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4 Mar 2008 : Column 1052
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I will not be supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, or the additional amendments tabled by my noble friends. I do not know Cheshire well enough to be in any position to speak, and it would be impertinent of me to talk about boundaries and the particular alignment of districts, the political history, and the changes of political control which have produced alternative voices on reorganisation issues. But perhaps I may make a few comments about process as I understand it from the papers I have studied and the careful attention I have paid to the debate tonight.
I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and my noble Lord Harrison on their instinctive feel for the history of the historic county of Cheshire, but I understand that the county of Cheshire is not being split into two. That somehow assumes that only the county is a local authority, and that it is being divvied up in some way. In fact, under this order, seven councils are to become two councils. Moreover, the notion that Cheshire has been an unchanging historic entity over the centuries does not conform to my understanding. Changes have already taken place in the historic county of Cheshire, in 1974 and again in the mid-1990s with the Banham review, when I believe my noble friend Lord Hoyle successfully won the case for Warrington being given independent unitary status. These things change over time as populations and business pressures change, and as needs alter.
I understand that there was always the option of no change at all. My honourable friend in the other place, Mr Healey, extended an invitation to local authorities, saying that it was up to them whether they responded to seeking the unitary structures that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I support. I believe the county council initially proposed a unitary council and that as a result, some of the alternative proposals for two or three unitaries, were brought up—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, my noble friend made a very long speech and I hope that I will not be trespassing on the House if I try to pursue my argument. I do not want noble Lords to be kept for too long.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I agree with the sympathies for a unitary authority, but Cheshire has not been untouched over the years. I think it is therefore reasonable to look at whether the proposed changes will offer the best value for the citizens of Cheshire. Recent research has been circulated by boundary committees in other local authorities which tries to connect the size of a local authority with its performance. It is based on best value performance indicators, comprehensive performance assessment value-for-money indicators and so on. Obviously the results are ambiguous, with some going one way and some the other, but it is clear from the report that in general, once a population goes beyond 450,000 to 480,000 there are real diseconomies of scale in some services. The two proposed unitaries would be for
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I take the point made by the noble Baroness that many unitary authorities are larger than Cheshire. However, this is not just about numbers. It also concerns geographical spread. In that sense we cannot compare a county with a densely populated, compact city. There is a real problem, if you have solely a unitary county, of whether at the end of it you have anything that could be called “local” government.
The research also shows that the cost/benefit savings between two-unitary option and the single-unitary option are about the same. It is clear, as my noble friend has explained on previous occasions when we have considered orders of this kind, that this is not about head-counting, but seeing whether there is sufficient support on a well-informed basis, including the business community, for the changes proposed to make them workable. The fact that considerable evidence in the other place showed that the existing authorities are beginning to work well together to deliver these objectives seems to suggest that my noble friend’s more pragmatic approach is a more valid one.
Finally, we have heard from the courts today. The judicial review and the appeal process both support the Government, so the courts are saying that there is no reason for delay. I suggest to your Lordships that further delay and possible further doubts about how the future may go will serve only to dislocate a process to the disadvantage of services and staff, of the citizens of Cheshire, and of the resulting follow-on authorities. I hope that noble Lords will agree with that approach and not seek further to delay the order tonight.
8 pm
The Earl of Selborne: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, reminded us that this is as much about geographical spread as optimal numbers. However, it is also about the realities of people’s loyalties; their understanding of where they belong and with whom they identify.
The noble Baroness also said that this was not a split into two, but that is not the perception of those who live in Cheshire, which I do not. But I have listened with great respect to those Peers from Cheshire who have spoken and, certainly from the correspondence that I have received, I am very clear that people see their county being dismembered for research which may or may not be valid but which certainly does not take into account the reality, as people see it, on the ground.
In her opening statement the Minister made it clear that the forces which are leading the Government to choose the two unitary authorities revolve around affinity to the large cities of Liverpool and Manchester, to the west and to the east respectively. As the right reverend Prelate said, the people of Cheshire do not see themselves as outlying citizens of city areas. If I lived in Cheshire, which my family did at one time—my mother’s family—and still do, I would be outraged at the idea that the county should be seen as something
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I agree that brevity is very important on this occasion. I wish to make it very clear, if I have not already, that I very much support my noble friend Lord Wade.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I start by apologising to the Minister for missing the first couple of minutes of her introduction—she seemed to slip her leash a little early—but I got the gist of what she was saying in the remainder of her speech.
It has been 40 years since I lived in Cheshire. I do not claim to be a Cheshire person but, after listening to the debate and the contributions from around the House, I find it difficult to make many points of contact with anyone who has been speaking about anything. I was concerned whether I should say anything at all because I disagree with everyone. The person with whom I came nearest to finding points of contact was the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who introduced a degree of reality into the debate and an understanding of the background of local democracy and what it is all about. I agreed with about a quarter of what she said, perhaps a little more.
I cannot support the concept behind the amendments that if there is to be a reorganisation to unitary authorities in Cheshire it should be a unitary county. Cheshire consists of many towns of different sizes and kinds—vibrant towns in many cases—and large areas of contrasting countryside; the idea that a unitary authority over such a large area is the ideal form of local government does not seem to be right. In fact, I would challenge whether such an authority could any longer be called “local”.
Manchester has fewer people than the new Cheshire would have, but big cities such as Birmingham, and perhaps some others, are communities in themselves. Cheshire consists of a vast constellation of communities, many of them interlinked in a complex way. Indeed, there is no point in pretending that there are not many people in Cheshire, particularly in the north-east and in the west, who look to Manchester and Liverpool as their main centres of employment—it is where they commute to—and they have moved out. They are part of those economic regions. But that is not an argument for incorporating them in city regions. Indeed, in parts of the south of Cheshire people would look to Stoke-on-Trent, and to Newcastle, perhaps, in some areas.
The questions of what kind of place Cheshire is is crucial. I do not like these proposed two new unitaries which seem not to make a great deal of sense. If you are going to divide Cheshire into two, that might be the best way to do it, but we are back to the obsession of this country with local authorities having to be larger than in any other part of the democratic world. We already have the largest local authorities in the democratic world and the Government are trying to make them even larger. I oppose that general trend. That is why I cannot support the Government in their Motion, but I certainly cannot support the amendments, which would make it far worse.
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On the question of timescale and delay, if this is going to happen it is important to have elections as soon as possible. That is what is happening here—although not in all the new unitaries—so at least the people who are setting up the new authority have got democratic accountability and credibility. The decision to go for early elections is right, although it causes all political parties—not least my own—great difficulties. If you are going to do it, 12 months is long enough.
In 1973-74 the whole of local government in England—apart from Greater London—was reorganised. It was all two-tier; there was an upper tier—the counties—and the metropolitan areas. Everywhere outside Greater London was reorganised and it was not a disaster; it happened very efficiently in many areas. Many counties were set up that people thought were abominations and it is an interesting observation that the councils which have not been successful and have not taken off, whether at county level or at district level, were artificial creations. Places such as Tyne and Wear, I think it was called, and Avon were totally artificial creations and they were abolished. Of the districts which were created—south-east this and north-west that and places that had to be invented with funny names which people did not know before the district was created—some have been successful and many have not.
I worry that authorities have to be given names such as East Cheshire or Cheshire East, West Cheshire or Cheshire West and Chester because you cannot think of sensible names to give them that people would know referred to that particular area.
My final point is that local democracy and local government in this country are in crisis. Most of the debate has been about efficiency, economics, loyalties to areas and so on. The Minister talked about what really mattered being the long-term outcomes. I do not say for a moment that these things are not crucial; you have to have what is now called best value, efficient structures and structures that make sense in an economic way. However, no one has been talking about local democracy. The vision of what local democracy in this country ought to be about in future is something we all ought to start talking about seriously.
One of the problems with local democracy is that it needs councillors. Reorganisations that reduce the number of elected councillors mean that everyone has to represent more areas and spend more time doing what councillors do on the council rather than in the community. That is an erosion of my vision of local democracy.
Towns are important places when it comes to civic involvement, civic culture and, if you like, civic vibrancy. It is the towns, by and large; I am not saying that villages do not have their own institutions, society and all the rest of it since they clearly do, but the civic culture of this country—the word “civic” shows this—is based essentially on towns. It is always towns that give the lead. The problem with lumping towns together in hotchpotch authorities—even quite large towns that have a real sense of civic pride and civic involvement, whether Macclesfield, Crewe or
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I am advised by my party that I should abstain on all these things, although I do not like abstaining on anything. I would happily vote against this order and kick it out, but I am told that that would be hot-headed and I should not do it. I am advised to abstain, and that is therefore what I shall do.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, the Minister must be relieved that we are at the end of the current batch of orders, because they get more controversial as they go along.
We on these Benches support the principle of unitary government. However, it is a question of process. It is disingenuous of the Minister, however, to talk about this as a bottom-up process. The Government set the ball rolling, they have set all the frameworks within which these decisions have been made and they have made the decision to give Cheshire the two-authority solution. It is even more disingenuous to pretend that somehow it is the councils themselves that have come up with this solution. If local authorities were able to work together and share a vision for local government in their area, we would not be talking about local government review at all; we would live in a sort of two-tier nirvana where everyone worked well and the citizens all knew what everyone did. It is precisely because of the rivalries between councils that two-tier working has problems, and that is why we have this process now. To pretend that we can leave it all to the local councils and that what emerges is consensus is quite clearly flawed from the outset.
All the financial information, and all the ways in which support has been expressed and assessed, has been provided by local authorities that have a vested interest in the outcome. What has been lacking is any sense of how the Government have assessed all that. Among the public and what the Government like to call the stakeholders, there is no real sense of confidence about how the Government have assessed the information they have been given by local authorities. The Government have made that even worse by claiming an exemption from freedom of information when it comes to the financial aspects. Just because you can claim an exemption from freedom of information does not mean that you should. In this case, more transparency would have done a great service to this process by showing the basis on which these decisions were made.
I share many of the concerns that were expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Wade and Lord Grantchester,
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The Minister has said strongly that the figures have all been independently verified and are all robust. If they are so robust, why are the Government not prepared to underwrite these costs? Why are they saying that it has to fall back on the councils? I fear that the district tier always underestimates the challenges involved in providing education and social care; they are services on a scale of which that tier has no experience.
8.15 pm
There are three reasons why one would consider local government review. The first is that people want it. Well, I have seen no evidence to suggest a great clamour anywhere in Cheshire for this review. The second is that the process of review would provide economies and somehow be cheaper. It might be, but we do not know because government will not let us see the figures. The third reason is that services would be improved. However, the current council is already a four-star authority; it is a highly rated council; so there is no evidence to suggest that services will be improved by this process.
The process in the case of Cheshire is very hurried. It is the only outcome from the current round of reviews which has created totally new councils. The authority which is providing 80 per cent of the services is to disappear, and we are to have a new authority within 12 months. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that we should not delay making the decision, because that would leave a vacuum and make life very difficult. However, it is possible to delay the implementation a little longer. I am worried that we are to have elections this year. Many of the decisions have already been made. Due to the way in which the timetable has been set, they have been made by officers. There is no political leadership in the way that the Government have said that they want.
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It is unclear what the Government are seeking to achieve by reorganisation in Cheshire. There have always been problems with two-tier working and there always will be, but, in this case, it is possible that the cure is worse than the disease.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, if we have listened to a classic tale of how things should not be done, then this is it. When I was in local government, we used to have an apocryphal tale of how Governments came to conclusions on anything. It ran along the lines that a problem was perceived, which was soon identified across the department. Eventually, some bright little clerk at about the fourth tier would say, “Well, my gosh, this is a solution”. He would talk to his superior, who would say, “Yes, by gosh, that might work. That’s a solution”. And he would talk to his superior, who would talk to the Permanent Secretary, who would talk to the Minister. And that was that. Of course, I am sure that that is not what is happening here.
What we have been talking about, tragically, is process. This is the end of the process. I hope that, when we get to the end, the noble Baroness will say, “Well, these are non-fatal amendments and, in fact, the order will be implemented”. It seems to me that, whatever we say tonight, that is going to be the reality, which we unfortunately have to recognise. If the Minister is going to say anything else, I shall be very surprised.
Other counties or areas are climbing up this greasy pole. The real question is whether the process is sufficient and sufficiently robust. Here, I come to the conclusion that the Government have been at fault, because they have not released sufficient information to the public for them to be persuaded. If one has listened to the whole of this debate, it is clear that, as people increasingly realised the implications of what was being proposed, opposition to those proposals strengthened. That is not unusual, but the problem is that there is no mechanism within the system to allow that opposition to have explanations or, when the opposition is as strong as it is in this case, to change the decision. This decision has not changed one iota, as far as I can see, from the original proposition. The Government will of course say that they invited proposals and they got these proposals. But the problem for the Government is that they then choose the wrong conclusions. The difficulty that they have is that they cannot get off that hook.
This is not a happy situation to be in. One report that I saw said that the process corrupts the body politic. That is a highly opinionated report and I would not give it any greater credence than that, but it is written by academics. We should never as a Government allow ourselves to get into a position where that could be an academic view of what was going on in government. It is incredibly damaging to the whole structure—everything that we do and that we stand for as a House of Parliament.
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