Institutional Developments in the English Regions

Abstract

The previous chapter suggested that a range of underlying pressures towards regionalisation has existed for some time as part of wider debates over public administration in England. In the current political debate, most opponents of elected regional assemblies reject the existence of coherent ‘regions’ in England (Conservative Party 2001), and opinion polls (Curtice 2005, Curtice and Sandford 2004) have long suggested public disinterest towards elected regional government. And as we shall see in Chapter 5, the New Labour government elected in 1997 was very far from being openly enthusiastic about English regionalism. It delivered its policy inheritance of devolution to Scotland, Wales and London but showed no sign of going further (Mawson 1998:172). These commitments were delivered with few implications for, and minimal interruption to, the machinery of government of England.