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Local Government (Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk)

I note, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Conservative Members appear to be challenging your ruling in calling me, and I sure that they did not intend to do that and would wish to rephrase their sedentary comments. When listening to the peroration of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), I felt that he had lost his knowledge of what had happened in the past on local government reorganisation. I simply point out to him the experience that many of us had of the Banham reorganisation under the previous Conservative Government. Although it is true that criteria were used then, the point is that the criteria were simply different as the commission progressed around the country and it was never terribly clear which set of criteria the Banham commission was using when it came to the area in question. I had direct experience of that as the then leader of the Labour-controlled Oxford city council. The council came to an agreeable arrangement with the four Tory-controlled district councils in the rest of the county. A very civilised discussion was held and we reached an agreement, which we presented to the Banham commission, on a proposal for three new unitary authorities. We understand that although we made an excellent case—each of us had the support of all the parties within each council and of a very large proportion of the population in each council area—at the last minute the proposal was rejected largely because of the principled, or unprincipled, intervention of the then Member for Witney. Other cities across the country had their own experience of the Banham reorganisation, when similar political considerations were considerably more powerful than the stated criteria against which everybody was operating. All the strictures given by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst about the process ring rather hollow given that, frankly, 'twas always thus and 'twill always be so. There will always be political considerations and it ill behoves Conservative Members to pretend that it happens only under Labour Governments and never happened under Conservative Governments. I also point out that it was under the previous Conservative Government that unitary authorities were imposed on Scotland and Wales without so much as a by your leave or any semblance of consultation. Pots and kettles come to mind. I found the peroration of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst very strange when set against the Conservative party's avowed commitment to localism, which appears to have a completely different meaning when it is applied to the desire of Exeter and Norwich to be unitary authorities and seems to stretch to the whole of a county. That is not normally what people out there believe to be localism. The overriding priority for the Opposition, it would appear, is the cost of the arrangements. There is no consideration for democracy. I am sure that if we scrubbed every local authority in the country and, indeed, this Parliament and just had a dictatorship, it would be immensely cost-effective and hugely cheaper than the democratic system that we operate in this country, but nobody—not even the Conservatives, presumably—would pursue cost-effectiveness to that level. There is a balance to be struck between democracy, localism and community identity, and cost. To simply say that the only thing that matters is cost-effectiveness seems to me not to run with the avowed commitment of the Conservative party to localism. It rather suggests that localism, as far as the Conservatives are concerned, is only about planning and stopping housing and not much about anything else. Let me turn to the issue of Exeter, as I know that at least one of the Members of Parliament for Norwich will doubtless speak about Norwich, if called. Opposition Members were suggesting, I think, that the Conservative councillors in Exeter were perhaps not as committed to the unitary status for their city as they had been before. I have a letter dated 2 March, which is not very long ago, signed by the leader of the Conservative group and the Conservative chairman of scrutiny resources of Exeter city council. It makes it quite clear:""An independent Exeter, with its own government, elected by and in touch with its own people, can make such decisions much more successfully. The city's voters will enjoy a much clearer idea of where responsibility lies and who to go to for help and advice.""A single-tier authority will cost less in the longer run…and enable the new council to focus on generating the prosperity which will benefit both Exeter and the surrounding county of Devon."" That is the view of local Conservative councillors on Exeter city council. It is also the view of the other groups on Exeter city council and I am surprised that Opposition Members have been laughing at that and belittling the views of their colleagues in the Conservative party, who are standing up for their city of Exeter.