Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

My Lords, the Minister will recall my presence in the Moses Room during the longest county debate on Thursday, but Divisions in the Chamber, which could not have been predicted a week earlier, robbed me of a chance to speak on Wiltshire because of an alternative engagement. I therefore thank my noble friend Lord Geddes for giving me this unexpected opportunity to speak to his amendment. I shall not abuse that opportunity by making last Thursday’s speech, but I should tell the House that I speak, as Lord Geddes did, as a resident. I lived in north Wiltshire for five years, then in central Wiltshire for 17 years; I have now been in south Wiltshire for 12 years. I can therefore endorse the view that Wiltshire is a highly diverse county that is ill suited in its physical topography or human geography to a unitary authority. I agree that, as Churchill once said, in democracy one vote is enough, but the Government primarily rest their case on a winning division of 25 votes to 24 in the county council. The Government make much of their consultation with stakeholders, yet, at the time of the Commons debate on 5 February, only one stakeholder was known to have been positively in favour. At first blush, the democratic statistics are against the Government. The Minister was a little free with personal parliamentary statistics on Thursday when she described admiration for the leader of the council among county MPs who were against the proposal but spoke of their warmth towards her. Of those who alluded to the leader in their speeches on 5 February, the Minister’s statement is correct of one; the only other one who spoke of her could not make up his mind whether he was in favour of or against the proposal. That seems not a bad summary of overall opinion in the county, incidentally, but it is a poor basis for going forward, for which the Government must therefore take full responsibility thereafter. Governments of both major parties have had a curate’s egg reputation for their central government decisions about local government since, 40 years ago, they started relying on Ministers who did not have local government experience. My noble friend Lord Geddes is giving the Government the opportunity to wait for the court’s views on the analogous Shropshire case before finalising their views by pressing the order today. As for the boundaries to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, alluded, in Wiltshire we had re-warding boundaries in 2003 and new parliamentary constituency boundaries in the interim; we are now to be asked to have all our local government boundaries altered again. As moonrakers, Wiltshiremen on the whole like a bit of peace and quiet.