Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

I intervene not as an expert—I am in a minority of one on that score—but simply as a resident of Wiltshire. I have four brief points for the Minister, and then a request. The first, smallest, point is that the Minister said in her opening remarks that there has been consideration in detail in another place. That rather depends on the definition of ““detail””. Others might take a slightly different view. My most substantive point, to which the Minister has just referred, is about consultation and its results. As we know, the Department for Communities and Local Government has, as its second objective against which it is meant to assess the plans for unitary councils, the requirement that they, "““be supported by a broad cross-section of partners and stakeholders””." In another place, my honourable friend the Member for Westbury said, "““there is no support worthy of the name for the proposal in the county of Wiltshire. There are no grounds for the Minister’s opinion, given in his letter of 25 July 2007 to Wiltshire county council’s chief executive, that the proposals would ‘command a broad cross section of support from a range of stakeholders’. ""Furthermore, the breezy assertion that there would be ‘some support from the general public’ is true only in the most literal sense, with ‘some support’ meaning more than no support””.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/2/08; col. 924.]" My honourable friend has told me, and he repeated it at col. 924, that he has photocopies of all the responses that came in from Wiltshire. There is no doubt that, by any criterion, the vast weight of those responses was against the order. My second point is brief but pertinent and regards costs. Wiltshire County Council’s submission did not cost the proposal for area governance based on 20 areas. The county submitted a costing of some £868,000 as the cost for its area governance proposals. Her Majesty’s Government were apparently content to accept that neighbourhood empowerment could be obtained for that sum, which works out at some £43,000 per area. I repeat that I am not an expert in local government, but that seems to be an astonishingly low sum. The Minister may want to comment on it. My final point before my request regards the pending appeal to which the noble Baroness referred. It relates directly to Shropshire but, although I am talking only for Wiltshire, I am sure that it has clear implications for the other orders. It seems extraordinary that Her Majesty’s Government would press forward with the orders when the result of that appeal hearing is imminent. In this context, I genuinely try to help Her Majesty’s Government by saying that there have been instances in the not too distant past where the Government have fallen foul of the law and have had to backtrack. It might help the Government quite a lot if there were a slow-down in the process pending the result of that appeal. It could save a lot of embarrassment and it would not do a lot of harm. I do not expect that the Minister will agree with my first request but I shall make it for the record: it is that Her Majesty’s Government withdraw the order for Wiltshire or, to use her terminology, ““do not progress with it””. If she is not able to help me in that respect, I earnestly ask her to postpone consideration, or at least approval, of the order pending the result of the appeal to the High Court.