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Local Government

I hope that I will get the chance to come to that a little later. However, that is not the assessment that we have made of the potential for offering local areas a greater opportunity to be involved and to have an influence over decision making. The hon. Gentleman may have been born in Cheshire, but he misrepresents the nature of that unified, integrated, remaining historic shire county. It was the mid-1990s reorganisation that led to the carving out of Halton and Warrington. Truth be told, the historic county of Cheshire has been broken up into bits previously. The question now is what is the best form of governance for the future within the area that is covered by Cheshire county council. I recognise that several Opposition Members argue for the status quo, but our starting point is that the general case for unitary local government is strong. It is a way of overcoming some of the well- established problems with county and district local government. The public are generally confused. The delivery of services can be fragmented. Local leaderships are sometimes competing. There is often duplication and inefficiency in the way that things are delivered. In the case of Cheshire, without imposing a unitary arrangement, we are close to arriving at a potential set of arrangements that will allow unitary local government for its people, based on the proposal that was originally put to us by City of Chester council.