I agree with my hon. Friend, and I think I said as much. I believe that it would be sheer folly to impose a leadership and accountability system without first having the wholehearted support of the wider public.
My hon. Friend also raised a point about what the boundaries might be. At the moment, we are made up of Halton, St Helens, Sefton, Knowsley, Liverpool and the Wirral, but there is a wider appetite for this, certainly from West Lancashire, which is in a process of negotiating whether it wants to be part of the combined authority that already exists. There is also some interest from the west Cheshire local authority area—which my hon. Friend’s constituency is in—to see whether it might want to be part of it. It might even encompass, in the wake of what has happened in Manchester, Warrington. I am not making a land grab for any of those areas. It is for them to decide, but I do think that question should be on the table, and it should be something that can be discussed.
What was said of the Scottish referendum is also true for the whole of England: this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it right. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shift the balance away from Westminster and Whitehall to local communities who know better what they want out of politics and what they want out of services. I hope we can get this right, but most of all I hope we can now have this discussion in the open and in public and not behind closed doors.
2.15 pm