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Local Government (Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk)

I put a simple challenge to the Opposition parties. Let us add up the votes cast on general election day for the candidates in Norwich, South and Norwich, North, according to their attitude on unitary status. I predict we will find that the overwhelming majority of votes have been cast for candidates who support unitary status in Norwich. I hope that will be honoured. That is a central point in the debate. Under the current arrangements, which the Opposition support and want to maintain, those decisions will continue to be taken by a county council covering an area—the county of Norfolk—with 85 per cent. of the population size of Birmingham. It is large enough to contain the whole of Greater London twice, parts of the county are more than 50 miles from Norwich and it stretches 75 miles from one end to the other. We are talking not about a tiny, coherent, local community, but about a state of affairs in which people do not have a purchase on the key decisions in their life. Increasingly, the county council, which was elected in 2009, takes decisions that take not the slightest account to the needs of my constituents. For the judicial review, it has even retained solicitors based in Tunbridge Wells, rather than the excellent solicitors based in Norwich, so much does it care about building the legal system in Norwich. I have strived and supported unitary local government throughout the county; I have favoured a unitary Norwich that is based on boundaries that reflect the actual built- up area of the city, because the divergence with Norwich is greater than that of any council in the country; I have opposed a unitary Norfolk on the ground that it is far too big to be properly responsive to local communities; and I had hoped and expected that the boundary committee would emerge with a proposal that commanded general support, as I believed was possible. It was an incompetent process that left the Secretary of State with an invidious choice between a unitary Norfolk, which even the Conservative county council formally opposed, the status quo and a unitary Norwich on current boundaries. He has taken the right decision, which should be supported in the Lobby tonight and when orders are put before Parliament later on.