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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

It is comforting that my constituency has been called Berwick-upon-Tweed for approximately 500 years and that, despite boundary changes, it has retained that title. I want to refer to some matters covered by the complex group of amendments and the clauses to which they relate and make, the Minister will be pleased to know, two relatively uncontroversial points. First, the timing of elections for new authorities is important. There is a principle at stake: the arrangements for a new authority should be agreed by those who have democratic accountability for it. That means that elections should take place—in the way in which they have usually happened in local government reorganisation—for a shadow authority. That happened when I served on a shadow local authority in 1973-4. It enabled us to plan the new authority in the knowledge that our actions would fulfil the wishes of the council that would run the authority in 12 months. We have been holding discussions in Northumberland because of reorganisation about when elections should happen and there is general agreement that we want them to take place in 2008. That is the view of not only all the districts and Members of Parliament but that of the county council and all parties on it.