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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Following such impassioned pleas from Members of different parties representing Northumberland constituencies, I wish to put in a final plea on behalf of the representatives of Shropshire constituencies, who have also gone through this travesty of a consultation. In the case of Shropshire, the primary reason that Ministers used to deny the evidence of the ballots presented to them was that the information on the ballot put forward by the councils opposed to unitary status was somehow deficient and biased. They chose not, however, to use that argument in respect of the authority in favour of unitary status; it put together a 16-page document, 14 pages of which were in favour of unitary status and two pages were opposed, and the population in South Shropshire voted by a 72 per cent. majority against unitary status. Inexplicably, that reason was deemed not to be relevant in the case of South Shropshire, whereas it was deemed relevant in the cases of the other two districts who voted against it. That is not what I wish to speak about, although I wanted to make a final plea to the Government to recognise the validity of the ballots that took place, but which seem to be about to be denied.