District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2006

He will not. This order does not do that. The boundary commissioner has to produce his report before the district area commissioner can start work. This order seeks to minimise the gap between those events, with parliamentary process and everything else. On the point about it being exactly the same individual, Richard Mackenzie will not begin his second role until his first role is finished. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, is quite right about that. On 11 January the Secretary of State announced his intention to appoint Richard Mackenzie CB as the next District Electoral Areas Commissioner. That appointment will be for 12 months on a full-time basis. He is the current Local Government Boundaries Commissioner and a member of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland. He will not formally take up his appointment until 1 June 2007. He shall not report to the Secretary of State until the recommendations of the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner have been given effect, with or without modifications, in legislation, so there is a gap. For the avoidance of any doubt, the District Electoral Areas Commissioner is classified as an ad hoc advisory body. As such, the appointment process does not fall within the remit of the Office of the Commissioner of Public Appointments. On the previous two occasions when a District Electoral Areas Commissioner has been appointed, the practice has been, once the local government boundary commission process was completed, to appoint the existing Local Government Boundaries Commissioner as the District Electoral Areas Commissioner—in other words, the same person at a point afterwards. That occurred in 1992 and 1984, and we are repeating that practice here. The current boundary commissioner is widely respected, and possesses experience and familiarity with the subject and the necessary considerations to be addressed by the District Electoral Areas Commissioner. That is important now, as it is the wish of Ministers that the District Electoral Areas Commissioner’s recommendations should be brought forward speedily, and that the district electoral areas should be in place for subsequent local elections. There is no conflict of interest with the two roles being filled by the same person. The appointments are entirely separate. Mr Mackenzie will not be appointed as the District Electoral Areas Commissioner until after he has completed his duties as the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner. A fair point has been made with regard to wards. The Secretary of State wrote to the leaders of the Northern Ireland parties and the Electoral Commission in October to invite their views on whether or not the existing range of five to seven wards per district electoral area in Northern Ireland should be retained, or changed using this Order in Council. Only one response, in support of retaining the current structure, was received. In the light of that, and of nil responses to a Northern Ireland Office press release on the issue, we decided that the current five-to-seven ward structure should be retained. Parties were given the opportunity to comment on whether they wanted a four to eight structure, but no party chose to oppose the retention of the current five to seven structure. In a way, we are in the hands of the professional whom Parliament has appointed to do the job. I understand that this is a big change for local government in Northern Ireland—I am not knocking that. It will change the role of councillors in many ways. I pay tribute to the 582 local councillors who, in the past few decades of the Troubles, have been the only elected representatives in Northern Ireland, save for the Assembly. They have carried a massive burden, far greater than their actual powers as councillors justified. In effect, they have the powers that parish councillors have in England but they carried a burden of representative democracy in all those dark years. They all deserve a big ““thank you”” from everyone for that. Their role is changing. Local government will change; it will be much stronger, more powerful and have many more functions than before. You could not justify retaining the existing structure if you were going to do that, but I am going down the wrong road. On Question, Motion agreed to.