Local Government Bill [Lords]

The Secretary of State is really scraping the barrel. If that is the best he can come up with, it demonstrates the paucity of his argument. The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) talked about democracy and said that there would be ““no advantage””—I think those were his words—to local people of a unitary council. I wonder what planet he is living on, because clearly there is a significant benefit to local people from a unitary local authority, and it is clear that the people in Exeter and in Norwich want a unitary authority. There is a streak of gerrymandering running all the way through the Conservative party: it wants to gerrymander constituencies across the country and to gerrymander in local government. The views of local people—