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Local Government (Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk)

No, I am afraid not, as I want to make some progress. The Audit Commission's report after that scandal awarded the city's services a zero rating and the council is undergoing challenging improvement requirements. This year is the first for five years in which the council's accounts have been officially approved. The city now wishes the new council to focus on""priorities that will maximise the future economic and social development of the city"—" all well and good—including economic development, co-ordinated growth strategy, educational attainment and aspiration, health improvement, climate change and sustainability, and waste collection and recycling. Those are all laudable, but I note that the competent provision of social housing is explicitly not on that list. For a city authority with a 33 per cent. proportion of social housing, an improvement order and a rock-bottom reputation to overcome, I am concerned. Residents of the city area, myself included, do not want new "strategy, people and place". They want housing that has no damp climbing the kitchen walls; they want a cashier at city hall who takes honest rent money from honest social tenants, not one who will force people into direct debits, which are very difficult for some people on low incomes to manage, as my constituents have told me; they want a council that answers the phone; and they want low council tax, not a bill for costly reorganisation. Put simply, current public services from this city, which wishes to be the preparing authority, is not good enough, and we do not believe that this process will make it better. Why should it have control of the vital areas of education and social services—make-or-break services for the most vulnerable in my constituency—because Labour in Norwich and Whitehall want to expand their political empire? I wrap up by observing that much has been made of the "democratic deficit" by the Labour party in Norwich. It feels in some sense that it is engaged in a David and Goliath struggle against the county council. There is no democratic deficit apart from the one created by this Government and their cronies. There is a deficit because people are ignored. There is a deficit in our national Budget. There is a deficit here in poor public services. That is my concern.