Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for trying to assist the Government this afternoon. I have listened intently to what noble Lords have said. We had a good debate on Thursday. We debated each of the orders in turn and went into considerable detail. Indeed, I wearied the Committee by going through the processes at some length, so I will not repeat all that. I am disappointed by what the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said. The Government have not been less than honest. We made what we were looking for very clear in the criteria that we set out. I remind the House that this was the first time in all the reorganisations of the past 40 years that the Government offered an invitation to local authorities to tell us whether they were interested in change. Yes, we made a case for unitary status, but it is the case that many people throughout the land have made. Many local councils and district councils have also made that case. We forced this on nobody. We set out our criteria clearly. We had 26 invitations and six have gone through. We have failed far more people and councillors on their proposals because they did not meet our criteria; they did not meet the financial criteria and they did not meet the broad support criteria. That is why we feel confident that the unitary structures that we now support—these five orders—are workable. That is the point. Noble Lords are absolutely right to raise the question of the criteria for broad support. I will quote the criteria in the original invitation, because what we were looking for was clear. We said that the change to unitary local government structure must be, "““supported by a broad cross section of partners and stakeholders ... We recognise that any proposal may not carry consensus from or within all sectors … No single body or group of councils or bodies will have a veto””." We also said: "““It will be necessary for any proposal to have support from a range of key partners, stakeholders and service users/citizens””." In any reorganisation people are unhappy, particularly if their council is not going to survive. We know that this has caused distress and disappointment. I listened with great respect to what the noble Lords, Lord Brooke, Lord Elton and Lord Geddes, said about Wiltshire and their personal associations with it. They are right to make the House aware of those matters. However, we were never less than clear that we could not look for a majority of popular support, for the reasons that my noble friend made clear. We were looking for the sort of support that would ensure that this reorganisation would work to the benefit of the local people, with more strategic leadership and more neighbourhood empowerment. We have found that the local arrangements that are being set up—as in the case of ““belonging communities”” in Northumberland or in Cornwall—are real local associations rather than artificial boundaries. There will be a new way; this will not just be a reiteration or a reformation of an old council. That is why it is important to get it right. In Wiltshire, there was a popular poll, which the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, quoted correctly. It was a postal campaign. We commissioned work into the nature of these polling campaigns in other places. They were not managed by the Electoral Reform Society. They were not supervised; the votes were merely collected at the end. There was not the supervision that we would expect in terms of a national postal vote. Consequently, we are saying that one has to be very careful about the value of that sort of vote. At the same time in Wiltshire, an Ipsos MORI poll revealed that 80 per cent of people were looking for more information about the benefits of unitary councils and structures, which is a slightly different perspective. We had the support of many public sector stakeholders, some of the voluntary and community sector and most of the Wiltshire business chambers. We were looking for the partners to be signed up to this proposal so that, when and if Parliament agreed it, it would be delivered. The partners would see the new strategic arrangements and the new governance arrangements; they would be working with them, they would be committed to delivering them and they would make them work. We started off there—from the principles of validity, accountability and workability. Let me say in response to what the noble Lord said that, as my noble friend stated, we are in a clear position in relation to the courts. In September, the court found conclusively in favour of the Government. It dismissed Congleton’s and Shrewsbury’s claim for judicial review on all grounds. It also gave leave for the parties to appeal, but the court made no suggestion whatever that the administrative processes should be delayed pending that appeal. We have been open with the court throughout this process about the fact that we intended to proceed as quickly as possible. We were urged by the local authorities engaged in this process to minimise the process and the timetable for disruption. As we all know, and as has been made clear in this House, the process is very disruptive. At the start of this process last spring, during the permission hearing, the court refused an application from Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council and Congleton Borough Council to stay the process until the outcome of the judicial review. In refusing the application, Mr Justice King explained that, "““on the evidence such a stay would cause manifest and serious prejudice and detriment to good administration””." The noble Lord will not be surprised that I cannot accept the amendment, which takes a diametrically opposite view to that of the court and seeks to put a hold on the process pending the outcome of the litigation, when we are now awaiting the decision of the Court of Appeal. As I have explained, the High Court, conscious of the process and the timetable involved in the structural changes, recognised at the very outset of this litigation the importance of pressing ahead and not holding back the administrative process for restructuring. Secondly, we gave every assurance to local authorities from the outset of the process that we would try not to drag this process out and make it more difficult. I do not know when the judgment on appeal will be given. The best we can say is that we expect that it will be given before the Easter Recess, but that is entirely a matter for the court. The implications for delay are very serious for councils and for the implementation process. This has been done in extensive consultation with the local authorities concerned about what they wanted, the timetable of elections that they wanted to follow and the nature of the implementation teams. Everything has been in their hands. The timetable that Wiltshire, like other areas, is now following, with the agreement of all parties, is for new elections in May 2009. That allows sufficient time for the Electoral Commission to undertake the necessary electoral review before the May 2009 election. If the noble Lord’s judgment were to prevail today and the court upheld its original judgment, on the Electoral Commission’s timetable that review would no longer be possible. The problems and confusion of such a delay more than outweigh, in our judgment, the problems and costs that would arise if an order were now approved and made but subsequently quashed by the court if it were to grant the appeal. We have to bear in mind the fact that, even if the court does grant the appeal, it is entirely at its discretion whether to quash the order or simply to make a declaration or grant some other relief. I know that the noble Lord has spoken with what he sees as the interests of Wiltshire at heart and that other noble Lords have raised important issues. However, I hope that he will agree with Members in another place that, given the decision to go ahead—and without denying that there have been and always have been disagreements and upset over this sort of change—we must support those who have come through the process and are now committed to implementing those changes and making them work as successfully as possible. I think that it would be a major disservice to those very loyal servants in local government if they were not able to do that.