Local Government Bill [Lords]

I thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for his contribution. I hear what he is saying, but he and I have rather different memories of what happened at that time. He has implied that the county of Devon was in favour of the unitary proposal for Exeter, but that is certainly not my recollection. Indeed, the people of Devon were not at all in favour of such a unitary authority for a number of reasons, and that is why I rise to support the Bill. Newton Abbot is part of Devon, and we are served by Devon county council. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) made a good point earlier when he said that we need to consider the impact on those we leave behind, as well as those we put into a unitary authority. What would happen to the rest of Devon if we were to carve out Exeter? Exeter has a large population, and a unitary authority would attract a lot of funding. What would happen to the remaining rump? Devon has one of the largest geographical areas in the country. Parts of it are also in the lowest quartile of economic resilience. Across the county, 20% comprises rural villages and hamlets, and it has already been noted that Torbay and Plymouth—two other large centres of population—have already been carved out of it. The remainder of Devon is a large swathe of small villages. Devon faces challenges not only of rurality but of an above-average number of older people, as a consequence of people liking to go there to retire. Why does that matter? It matters because of the way in which public funding formulae work. For the most part, rurality and the age of the population are not taken into account. The consequence for education in Devon can be seen in the league tables for the country; Devon is now 148th out of 151. That means that our children are getting £300 less per head spent on them, which adds up to a substantial amount for a sizable secondary school. In health, we are also below average. It is true that statistics show a figure of only 1.1%, which seems like a very small number. That completely misrepresents the position, however, because of the number of ageing people in the county. If Exeter had become a unitary authority, my constituents and those in other parts of rural Devon would have been significantly worse off.