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Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Debates on Queen's Speeches always involve a wide range of subjects, and this is perhaps a good opportunity for Members to assess—to audit, even—what is happening not only in their own constituencies but within Parliament. On looking back at the changes that have taken place in Crewe and Nantwich in the past 10 years, I can see exactly why we should be positive and welcome the workmanlike terms of this Queen's Speech. New schools have been built in my constituency, including three new primary schools, one of which was custom-built in an area that was previously unable to get any assistance. Not one but three new health centres have been built, in which we are able to offer an enormous range of primary health care services. There has also been an explosion of university places. I am amused to think that within a very short period, Crewe and Nantwich will undoubtedly be known as a university town. I imagine that within the next 300 years, ours shall be regarded as the doyenne of those establishments, far outflanking those newcomers that claim credit for their students' background, general development and education. When I look back at the positive and useful things that have happened, it is important—indeed, essential—to relate them to the future. The future in Crewe and Nantwich is going to be sparkling and happy. Our unemployment has virtually disappeared and we are building new houses at an incredible rate, but we still have exactly the problems associated with deprivation that one of my hon. Friends identified earlier. We have all the deprivation factors that destroy lives, although happily, only within a very small area. For example, there are children who do not seem to benefit from Sure Start services or from the imaginative range of health and education services that could transform their future, and parents who are still unable to find anywhere decent to live. In conducting the ““audit”” to which I referred, perhaps we in this House could ask that housing associations be looked at closely. Those who persuaded local authorities to hand over their housing stock by advancing the argument that they would be able, through a housing association, to get all their repairs done, get all their buildings brought up to first-class status and achieve a truly high-class level of housing perhaps need to do some persuading that that is actually happening. Indeed, some housing authorities, struggling as they are to change people's circumstances, still have a vast backlog of repairs. They are finding it virtually impossible to rehouse people who would have been on the old housing authority lists—both young, small families and those who want to change their accommodation. The flexibility within the housing stock seems to have disappeared, and we do not yet seem able to address those problems. We must consider not only education and housing but transport, which is my field. To me, transport is a vital issue. For example, we are demanding a sparkling new station at Crewe, which will be the gateway to the north-west. We want either a proper development of the Victorian buildings or a genuinely new, architect-designed, superb station. Not only are all those things possible; we shall insist on their being created. However, the reality is that in order to push such change and to hold together the myriad streams needed for funding and development, we need a sound, carefully researched and defensible local authority structure. The Government decided—one understands why—that the changes in local authorities were such that we should not only seriously look at the whole question of restructuring, but ask where we can make serious advances. Those of us who know that there is increasing demand in Whitehall for shared services and for reorganising not only the number of jobs, but where they are and how they are done, recognise that local government cannot expect to escape that. However, it is essential that we do not make changes that, far from providing bigger sums of money, better planning and more imaginative schemes, go back two or three steps by splitting local authorities, making many of them unviable and difficult to support. I am afraid that we in Cheshire are in danger of doing that. When a reorganisation of local government in Cheshire was originally suggested, I looked carefully at both sets of figures. I had no particular animus toward one set or the other, because frankly, like Members of all political parties, I had councillors on both sides of the argument. I looked carefully at the proposed split and I must confess that I assumed—wrongly—that once the Government had looked at the economics of it, they would not argue the case any further. Splitting Cheshire into two unitary authorities would cost more than £100 million, and the new authorities would run out of reserves in their first year of operation. Many of the things that are essential to me, such as planning the new education and transport services, would rely on two authorities that might be—perhaps inevitably would be—under different forms of political control. Those authorities would have to be prepared to vire money from their own budget into the budget next door, which is controlled by their opponents. I have great faith in human nature, but I find that an unlikely scenario and one that causes me considerable difficulty. The financial case for a single Cheshire unitary authority is proven. It meets the Government's affordability criteria, generating a surplus of £58 million over the five-year payback period. It can be demonstrated because it relates not to the existing county, but to a new idea of a county region responding to the flows across Cheshire, connecting with Liverpool in one direction, Manchester in another, the potteries in a third, and north Wales and Shrewsbury in a fourth, so that ours is a most flexible and increasingly imaginative area. If we were to go ahead with splitting Cheshire in the way that has been suggested, worrying things would happen. Although four districts asked for this split, their own advisers, Deloitte, examined the affordability material and assessed 78 per cent. of the categories of cost as being above normal risk. That led the Conservative-controlled authority that had originally asked for this to say that it was giving the information to the Department, but that it did not now support the idea. That is mildly worrying. Furthermore, three sets of figures have been submitted on this bid, but totally different assessments have been made each time and they have been found to be seriously wanting in a number of fields. I do not have the time to set those out today. The reality is that the political argument—this is not party political—for this change is not proven. There is an appetite for unitary government in Cheshire, and the Government are right to identify it. The two unitary authorities idea lacks credibility and stakeholder support. The letter that the Secretary of State sent demonstrated that it would be supported only if the facts and figures added up and were plainly and clearly demonstrable. They are not, and the case is clearly made the other way. Those who support local government and who want to see it leading in those fields that are most important, supporting the work of the Labour Government and providing the sort of leadership that only locally-elected people can provide, know that local authorities must themselves be viable if they are able to fulfil that role and must have the support of the people who elected them. I am sure that the Secretary of State will understand that that is not the case in respect of the proposal for Cheshire to be divided from top to bottom. I know that she will reconsider the figures when they are presented to her.