Cheshire (Structural Changes) Order 2008

My Lords, I start by apologising to the Minister for missing the first couple of minutes of her introduction—she seemed to slip her leash a little early—but I got the gist of what she was saying in the remainder of her speech. It has been 40 years since I lived in Cheshire. I do not claim to be a Cheshire person but, after listening to the debate and the contributions from around the House, I find it difficult to make many points of contact with anyone who has been speaking about anything. I was concerned whether I should say anything at all because I disagree with everyone. The person with whom I came nearest to finding points of contact was the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who introduced a degree of reality into the debate and an understanding of the background of local democracy and what it is all about. I agreed with about a quarter of what she said, perhaps a little more. I cannot support the concept behind the amendments that if there is to be a reorganisation to unitary authorities in Cheshire it should be a unitary county. Cheshire consists of many towns of different sizes and kinds—vibrant towns in many cases—and large areas of contrasting countryside; the idea that a unitary authority over such a large area is the ideal form of local government does not seem to be right. In fact, I would challenge whether such an authority could any longer be called ““local””. Manchester has fewer people than the new Cheshire would have, but big cities such as Birmingham, and perhaps some others, are communities in themselves. Cheshire consists of a vast constellation of communities, many of them interlinked in a complex way. Indeed, there is no point in pretending that there are not many people in Cheshire, particularly in the north-east and in the west, who look to Manchester and Liverpool as their main centres of employment—it is where they commute to—and they have moved out. They are part of those economic regions. But that is not an argument for incorporating them in city regions. Indeed, in parts of the south of Cheshire people would look to Stoke-on-Trent, and to Newcastle, perhaps, in some areas. The questions of what kind of place Cheshire is is crucial. I do not like these proposed two new unitaries which seem not to make a great deal of sense. If you are going to divide Cheshire into two, that might be the best way to do it, but we are back to the obsession of this country with local authorities having to be larger than in any other part of the democratic world. We already have the largest local authorities in the democratic world and the Government are trying to make them even larger. I oppose that general trend. That is why I cannot support the Government in their Motion, but I certainly cannot support the amendments, which would make it far worse. On the question of timescale and delay, if this is going to happen it is important to have elections as soon as possible. That is what is happening here—although not in all the new unitaries—so at least the people who are setting up the new authority have got democratic accountability and credibility. The decision to go for early elections is right, although it causes all political parties—not least my own—great difficulties. If you are going to do it, 12 months is long enough. In 1973-74 the whole of local government in England—apart from Greater London—was reorganised. It was all two-tier; there was an upper tier—the counties—and the metropolitan areas. Everywhere outside Greater London was reorganised and it was not a disaster; it happened very efficiently in many areas. Many counties were set up that people thought were abominations and it is an interesting observation that the councils which have not been successful and have not taken off, whether at county level or at district level, were artificial creations. Places such as Tyne and Wear, I think it was called, and Avon were totally artificial creations and they were abolished. Of the districts which were created—south-east this and north-west that and places that had to be invented with funny names which people did not know before the district was created—some have been successful and many have not. I worry that authorities have to be given names such as East Cheshire or Cheshire East, West Cheshire or Cheshire West and Chester because you cannot think of sensible names to give them that people would know referred to that particular area. My final point is that local democracy and local government in this country are in crisis. Most of the debate has been about efficiency, economics, loyalties to areas and so on. The Minister talked about what really mattered being the long-term outcomes. I do not say for a moment that these things are not crucial; you have to have what is now called best value, efficient structures and structures that make sense in an economic way. However, no one has been talking about local democracy. The vision of what local democracy in this country ought to be about in future is something we all ought to start talking about seriously. One of the problems with local democracy is that it needs councillors. Reorganisations that reduce the number of elected councillors mean that everyone has to represent more areas and spend more time doing what councillors do on the council rather than in the community. That is an erosion of my vision of local democracy. Towns are important places when it comes to civic involvement, civic culture and, if you like, civic vibrancy. It is the towns, by and large; I am not saying that villages do not have their own institutions, society and all the rest of it since they clearly do, but the civic culture of this country—the word ““civic”” shows this—is based essentially on towns. It is always towns that give the lead. The problem with lumping towns together in hotchpotch authorities—even quite large towns that have a real sense of civic pride and civic involvement, whether Macclesfield, Crewe or Ellesmere Point—is that some of those towns will lose out in terms of status and future involvement. Many of the casualties of previous reorganisations, particularly the one in 1974, were towns that had a vibrant civic culture but lost it. Keighley, for example, was forced screaming into Bradford, and a great deal of its problems since then have been because it lost its civic culture and has had nothing; it became just two or three wards in Bradford. There are towns like that all over the country that got taken into hotchpotch, larger, amalgamated local authorities in 1974. What worries me about somewhere like east Cheshire or west Cheshire is that that is the fate that awaits some of those towns, which might not be resilient enough to avoid it. I am advised by my party that I should abstain on all these things, although I do not like abstaining on anything. I would happily vote against this order and kick it out, but I am told that that would be hot-headed and I should not do it. I am advised to abstain, and that is therefore what I shall do.