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Local Government

If the hon. Gentleman wants more detail, I shall provide it later. I have dealt at some length with hon. Members' questions about support and I want to move on because it is important to explain one or two points in setting the scene, not least the contents of the order, what staff who may be affected can expect and the financial case. We made the decision that we wanted Wiltshire county council's proposal to go ahead with reference to the five criteria that we set out at the start. We also had to consider not only whether there was a sufficiently broad cross-section of support that could make the proposal work but whether the change was affordable. Our judgment, as I told the House on 5 December, is that if the proposal in the order is implemented, there is a reasonable likelihood that it will achieve the outcome specified by the five criteria. In short, our clear judgment is that the proposal meets all the criteria. On affordability, first, the estimated transitional costs are more than offset by the savings that the proposal is estimated to generate, which can be expected to be achieved well within the five-year limit that we imposed at the outset. Secondly, implementation does not involve any capitalisation to deal with revenue costs. Thirdly, implementation does not impose any costs that would have to be met by increasing the council tax. Fourthly, to the extent that in any one year the costs of transition are not covered by savings, they will be met by councils' reserves, which are adequate. We subjected the figures that the councils provided to independent financial advice, in order to assess both what the county council was telling us and, in light of what I said earlier, the flaws that others felt were present in those figures. On the basis of those figures, the advice that we were given by independent financial experts suggested both that the council's figures and the expectation that the proposal might lead to savings of more than £18 million a year were sound and that the overall financial case was a low-risk one that imposed no barrier to proceeding.