---

Local Government

I genuinely thank the Minister for the care and courtesy that he always shows the House when he presents statements. We are on the fourth or fifth of these orders, which form part of what is to be a rolling programme, but the repetition of the arguments does not entirely make up for the lack of substance on some issues. Shropshire raises particular problems: there is the nature of the county, its geographic diversity, and the fact that to me—a mere outsider from London—it seems that it has no natural centres. There is also a lack of one of the things that the Minister regarded as a prime mover—a groundswell of opinion behind the proposal. There is a lack of support, and that is fundamental. I would not have an issue with a genuinely localist proposal, but I do not see any evidence to suggest that change in Shropshire is localist or driven by the people. The issue may be of considerable import to the county council, for which we have great respect, and which delivers well, but that is not to say that the proposal represents the views of all the people in the county. There is an issue that the Minister may have to consider for the future. I shall not go into it in detail now, but if we go down the route of putting in place unitary authorities in large rural areas, what do we place beneath them? How do we make sure that there is proper representation locally, as well as at county level? That is largely unaddressed in the process that the Government are undertaking, because the change is being made piecemeal. They are picking off areas that may be advantageous—dare I say it, almost for political reasons. Mischievous is the word, I think. I took a night off and went to see ““A Midsummer Night's Dream”” at the Royal Opera House the other night. The Minister occasionally behaves a bit like Puck, although he might not think of himself in those terms. He likes to sprinkle a little bit of mischievous dust on the local government spectrum and see what happens. What happens is not always what is intended, as we all know from the programme, the opera and the play. Our local government structures frequently represent entrenched concerns and identities—that is particularly true in the counties, outside London, which is my part of the world—and that is precisely why we should be particularly careful about interfering with them. The Minister will have heard me say before that a very high standard of proof must always be required, and that the burden of proof must always fall on those who propose change. I do not think that the standard or the burden are met in this case. That is the issue for the Opposition. We do not want to be obstructive about good government—we are in favour of it—but the case for the proposal has not been made. The Minister talks of the opinion-forming views that were taken, but he knows full well that the majority of the districts in Shropshire do not support the proposal. At least three or four of them have conducted well-researched polls, carefully constructed and controlled by the Electoral Reform Society. In internal elections, the results are generally as good for his party as they are for mine. The polls show that overwhelming majorities are against the proposal. We are not talking about a marginal majority, but about compelling evidence that points the other way; that is the point. As the Minister is a reasonable man, I might allow him a bit of subjective judgment where the situation is 50:50, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against making the change. I urge him to think about whether the measure will really help in Shropshire. On the transitional costs and the long-term savings, neither of us have gone into the issue in great detail, but he knows that academic experts have raised questions about how robust the county council's costing methodology is. It may be right, or it may be wrong, but it has not been tested. No objective, independent values have been applied at all. I will give way to the Minister if he wants to intervene on me on that point. A series of subjective judgments have been made, one after the other. That is the picture for all the issues.