Local Government Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for her contribution, because she has summed up very clearly what the attitude ought to be about this. It is not government business to try to ensure that counties and districts get on together; nor is it government business to ensure that just one or two authorities are required to provide financial information. Public information is public information; if it cannot be obtained under normal freedom of information rules, there are ways of making sure that you get it. What worries me about how the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has put this forward is that she seems to be suggesting that there are such desperate animosities between the city and the county that it is absolutely impossible for this to work. I do not believe that in democratic government it is impossible for authorities to work together in a common cause. The noble Baroness also said that I have said that savings must come now rather than through a reorganisation. Indeed I have, and that is not confined to Norfolk and Norwich. It is going to be a general view and a general situation across the country that serious savings will have to come. If we are talking about £6 million a year—I think those are the savings that it was suggested would be made—within that confine, the amount that has to be provided may be within those regions and it may not. Yet savings will surely have to be made in co-operation with Norfolk to ensure the preservation of services and the local community. I am not going to accept the amendment. As I said on another amendment, the Government do not have any role in this. I hope only that people will hear what we say: that there will be have to be good co-operation at all levels of government over the coming months and years to ensure that, one way or another, we scramble out of this terrible financial situation in which the previous Government left us.