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Local Government

My hon. Friend is right, and because he follows such matters closely he will be able to track this back not just to the invitation we issued in October 2006, which reflected our belief that unitary local government was a way of removing many of the weaknesses he mentions in two-tier areas, but to the White Paper that we published on local government, which set out clearly the general case for unitary local government. He is right about the weaknesses: people are often confused about what different councils at different levels do. Often, services can be fragmented, leadership can be in competition and confused, and there is a degree of duplication, inefficiency and a lack of co-ordination.