“The whole range of sub-central government bodies that help to govern Cornwall but are not accountable to the people of Cornwall have to be rationalised in order to build the best government for Cornwall and, in addition, various other constitutional reforms are necessary.
The democratic deficit
Among the stated reasons given for this Local Government review are over-government and unaccountability. This is certainly the case in Cornwall, where it is seen in the proliferation of overlapping agencies and quangos. The degree of waste at the supra-Cornwall level is surely far greater than it is within Cornwall and it is this higher level that should be targeted but is ignored by this review. Truly, in the words of the Audit Commission, this is “a patchwork quilt of measures which serves only to confuse” [Brown, 1994, p 78].”
[The report then lists a number of agencies and quangos located in the Nation-state, South West England and Cornwall. Some of these no longer exist. There are also comments about ‘Devonwall’].
The costs of the policy folly known as ‘Devonwall'
It perpetuates dependence by pursuing policies that, in the Cornish context, thirty years experience have consistently shown do not succeed. And the policy objectives of the leading Devonwall agencies do not include those policies that Cornwall desperately needs....
It increases peripheralisation by shifting economic and political decision-making out of Cornwall.
It has serious employment costs for Cornwall through removing well paid jobs (exactly those with which Cornwall is under-endowed) to Plymouth, Exeter or further east.
It blurs the Cornish case to be treated as a European region and therefore costs Cornwall £ millions in lost grant aid [Cornwall later got NUTS 2 status then Obj 1 funding followed by the UK leaving the EU!]
Devonwall bodies are locally unaccountable despite making strategic policies for Cornwall.
These bodies waste the economic, cultural and social strengths provided by the Cornish identity by failing to market its distinctive image to the full.
They do not represent a wide range of Cornish interests.
They are remote from local communities; for example the Devon and Cornwall TEC is the biggest in the UK. Incidentally, Cornwall is unique in having 'training and enterprise' run from outside its boundaries.
They produce strategic policies that contradict those adopted by Cornwall County Council. For example, Cornwall in Europe, a Cornish Development Agency, A Cornish Euro-constituency are all subverted by initiatives that emanate form the various Devonwall bodies.
In fact the various Devon and Cornwall initiatives are entirely unnecessary. They do nothing which could not, give the policy will and the funding, be done perfectly adequately on a Cornish basis. In fact, it can usually be done better. [Ref to the campaign to bring the National Lottery Headquarters to Cornwall].
The effectiveness of government in Cornwall would be vastly improved if the functions of this tier of unnecessary and unaccountable government were rationalised on a Cornish basis. A simplified network of economic agencies and health service and other truss that treat Cornwall as a unit would then lock into the cultural reality, utilise Cornish strengths rather than waste them, harmonise its private and public sectors and allow a more coherent strategic response to be mounted. This would have the added advantage of re-democratising areas of policy-making (notably environment, planning, transport, education and training) that are too important to be left to unrepresentative vested interests and a small and vociferous 'Westcountry' policy lobby of local bureaucrats and big business.”
Cornish Social and Economic Research Group, (1994), ‘Empowering Cornwall – the best government for the region and its communities’. [p.11-13].
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