Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I welcome the Bill and applaud the Government for introducing enabling legislation that allows local circumstances relating to restructuring to be taken into account. I shall give a completely opposite set of reasons why we should have a unitary county in Durham from those given by my hon. Friends the Members for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) and for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), who are no longer in their places. I know that not everyone will be pleased that the restructuring of councils is back on the agenda, and we should acknowledge that the Bill actually goes much further than that. I have previously been a member of a unitary authority and a district council, and I represent an area that now has a two-tier authority. Over the years I have developed strong views about the need for unitary councils. Therefore, I am pleased that the previous Secretary of State and the present ministerial team have listened to those who were saying that it should be possible to revisit the question of unitary status, and I thank them for bringing forward legislation that will enable that. When the then Secretary of State for the Environment set up the Banham commission in 1991-92, he clearly set out the reasons why two-tier authorities were not a good idea and the advantages of changing to unitary status. It is a pity that that Administration bottled out of rolling that change out across the country. Instead, they stopped as soon as they got into some difficulties in rural areas. It is not easy to establish unitary authorities in rural areas, but the Bill charts a way to do so. It is worth briefly rehearsing the arguments against two-tier authorities. They can be very costly. We have seven districts in County Durham that duplicate several functions, but we need to recognise the lack of strategic leadership caused by small districts. Districts may also not be sufficiently local to have a real connection with people. That is not a point that has really been discussed today, but their boundaries are often very artificial. Perhaps most importantly, it is very confusing for local people who live under a two-tier structure, because they are often not clear about which council has responsibility for what.