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Local Government

I will take your advice to the House as applying to my responses, too, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise if I am going on, but I am trying to answer questions as they are put to me. We consulted on the issue of grant and the allocation of resources to the authorities last year, in preparation for the financial settlement. If the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) is particularly interested in the detail, I can let him have it. In essence, when we move to create the new authority in Wiltshire, all being well in 2009, the allocation of budgets, set out for the next three years under the formula settlement that the House debated and approved last night, would automatically be pooled with that of the county council's budget, to create the total budget for the new authority to carry out its new range of functions and responsibilities. Let me turn to the order. Rather like the process that we conducted for encouraging proposals, we tried to take an approach in the order that will allow each area to adopt the arrangements that are best suited to it. We therefore prepared the order following consultation and full discussion with the councils concerned, not just the county council. Our aim was to ensure that the arrangements were those that the local people most directly involved would consider best suited to their circumstances. First, the order provides that from 1 April 2009 there will be a single tier of local government in Wiltshire. Secondly, it provides for the existing district councils to be dissolved. The county council will be transformed into a new unitary authority with both district and county functions. However, we have made clear from the outset, and will make clear in the way in which we require the implementation plan to be produced and pursued, that this is not a case of the county council either continuing as it is or mounting a takeover of the district councils. This is a new start. We expect a new sense of leadership and direction in the authority, and we expect it to implement the proposals set out in its plan.