appeared to be a local demand for it and, some believe, as a face
saver.’
97
Unfortunately, for those supporting regional governance, there would be no
question of faces being saved.
On 4 November 2004, voters went to the polls for the North East devolution refer-
endum. In what John Prescott would later describe as his ‘biggest disappointment’
during his tenure in Government
98
, voters would reject a regional assembly by a 78
per cent to 22 per cent margin. More than seven years after New Labour had
pledged to give voters a choice over regional governance, that choice had been made
and with it came the end of New Labour’s regionalism agenda. Why the North voted
No has been explored elsewhere.
99
However, it seems fair to conclude that the minima-
listic nature of the package on oer to voters did little to help the Yes campaign.
According to Peter Hain, the then Secretary of State for Wales, the devolution oer
to the English regions ‘was a ‘‘Mickey Mouse’’ one: regional government with very
few powers.’ As a result, he suggests, the Yes campaign was ‘very vulnerable to the
No campaigns relentless attack on ‘more politicians, costing you more and more
bureaucracy’.
100
This suggestion was echoed in one of the major academic analyses
of the 2004 referendum, with Sanford suggesting that the modest range of powers on
oer ‘left the policy exposed to accusations by opponents that assemblies would be
mere talking shops.
101
92
HC Deb 22 July 2004, vol. 424 c.501.
93
HC Deb 22 July 2004, vol.424, cc.501-14.
94
HM Government, Draft Regional Assemblies Bill, July 2004, Cm 6285.
95
HC Deb 22 July 2004, vol. 424, c.502.
96
N. Assinder, Is this the end for regional devolution?, BBC News [online] (5 November 2004), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
uk_politics/3979549.stm; M. Sandford, Introduction, in, M. Sandford (ed.), The Northern Veto, (Manchester, 2009), p. 11.
97
Assinder, Is this the end for regional devolution?
98
J. Prescott, Prezza – My Story: Pulling no punches, (London, 2008), p. 331
99
For a dedicated study of the 2004 referendum result, see: M. Sandford (ed.), The Northern Veto (Manchester, 2009).
100
P. Hain, The Hain Diaries 1998-2007, (London, 2015), p. 155.
101
M. Sandford, Conclusion, in, Sandford (ed.), The Northern Veto, p. 187.
20 A. EVANS
In their January 2005 report on the Draft Regional Assemblies Bill, the House of
Commons ODPM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee
oered a detailed critique of the proposals which were put to voters in the North East.
According to the Committee, the ‘scope of the powers and responsibilities which the
Government was prepared to give to Assemblies was disappointing and would limit
their eectiveness’. A fundamental handicap highlighted by the Committee, and a
theme throughout this article, was the ambivalence, verging often towards outright scep-
ticism, towards devolution within the centre of Government. Noting that the Deputy
Prime Minister’s own department and ‘to a lesser extent’ the Department of Trade
and Industry, ‘were the only Government departments prepared to devolve power to
the assemblies’, the Committee suggested that if any future attempt at regionalization
was to be successful, it would have ‘to have the commitment of all government depart-
ments.’ Overall, the Committee concluded that:
A clearer case is needed for elected regional assemblies in terms of value for money for the
electorate. Voters in the North East were not convinced about the ‘cost-benefit’ calculation
in regard to elected assemblies. They were unable to see in the modest powers of assemblies
sucient prospects of concrete improvements in their daily lives to vote for their
introduction.
102
Conclusion
The wariness and small c conservatism that defined Number Ten and much of the rest of
Whitehall’s response to regional devolution was therefore widely commented at the time
of the 2004 referendum defeat.
103
Using an extensive array of recently released Govern-
ment papers from that period, this article has shone further light on these perspectives
and added to our understanding of the Blair Government’s approach to constitutional
reform. These papers demonstrate the extensive hyper vigilance, at times some might
suggest almost bordering on paranoia, that defined many of the Prime Minister’s
closest aides on the question of regional governance, as well as highlighting the full
extent of the patient ‘war of attrition’ that the Deputy Prime Minister had to play in
keeping regional devolution alive within Whitehall. These papers fit with an image of
a Prime Minister who was unenthusiastic at the prospect of regional devolution within
England, and treated the whole question with a strong dollop of wariness and caution.
The Prime Minister’s approach might be best summed up as wary indierence, and cer-
tainly the papers discussed in this paper often seem to depict a Prime Minister struggling
to summon the same depth of hostility and scepticism that defined many of his closest
aides in their handling of the topic.
Overall, this was a story of ambivalence and conservatism, with strenuous eorts made
by Number Ten and throughout government to kick any hint of regional government
into the long grass during the first term of the Blair administration, followed by similarly
102
House of Commons ODPM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee, The Draft Regional
Assemblies Bill, First Report of Session 2004–05 (5 January 2005), HC62-I, p. 3.
103
This attitude was not confined to regional government in England, but also defined the Government’s handling of
Welsh devolution, see: A. Evans, There will be no shortage of Cabinet ministers taking part in the Scottish referendum
campaign. The same is not true in Wales’: New Labour, Old Struggles, and the Advent of Welsh Devolution, Parliamen-
tary History 42, (2023), pp. 255–73.
PARLIAMENTS, ESTATES AND REPRESENTATION 21
committed attempts to minimise the scale and scope of regional government when it
became clear that the Government would have to make a clear oer to the public
during its second term. The result was a devolution package that senior figures in gov-
ernment themselves admitted was ‘minimalistic’ and ‘weak’, but crucially was, as a
result of these limitations, a package that they could ‘live with’.
104
While the commitment
of the Deputy Prime Minister to regionalism is evident throughout, we are left with a
picture of a centre of government whose ambivalence to the devolution agenda was
also fairly evident, whether seen in the constant references to the choice element of
the policy, but most clearly seen in the number of times the Prime Minister’s aides felt
the need to question whether he would even publicly endorse his government’s own
policy (or use the ‘we’re just giving voters a choice’ argument as a means to distance
himself). In his memoirs, discussing his government’s devolution programme for Scot-
land and Wales, Tony Blair acknowledged that he ‘was never a passionate devolution-
ist’.
105
This absence of passion could be seen no more clearly than in relation to his
government’s largely reluctant and ultimately doomed approach to regional devolution
in England.
106
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dr Robert Jones, Dr Ed Poole and Dr Nye Davies for their helpful
comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Adam Evans is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Wales Governance Centre at Cardi Univer-
sity, Wales. He has published widely on British constitutional history and aspects of devolution in
the United Kingdom.
ORCID
Adam Evans http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4150-1517
104
TNA. PREM 49/2789. Memorandum from A. McGowan to T. Blair, dated 4 April 2002.
105
T. Blair, A Journey, (London, 2010), p. 251.
106
It is particularly fitting that his memoirs do not mention this chapter in his government at all.
22 A. EVANS
