Leave aside the fact that Westminster also looks after the tertiary level issues (foreign relations, defence etc), overlook the West Lothian Question, and you have a government looking after local/regional issues for the 50m residents of England.

50m people seems to be a large population for “local/regional” government, but there doesn’t seem to be popular support for a lower level of government within the English regions (the Northeast Referendum being the main evidence). Is this the only way of managing the gravitational pull of London and the SE, meaning that issues concerning the SE issues will always dominate Cornwall or Manchester?

Here’s my full post:
http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2005/09/defining_the_po.html

Regards,
Anthony

Owen replies: Thanks Anthony. I pretty much agree with this, and you present an interesting idea, which I had not considered before, that some government activities are inherently location-based and some are not.

I agree with you that the former should be delivered locally. But I do not think it follows that those services or activities that are location-independent (eg rules of criminal justice) should be delivered at a supra-national level. There is a trade-off between the returns to scale of providing these activities of government for many communities at once, and the loss of representativeness and accountability that this might entail.

On the positive side, devolution has led a Lab-Lib coalition government to abandon key New Labour policies. The Executive have introduced free personal care for the elderly, have avoided university top-up fees and will introduce a smoking ban in 2006, all different directions or more quickly than in England.

In addition, Scotland already has a different legal and education system from the rest of the UK (thus answering part of Tim’s response above).

Unfortunately, government at this level does suffer from disadvantages – such as the poor quality of MSPs, runaway spending (£500m Parliament building) and the continuing desire to do things differently just because they are Scottish.

For example, the Scottish NHS is not participating in the NHS “National” Programme for IT and is developing its own systems. The Patients Record Systems will be different in Scotland and England – imagine the problems for people moving between or visiting these countries.

One thing you don’t mention is economic development, and which level is most appropriate for this. Where should economic development support (subsidies, start-up costs etc) be provided from and administered? Remote rural regions of the UK still get a raw deal because the relative wealth of the SE corner of the UK means that EU funds are unavailable. Maybe this is an argument for a larger EU pot delivered to more discrete regions rather than to nation states?

Owen replies: John: great to hear from you. Yes, I had Scotland in the back of my mind as I wrote this. I think that economic development support should be split – paid for at EU-wide level, prioritized and administered locally. (No role for Westminster, needless to say).

Pan European monetary policy? What, compulsory membership of the euro?

Trade policy? Why should we need a trade policy at all? I thought you were a free trader?

Fiscal redistribution? What about those of us who don’t think that should happen at all? Even between regions within a country?

Criminal law? How are you going to deal with the differences between habeus corpus, jury trial, the presumption of innocence etc etc (ooops, forgot, Charlie and Tony are taking care of that already).

Sport and culture best done by regional or local Govt? You mean you actually want such things to be directed by Government? What is this, a playback of socialist realism?

Local transport? Why not by the bus company?

Owen replies: I agree that many that many of these things should be done little or not at all (eg free trade). You might take the view that others (eg fiscal redistribution) should not be done and I think it should. The question is, at what level of government should we decide what, if anything, we are going to do about these things and – to the extent we decide we want them – which layer of government should carry out those wishes?