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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

The hon. Gentleman has illustrated the ludicrous position in which the Government have placed themselves. In a sense the Government, in advance of the Bill, have exercised the powers that clause 7 gives them. There were certain other people whom they deemed it ““appropriate”” to consult, one of whom was the chief constable of Northumbria. It should be borne in mind that the chief constable of Northumbria administers a police area much larger than either the one or the two authorities. It is not as large as he would like it to be, because he wanted to enlarge it to embrace a vastly greater area and become a much bigger chief constable in the scheme of things. He lost his way in that respect. The Minister's letter states that there was 40 per cent. support for a single authority, but it also states that the chief constable is in favour of the proposal. That means that the chief constable personally has the equivalent of about 20 per cent. of the vote. He is not just ““appropriate””; he has an incredibly weighted share of the vote. I will qualify that by saying that the Government prayed one other body in aid as discounting the votes of the people: the North East chamber of commerce. As I recall, the chamber of commerce indicated that it could work with either of the options, but it, too, is a much bigger body. Clearly, all the bodies that are regional or sub-regional in scale prefer to work with fewer rather than more authorities. They will have fewer letters to write, and it makes life simpler. If the Government are merely to consult people whom they deem it appropriate to consult or those on whom they can rely to support them, and then count them as though they represented thousands of votes in comparison with the opinion of the people who live in the area—those whose children will go to the schools administered by the authority, whose bins are emptied by the authority, who have a real and direct interest—we are making a complete nonsense of the procedure. The Minister must explain to us today how on earth such a decision came to be made, and how we can interpret the Bill as functioning legislation if, when the views of the people have been expressed fully and in a correctly administered referendum—for no one disputes the fact that the referendum was properly conducted—they can be overtaken by those of persons whom the Secretary of State deems it ““appropriate”” to consult. What are we doing here? It appears that when we enact the Bill in the next few days, we shall be legitimising a travesty. That is a deplorable state of affairs, and it causes great offence. As I travelled around the villages of my constituency in September, time and again people came up to me and said, ““We voted for two authorities. Why are we not getting two authorities?”” Why are they not getting that? Because the Minister takes note of the people's votes and then consults a few people he deems appropriate and whose views he considers to be more important than those of the people. That is no way to run a democracy.