Local Government Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will be brief. Fairly obviously, I support these amendments. Does anyone in this Chamber doubt that unitary government, especially for cities, is the most effective form of local government and offers the best value for money? I was a Norwich city councillor when we were unitary before 1974 and know what it has meant for the city of Norwich. Basically, unitary structures offer at least four gains for the people who local councillors seek to represent. First, they offer better integrated services. This is because services are all on one tier and you can make decisions out of the box, so to speak, and across the lines—particularly, for example, in housing and social services. When I was a very young councillor and chair of Norwich’s housing committee, my vice-chair was the chair of what was then called, in those pre-Seebohm days—the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard will recall this—the welfare committee. The result was that we could produce halfway houses for battered wives and supported accommodation for those with severe learning difficulties because we ran housing and social services as one semi-common service. That is no longer possible. Now services are fractured and, frankly, it is a full-time job being poor and vulnerable. The second gain from unitary structures for cities is better value for money—I shall in a moment engage with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope—because it avoids duplication, for example, on economic development, and the toing and froing on planning applications between two tiers. As I have told the House on previous occasions, when I was leader of Norwich City Council, development opportunities that would have brought 600 to 800 jobs to the city of Norwich were lost when the developers walked away after they learnt that they would have to work with two tiers. I do not doubt that the county would have been supportive—I have no reason to think it would have blocked it—but the point is that for those seeking to come to the city the structure of local government was seen as an impediment to what they wanted—which was quick, easy, simple, transparent and responsive comments to their proposals. Not only is unitary better for value for money in terms of avoiding duplication, it is also cheaper—and here I shall tackle the points made by both the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope. For I think the third time, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has quoted the Permanent Secretary as the auditing officer saying that this did not represent best value for the money; and for the third time I shall attempt to appropriately correct her understanding of what the Permanent Secretary was saying. He was indeed saying that unitary Norwich and unitary Exeter were not best value for money—but compared with what? It was compared with a unitary county of Norfolk and a unitary county of Devon which wiped out the rest of local government—an outcome that no one except the Permanent Secretary and the Boundary Committee supported. Indeed, the county of Norfolk, I understand, would have taken out a JR against the recommendation of the Permanent Secretary. It is simply misleading and fallacious to quote the Permanent Secretary, as the noble and learned Baroness has done on several occasions—