Andrew George on Iceland and Canada

Andrew George

In this summer series specially for The Westminster Hour's website, we have asked politicians to reveal what inspires them about the political systems in other countries.

Each week we have a different contributor and at the end of this series the best ideas will be featured in a special report to be broadcast on The Westminster Hour.

So far we have had the opinions of cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, Labour MPs Graham Allen, Gisela Stuart and Jim Knight, Lib Dem politician Norman Baker and Conservatives Ann Widdecombe and Tony Baldry.

On the campaign trail in 1997: Andrew George in St Ives

This week's contributor is Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives in Cornwall, who was elected to the parliament for the first time in 1997.

I have visited Iceland and Canada with various parliamentary groups and select committees, particularly when we were debating further devolution to regional assemblies. What I found in those two countries was a much more chilled-out, relaxed, attitude about how you define the places that make up their provinces - and the appropriate size for them, which is the critical factor for me in the way in which those powers are devolved.

Traditional housing in Iceland

If you look at Iceland, which I think a lot of people forget has a population of 270,000, it is one of the most economically successful countries in the world. Certainly per capita it is extremely wealthy and has one of the most healthy populations. So it is obviously doing some things right and yet running a country with a population so small.

I come from Cornwall, where we have aspirations to take additional powers and we have got a population almost twice that and yet people in the UK argue that 'well, of course, Cornwall is far too small to take on responsibilities for regional quangos, let alone government departments.'

Jean Chretien, Canada's Prime Minister

Similarly in Canada where there are provinces that have populations of between 120,000 for Prince Edward Island, up to Ontario with about 12 million. And there are a large number of provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador with a population roughly the same as Cornwall, but which actually have powers which give them very significant responsibility for the delivery of public services.

And when I ask people there, 'Don't people criticise the size of these provinces for not having the necessary economies of scale - they're surely too small,' they say, 'Well, if there is a need for economies of scale we just co-operate with our neighbours in order to deliver highly specialist services like cardiology across provincial boundaries.'

They are much more relaxed about it but they are quite clear about the fact that the provinces are there to reflect historic and community identities and not there to suit the needs of central government to establish bureaucracies based on administrative convenience.