Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

My Lords, I hope for two reasons that noble Lords do not support the amendment. First, there has been no suggestion at any stage in dealing with any of these orders that consensus means the result of a plebiscite. Local government reorganisation, whether in 1974 or David Curry’s reorganisation in the 1990s, did not seek public opinion particularly strongly. The reason for that seems to me to be twofold. First, some of the authorities may have to have changed boundaries. Where people in, for example, a rural area may come within an expanded boundary, they enjoy urban services at a much lower cost because they are paying rural rates. In a completely non-judgmental way, I would point out that they are essentially piggy-backing on urban services for which they have not fully paid. To expect them to want to vote to come into such a system would be utopian at best. My second hesitation about talk about plebiscites and referendums is that consensus is not just about each individual council tax payer or each taxpayer, because local communities are made up of networks of interest—the churches, the faith groups and, above all, business—and it is business that in many areas has been driving this agenda for unitary authorities. As a result, you cannot pick up those community voices through a plebiscite. As my noble friend made clear when we discussed this in Grand Committee, it will be a pragmatic judgment whether the key stakeholders, together with the principal players—that is, the local authorities—would make the proposed unitary authorities work. My noble friend was confident that, in Wiltshire’s case, they would, and went on to explain that the judge at that appeal said that it was perfectly appropriate and proper for the Government to go ahead and not to defer their activities to await any outcome of the formal decision. My second point is that if my noble friend were to accept this amendment, or the House were to support it, that would mean that any individual of any party to any such order—we have a dozen or so of them coming our way, including some quite difficult ones in a week or two—could seek to delay and delay again by going through the court procedure. When, as here, the judge has clearly made it acceptable to go ahead and the Government won on all points of the first round, there is, presumably, nothing to prevent these local authorities from delaying yet again by taking the matter on to the House of Lords. We could end up delaying each system of change by months when the staff, the stakeholders and the electorate want us to go swiftly and seamlessly into the new authorities. On both those grounds, I hope that the House will not support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes.