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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I shall be brief on the point about a referendum. I think that all of us are supporters of the democratic principle. Those of us who have come from local government rate and respect what local government achieves and does. I, like many others around the Chamber, very much do so. The point about a referendum is that it is a snapshot of direct democracy at a single point of time of those eligible to vote. Think about what that means. Does it mean, for example, that the whole of Devon would be pitted against the judgment of the citizens of Exeter? Would we have capping on the expenditure of the county resources against that of, currently, a district council, which probably has only one-fifth or one-tenth of the county resources, and who would ensure that the questions were valid? Secondly, and to my mind more important still, what about the groups that are most affected by the possibilities of reorganisation but which have no vote either way? Certainly in the city of Norwich one of the big driving forces for unitary status on enlarged boundaries has been business. The Conservative Party, rightly in my view, has been calling for—I took part in the debate and was cheering on the Front Bench of the Conservative Party—the restoration to local authority of the business rate. Alongside that, you have to build in the ability to listen to what business wants. But business is disfranchised in any debate on a referendum, as are the faith groups, the voluntary organisations and all those organisations that make up the texture of civil life. How do you incorporate them? Not by a referendum. What should be going on here—and what I believe is happening from what I know about local government reorganisation—is not a snapshot referendum or a snapshot plebiscite. It is a reiterative process in which people with disparate and often rewardingly different points of view come round a table and work out what makes best sense for their areas; they will work out some of these issues of boundaries, resources, partnerships and local offices. That is the way to do it. That then gets fed through to the Secretary of State, who decides whether enough of a robust case has been made in terms of public support, financial viability, economic growth and the views of business to justify this. Above all, the question is whether as a result you will get a strengthened recognition of the sense of place, which at the end of the day is what local government is about. Those are the tests. When it comes to that distinctiveness about the sense of the place, you cannot just do this on a head count with people in Yarmouth, King’s Lynn or Cromer voting about what happens in Norwich; it is for the people of Norwich to have a view and for that view to be negotiated with business and all the other interests in the area and put forward for consideration in a reiterative way. That seems to me the sensible way forward. I suspect that those on the Front Bench opposite agree with me, but they are rather stuck on the amendment. I hope that they will not take it forward.