Local Government

Because the criterion on support is not about public support; it is about the broad cross-section of support. Let me quote from the invitation of October 2006 that I referred to. It states that the Government recognise"““that any proposal may not carry consensus from or within all sectors””" and that while no"““single council or body, or group of councils or bodies will have a veto””" it"““will be necessary for any proposal to have support from a range of key partners, stakeholders, and service users/citizens.””" The purpose of that is not to be able to demonstrate a majority of any particular group, including local citizens, who are in favour of a unitary council; rather, it is to allow us to make an assessment of whether support is strong and broad enough that if we decided to go ahead with implementing a proposal for a unitary council it would have a good chance of success. That was the basis on which we set out to make that judgment, and that is the basis on which we made it. The hon. Gentleman talks about the survey that was done in his area. I recognise that his council, and two others, conducted such surveys, but I am sure that he would also recognise that the clarity of the questions and the balance and clarity of the supporting information that was provided to citizens as part of the surveys are relevant factors in assessing what weight to give to them. I could—although I do not particularly want to—quote from that supporting information, but let me simply say that an assessment of those exercises was done by Thrasher and Rallings, recognised independent academic experts in this sort of work, and we accepted their conclusion that there were reasons for treating the results of those surveys with some caution given the way in which they were framed and the context in which they were conducted.