Local Government Bill [Lords]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Indeed, the counties do better in many ways, because the concerns of a particular city, freestanding within a far less urban environment, are focused on that city, and the concerns of the less urban environment are focused in the county council. It is certainly true that after some slight ill feeling, and attempts to foist less up-to-date computers on the unitary authority when the equipment was divided up, the arrangements between Hampshire and Southampton have been very good. They have worked very well, and as my right hon. Friend correctly points out, the county has prospered in its way, and the city has prospered in its way, as a result of unitary status. I know that the Secretary of State will have his way this afternoon. He ought to hang his head in shame because of the fundamental contradiction between what he says about localism and what he is proposing to do this afternoon, but he will undoubtedly have his way. My concern, among others, is that we should not, as a result of this vindictive and spiteful early legislation, lose the idea that unitary local government—particularly in cities and towns outside metropolitan areas—is palpably a good thing for those cities and towns, and ought to be pursued. It is interesting, in terms of the historical full circle that we might come in the end, that the mechanism in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 is essentially the same as the one introduced in the local government legislation of 1889. If a local authority wanted to make the case that it should become a unitary authority, that could be done without a huge upheaval, with the whole of local government being reorganised and commissioners going up and down the country. Indeed, between 1889 and the present a number of local authorities became county boroughs over the years, without a crisis in local government or a series of legislative measures going through this House on local government as a whole. That was a method of securing the way in which people in those areas wished to be self-governed. That is at the heart of this subject, and that is what is being denied this afternoon. I hope that as a result of some of the corrections of the myths put forward in this afternoon's debates, we can concentrate our attention on what is best for local government, not on what is best for particular people's opinions on particular days about how they would like to see local government run.