Northumberland (Structural Change) Order 2008

This has been a fascinating debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, it has been almost like a Second Reading debate: very thoughtful and much informed by people who have had many years’ experience in local government, which shows. Like the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, I was involved in the reorganisation of 1974, when there was the nitty-gritty of transferring assets and staff and deciding which jobs were ring-fenced and which went out to public advertisement and so on. We have been through it once. I was also involved in very constructive discussions with his right honourable friend in the other place, David Curry, when it looked as though there might be further progression. What 1974 taught me was that going from the original concept of a unitary to a two-tier structure in places such as Plymouth, Bristol—my own authority—Nottingham and Leicester, which became district councils, the citizens paid a cost as regards transparency and accountability. The result was that services such as housing and social services, which should be together, were splintered. Other services, such as planning, were concurrent; others were overlapping, such as environmental health and weights and measures; and some services, such as highways, were delivered by agency. The result was that each district council had a different set of arrangements with the county council regarding the services that it did or did not offer. As a result, the poor public did not know who did what, to what level of service, at what price and whom to hold accountable. There cannot be decent local government if there is not sufficient transparency to produce accountability. From that, I learnt the desirability of unitary authorities. Whether they should be county councils or enlarged district authorities depends on the assessment or judgment in local areas about the appropriateness of service delivery and the needs and cohesion of the local community. I am open-minded about that, but I am convinced that they need to be unitary. The second point, already touched on briefly by my noble friend, is that you cannot have reorganisation by popular plebiscite. I know it was not done by plebiscite in 1974. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, rightly said, Norwich would have been against it and the country would have been for it—plus c’est la même chose. You cannot do it by plebiscite and it was not done by plebiscite in the mid-1990s. There are some good reasons for that—for example, boundary extensions; I remember Plymouth back in the 1950s having boundary extensions. Anyone in the adjacent area who currently enjoys urban services but at lower rates because they are in rural areas—I mean this in no moral sense at all—is effectively free-riding on some of those urban services. I do not criticise them as they are absolutely entitled to use those services, but why would they want to see any such boundary extension when they already receive the services at a cheaper rate than those in the city area? A second reason for not thinking that a plebiscite is the appropriate way forward is that what makes local government work is not just a head count in democracy—too often councils are composed of the few people who can be bothered to stand, elected by the few who can be bothered to vote—but a community of interest locally. I refer to voluntary organisations, which may be instrumental in addressing social services problems or working with challenged families, faith groups and, above all, businesses, whose ability to work smoothly and easily with the planning authorities ensures that local authorities get the economic growth, the green growth and investment in industry that they want to see. They are major players in the life of the community and there is no way in which one can pick them up in a plebiscite. You have to hear their voices, which is why I very much welcome my noble friend’s remarks about seeing who the stakeholders are. You need to ensure that the major stakeholders and those who in a pragmatic way—I believe that was the word she used—deliver local government services believe that they can make it work in the best interests of the people of their community. I wish these orders well and I very much hope that the House will support the Government in all ways possible.