Cheshire (Structural Changes) Order 2008

My Lords, my noble friend made a very long speech and I hope that I will not be trespassing on the House if I try to pursue my argument. I do not want noble Lords to be kept for too long. Like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I agree with the sympathies for a unitary authority, but Cheshire has not been untouched over the years. I think it is therefore reasonable to look at whether the proposed changes will offer the best value for the citizens of Cheshire. Recent research has been circulated by boundary committees in other local authorities which tries to connect the size of a local authority with its performance. It is based on best value performance indicators, comprehensive performance assessment value-for-money indicators and so on. Obviously the results are ambiguous, with some going one way and some the other, but it is clear from the report that in general, once a population goes beyond 450,000 to 480,000 there are real diseconomies of scale in some services. The two proposed unitaries would be for populations of around 320,000 and 360,000 respectively and are therefore the optimum size, based on recent published research. Cheshire, with a population of some 650,000, goes well beyond the optimum. I take the point made by the noble Baroness that many unitary authorities are larger than Cheshire. However, this is not just about numbers. It also concerns geographical spread. In that sense we cannot compare a county with a densely populated, compact city. There is a real problem, if you have solely a unitary county, of whether at the end of it you have anything that could be called ““local”” government. The research also shows that the cost/benefit savings between two-unitary option and the single-unitary option are about the same. It is clear, as my noble friend has explained on previous occasions when we have considered orders of this kind, that this is not about head-counting, but seeing whether there is sufficient support on a well-informed basis, including the business community, for the changes proposed to make them workable. The fact that considerable evidence in the other place showed that the existing authorities are beginning to work well together to deliver these objectives seems to suggest that my noble friend’s more pragmatic approach is a more valid one. Finally, we have heard from the courts today. The judicial review and the appeal process both support the Government, so the courts are saying that there is no reason for delay. I suggest to your Lordships that further delay and possible further doubts about how the future may go will serve only to dislocate a process to the disadvantage of services and staff, of the citizens of Cheshire, and of the resulting follow-on authorities. I hope that noble Lords will agree with that approach and not seek further to delay the order tonight.