Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I shall have to curtail my comments significantly, as we are coming to the end of the debate and I want to make sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), have a chance to speak. I want to give the Minister the result, hot off the press, of the referendum held in Shrewsbury on unitary authority status. It is with great honour that I announce that more than 27,000 people in my constituency voted in the referendum, which is great for democracy. People are interested in how their council works. I must tell the Minister that 67 per cent. of the people of Shrewsbury voted against a unitary authority—a majority of more than 10,000, which is even bigger than my parliamentary majority. I campaigned hard against a unitary authority, so I am grateful to my constituents for rejecting the proposals. Ministers say that they will be open-minded and respect the wishes of the people. Well, people in Shrewsbury have spoken and I very much hope that the Minister will take their point of view on board. I campaigned on the issue because I felt so desperately passionate about Shrewsbury and her identity. We have the lowest council tax in Shropshire and the council is rated excellent. In my estimation, we have the best chief executive in the whole of England, Mr. Robin Hooper—an excellent gentleman who does a tremendous job of providing services to Shrewsbury, despite the below inflation levels of increase in local government funding from the Government. In fact, Mr. Campbell, our finance director, informs me that this year our increase was only 1 per cent.—far less than the rate of inflation. Because of my passion for Shrewsbury, I decided to call a meeting with the Minister for Local Government—I am pleased to see him in his place to listen to my speech—and I must say that he is a man of honour and principle. I would like to thank him for the help he gave me—a very rare thing among the Labour Government. This gentleman certainly deserves praise for all his help. However, he did say at the meetings that the Government would not be prescriptive. That word is indelibly printed on my mind—and I am pleased to see him moving his head. He told me that the Government would not be prescriptive. He told me that if all areas asked for unitary authorities, the Government would not be able to afford it. He acknowledged the huge cost of redundancies and gave me a commitment in last December’s meeting that the referendum would ultimately play a role in the Government’s decision. I must say that Labour councillors tried to provide a different view of what I have said about my constituency. I am particularly upset with Councillor Alan Mosley, the socialist councillor from Castlefields, who has tried to imply in public meetings that I am somehow misleading my electorate about the Minister’s comments. I put on the record here in the House of Commons that I spoke the truth to my electorate when I assured them that the Minister for Local Government would not be prescriptive in this matter and that he would take the result of the referendum into account. Unless he intervenes on me, I take it as confirmation that my comments were correct. I ask the Minister to confirm the Government’s view on this matter—and I need a guarantee from him in his summing-up speech that the referendum result will be respected. During the course of my campaign on this issue, I spoke about one thing and one thing only. I did not get involved in the fiscal or financial elements, but spoke about local councillors being accountable to local people in Shrewsbury. Let me provide one example. Councillor Mrs. Judith Williams, who has represented the Porthill area for nearly 20 years, is an extremely hard-working Conservative councillor. She knows every single flagstone on every single pavement in that part of Shrewsbury. That is exactly the type of local person living in Shrewsbury who is accountable to the people of Shrewsbury and who can take the decisions that affect Shrewsbury. Nobody else from outside our town could do so as well. The county council is currently looking into proposals for congestion charging in Shrewsbury as part of TIF—the transport innovation fund. This quango said yes to providing money for a north-west relief road, but explained that the downside would be the imposition of congestion charging in Shrewsbury. If we have no borough council in Shrewsbury, the unitary authority will be able to impose such measures, so councillors from outside our community will be able to impose congestion charging on Shrewsbury and we will have no say in it whatever. In a unitary authority, Shrewsbury would have only about a third of all the councils across the whole of Shropshire. Tanners, a major company in my constituency, is extremely concerned and has said that it will leave Shrewsbury if congestion charging is imposed. I am trying to be as quick as I possibly can, but I also want to say that the Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council gets £80 less per household than the neighbouring Labour council of Telford and Wrekin. For every single house in my borough, we receive £80 less, which is an extraordinary amount of money. Two identical Shropshire hamlets—Withington on my side of the border and Roden on the other side—are subject to that difference of £80 for every single house. That is a great anomaly, which I want the Minister to take into account. I always get replies from the Minister for Local Government saying, ““Oh well, there are significant areas of deprivation in Telford.”” Well, yes, we have significant areas of deprivation in Shrewsbury as well. I am sick and tired of Ministers telling me, ““Oh well, yes, but Shrewsbury is a beautiful, quaint little English town with flowers—a picturesque little town.”” Yes, of course, we want to have that image—ours is a beautiful town—but we have areas of deprivation. When his Parliamentary Private Secretary visited my constituency to look at a new library in a very run-down part of Shrewsbury, she was amazed. She said, ““I didn’t know you had areas like this in Shrewsbury.”” There is that sort of prejudice among the Government. They think that, if people are out in the countryside in Shropshire, they are somehow very wealthy and do not need extra support from the Government. That is not true. I shall finish now, because I have been told that I can speak only for seven minutes. I could speak for hours on this issue. I will finish by saying that at the end of today’s sitting, I will present the Minister with a document, which I hold up proudly, entitled ““Local Governance by Local People for Local People: Darwin Option for Shropshire; Evolution of Change; Outline Case for the Enhancement of Effective Two Tier Working.”” That document has been created by my borough council and its chief executive, Robin Hooper, to make the case for an enhanced two-tier system for Shropshire, rather than having an unwanted unitary authority imposed on us.