Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

Yes. I was grateful for how the noble Lord addressed the other important points. With regard to what he said about the degree of detailed scrutiny in the other place, we have more detached debate on these issues in this place, and it is incumbent on me seriously to address the questions that the noble Lord raises. On popular support, I do not want to reiterate what I said at some length in my opening speech. However, in Wiltshire, there was both a significant amount of campaign correspondence and an Ipsos MORI poll surveying about 1,200 residents. What was interesting about the postal polling was that, as was borne out by some academic work in Shropshire, postal polls of this order are not subject to the rigour of voting by post. The Electoral Reform Society may be involved but it does not oversee the process in that way, so there is a question over the validity of how some of that polling reflects genuine opinion. We must therefore be careful about how we treat some of it, which is what we said in our correspondence. Nevertheless, about a third of those returns showed that people were in favour. The other bit of polling in Wiltshire showed that 78 per cent of residents were in favour of the status quo but were looking for more co-operation between councils. When they were asked the question in another way, 81 per cent said that they wanted more information on any proposal before making a proper decision, and 53 per cent agreed that with a single council it would be clearer to demonstrate who was responsible. I said that there was a balance of opinion but it is when you get under the radar of some of these questions and how they are asked that you determine a sense that people want an improvement on the two-tier system. I also said at the beginning that we never intended this to be a popular referendum, for the reasons given by my noble friend. That would not show to anyone’s satisfaction that there would be something deliverable at the end of the day. You tap into emotion and loyalty, which are perfectly valid, but perhaps that is not what you should be looking for in introducing a change of this sort, when you need to deliver better local government and better services. We determined that there was a broad cross-section of support in Wiltshire. We found that there was support from many public sector stakeholders, many in the voluntary and community sector, most of the business chambers and, as I said, some of the general public. On that basis, we judged that it was right to proceed because we had a broad cross-section of support. It was interesting that some of that was reflected in the debate in another place in the responses of local Members of Parliament.