Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), and I want to present what is a rather simpler picture in Northumberland than the complicated cross-currents of opinion that exist in Carlisle. I have been helped in what I am about to say by an earlier intervention from the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), who, in a slight slip of the tongue, referred to a two-tier option when he meant the two-council option; however, he made his position very clear. Like the hon. Member for Carlisle, I believe that unitary local government has considerable advantages, not least because it is easier for the electorate to understand, and because local authorities then tend to have a bigger critical mass of services and staff within which they can make changes and adjustments denied under the two-tier system. It is difficult, however, to implement unitary local government in Northumberland; indeed, we have found it difficult every time such a reorganisation has been considered. At the moment we have a county council and six districts, but the size of the county makes things very difficult. It is more than 100 miles from end to end, and contains two very different types of area: a highly concentrated urban south-east core, and a large rural area stretching from Berwick, in the north of my constituency, to Haltwhistle, which borders on Cumbria. I want to suggest to the Minister how he might consider the bids that will emerge from Northumberland. To start with, he should remember that when the unitary question was put to a referendum at the time of the regional referendum, there was a clear vote—some 56 per cent.—in favour of two unitary authorities for Northumberland, not one. The votes were broken down according to the way in which the regional referendum was conducted, and in my own rural area the majority in favour of two authorities was much higher even than in the referendum as a whole. It was clear that there was no consensus for a single county-wide unitary authority. The Labour leadership of the county council simply ignored that fact and decided to go ahead and put to the Minister a proposal for a single unitary county authority—against the wishes of many of their own councillors. Indeed, the leadership did not even seek the council’s support for the proposition until last week. The Minister will have received letters, deputations, visits and all sorts from the Labour leadership of Northumberland county council, but they never sought the support of the council for their proposition. Meanwhile, the Northumberland districts showed surprising consensus. Bearing in mind all the past difficulties, I was surprised that all six districts agreed that a twin unitary authority solution was the right way to go.