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Local Government (Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk)

I do not understand the point of that intervention. If the hon. Lady is saying that there are benefits from Total Place—which she might like to tell her hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) about—it is obvious that they would count in that respect. Let me now turn to the direction that the Secretary of State gave to the Department's accounting officer on 10 February. There are two issues that I would like to deal with. First, the process of seeking a direction is a standard part of the administrative processes of government, and one that recognises that accounting officers have certain responsibilities and that Ministers' responsibilities range more widely. In short, it was proper for the permanent secretary, as accounting officer for the Department, to draw attention to the fact that Ministers had not chosen the option that appeared to him to deliver the best value for money. However, it was equally proper for me and the Secretary of State to adopt the approach that we have, and to set out our reasons for those decisions. Of course my right hon. Friend and I gave careful consideration to the permanent secretary's advice before taking our decisions on all the proposals, recognising that accounting officers have certain responsibilities and that Ministers' responsibilities range more widely. Let me turn to the accusation that now is not the right time for such important decisions to be taken because we are in some kind of pre-election period. We need to be clear about our conventions. Until an election is called, the Government of the day have both the duty and the right to pursue and implement the policies that they believe are best for the people of this country. Likewise, Parliament continues to have the duty and the right to scrutinise those policies and, where legislation provides for this, to decide whether or not to approve them. It would be wrong for us at this stage not to face up to our responsibilities and take the decisions that we have. It would be equally wrong for Parliament not now to consider them. In the meetings that right hon. and hon. Members attended, we were told over and over again, "Please take a decision quickly on this, so that there is an end to uncertainty." To conclude, we considered each of the unitary proposals before us on its merits. We did not accept any implication that the public interest lies with adopting the cheapest option across all three counties. We adopted the approach whereby we carefully assessed each proposal against the five criteria. In all circumstances we gave careful consideration to whether there were compelling reasons to depart from the presumption that proposals that meet the criteria are implemented and that those that do not are not.