I wonder if my noble friend would accept that it sounds a bit odd to those of us who live in the countryside that counties should be left out. I know why it was; I can see the civil servant saying to her, “Well, you know, counties don’t have planning powers, except for minerals, so it really doesn’t count here. It’s the district councils that have it”. I know what they have said; they would have said it to me all those years ago—that is what they would do. I say to my noble friend that I will not easily be dissuaded from the fact that the county council is crucially important if you go in for spatial planning. I do not see how you do it otherwise.
Take the planning authority for Ipswich. Several of the housing developments and industrial sites that anybody else would have thought were in Ipswich are not; they are outside it, in another district council. The county council has to provide many of the services that service the whole group. If the county council is excluded from this, it is not just a bit odd but it will not work—the county council is crucial.
The second reason why I ask my noble friend to look again is a simple matter. We had the welcome announcement of a new relationship between national and local government. I am distressed by the way that national government often treats local government as if it is a sort of incubus, and I am afraid that civil servants often have a view of local government officers which is other than entirely polite. They say, “Better not, Minister—you never know what they might they do. Therefore, don’t give them any powers without us being able to pull them back.” I am afraid that is the view of many of the civil servants who serviced Ministers and continue to do so, so I want to break into that.
9 pm
I am pleased to hear of the deal which has been done with Manchester and that with the West Midlands. It seems to be the beginning for a participational democracy, which is so much more effective. But I say to my noble friend that the fact that no country areas
are involved in this at the moment is a great mistake, because country people are increasingly of the opinion that we have a metropolitan Government making metropolitan decisions and that we who are in the country do not have a say at all. The counties are very useful for making sure that there is a balance between the town and the country.
This is particularly important for the third reason. We know that what happens now is that more and more people are working at least part of the week from home. That is very true in the countryside and modern technology has made it possible. In general, it is a good thing and I get fed up with superior people who say that everybody ought to be in their offices, otherwise they will not do any work. I declare an interest in that I run a business which, I am happy to say, is successful. We get better productivity and much happier people because they do in fact work from home for two or even three days a week. The reason is that they are part of their local community: they can, in a way, look after their families; they are happier people; they work longer and produce better. I am proud of that but if they live in the country, they want their interests to be carried through in spatial planning. They need that and we have to think of it in a way which we have not had to before.
My last reason is this. If you do not have the counties, spatial planning becomes much less big. It is tiny in many of these areas and now that we have associations between district councils, because they have discovered they are not big enough to do things, you need somebody to come in who brings them all together. The counties have a particular role in doing that.
This is not a real point, because I should not make it, but I just remind my noble friend that the counties have large numbers of people who might just be willing to vote for her party. They do not much like being left out, and they are beginning to think that is what often happens, so there may be some self-interest in rewriting this part of the Bill.