Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Like my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Mr. Turner) and for High Peak (Tom Levitt), I was one of the defenders of elections by thirds in Committee, and I am delighted that the Minister has tabled the amendments that we are discussing today. I will not rehearse the arguments that I expressed in Committee. There are strong views on both sides. I think that elections by thirds works well in the two local authorities in my constituency, Tameside and Stockport. Tameside has four stars and ““improving strongly”” status under the strong leadership of Councillor Roy Oldham CBE. The Minister has delighted me with these amendments. I have always rated him as an effective operator on the political field, and as a result he is a great Minister for Local Government. In Committee, he made great play of his devolutionary desires, which he has actually demonstrated. He has proved to be a listening Minister, too, because there was consensus across the Committee on this issue. It is absolutely right to introduce the two-thirds majority safeguard to ensure that the powers are not abused by local authorities. In a council such as Tameside, where the controlling group has a two-thirds majority, the safeguard would not make much of a difference, but I realise that it would in most local authorities. The Minister has been absolutely generous in respect of opportunities to move back. After a full council cycle, if a council resolves at a special meeting by a two-thirds majority to move back, it will be permitted to do so. That is much more generous than the provisions proposed by me, my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan and for High Peak and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell). We thought that it would be more reasonable to have two cycles to allow the new system to bed down; two cycles would result in a period of eight years and three cycles would result in a period of 12 years. If a local authority sees that approach as a failure, the opportunity to move sooner is welcome. I was going to raise the precise point mentioned by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove about non-metropolitan districts established under the Local Government Act 1972, which came into force on 1 April 1974, that have subsequently become unitary authorities. When those districts were non-metropolitan shire districts in a two-tier system, many of them were elected according to elections by thirds. On becoming unitary authorities, which gave them a new status and a new creation date, because they technically became new local authorities on the date on which the unitaries were created, many of them moved to all-out elections. If such local authorities wanted to elect by thirds, it would be wrong to prevent them from doing so. Like the hon. Member for Hazel Grove, I look forward to the Minister’s response.