Wiltshire (Structural Change) Order 2008

My Lords, I am immensely grateful to my noble friends and other noble Lords for their support of my amendment. I will just make a couple of points to the Minister. First, on the crucial issue of consensus, which several noble Lords have raised, the Minister used a very interesting phrase. She said that the Government ““forced this on nobody””. However, that is exactly what is happening now in Wiltshire—and probably other counties as well, but I am concentrating on Wiltshire. It is exactly what is happening: this is being forced on the people of Wiltshire. It was not achieved by plebiscite; I do not why the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has brought up that word again after doing so last Thursday. My honourable friend the Member for Westbury said in col. 924 of Commons Hansard of 5 February that he has photocopies of every response. I do not know whether the noble Baroness or her officials have seen those copies, but they are readily available. Two-thirds of the respondents in Wiltshire said that they did not want this. By any common use of English, that seems to me to be forcing a decision on the people of Wiltshire. The Minister mentioned the MORI poll. I put no weight on it at all but, as she has mentioned it, I will, too. If I heard her correctly, she said that 80 per cent of the respondents would like to know the benefits of the unitary authority. I bet they would—so would I—but that does not mean that they will agree with them. It is plain common sense to want to find out what the benefits are of this thing that is being proposed. I cannot argue with that. On the issue of the timetable, I am not an expert in local government, but it beggars belief that a pause of four weeks will put Wiltshire’s local elections in May 2009 into jeopardy. However, the noble Baroness has said that the judgment will be before Easter. Adding up on my fingers and my toes, I can say that that is less than four weeks. I find it extremely hard to believe that four weeks will make that amount of difference. Sadly, I do not think that there are enough people here to warrant my testing the opinion of the House. It is with great reluctance, therefore, that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. On Question, Motion agreed to.