---

Local Government (Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk)

As we have heard, the history of changing the boundaries and structures of local authorities is long and intricate, but the restructuring in Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk began life back in 2007. As events and tonight's debate have shown, the Government's handling of these proposals has been utterly shambolic and disingenuous. We have all heard how councils were asked to make proposals for the formation of unitary government, subject to five criteria that Ministers themselves set. By 2007, the Secretary of State had expressed the view that the unitary proposals for Norwich, Exeter and Ipswich were unlikely to meet all those criteria, but that alternative unitary proposals might. At that point, proposals were referred to the boundary committee. Following legal challenges and delays, as we heard, the boundary committee finally ruled at the end of last year that the city unitary proposals should not be implemented. That was not good enough, and Ministers nevertheless chose to press ahead with their city unitary proposals, totally ignoring the boundary committee and what it had said about Norwich and Exeter. Ministers even admit that the city unitary proposals failed to meet the established criteria that they themselves had set for granting unitary status. Ministers have argued that additional economic benefits and public service improvements through Total Place would result from the unitary status that they wanted Norwich and Exeter to have. I shall deal with the credibility of those claims shortly, but the simple fact is that Ministers changed the rules governing their own criteria halfway through their game. They may claim that those criteria were not legal requirements set in stone, but they were certainly widely perceived as the basis on which unitary decisions would be made. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Department's permanent secretary said in his letter to the Secretary of State:""Whilst there is no statutory basis for the criteria, there is a legitimate expectation that they will be the basis of your decisions."" The Government ignored that. They are now also subject to legal challenges to the proposals from the county councils involved, and the permanent secretary believes that there is a "very high" chance that judicial review proceedings would be successful. As we have heard, the Government's handling of the process has been appalling. An additional question is whether there was any valid case for unitary proposals for Exeter and Norwich, and there is overwhelming evidence that that was never the case. Did the proposals represent value for money? As my hon. Friend pointed out, the Department's permanent secretary did not think so. He had to write to the Secretary of State requesting a direct instruction to undertake proposals that he considered to be unjustifiable. Commenting on the Secretary of State's view that the economic benefits of city unitaries would offset any additional council running costs, he said:""The evidence for such gains is mixed and representations that you have received provide no evidence to quantify such benefits."" The permanent secretary was not alone in expressing concern. The House of Lords Merits Committee was doubtful about Ministers' claims, while Devon and Norfolk county councils criticised the claims about value-for-money savings, also citing a lack of evidence. The money spent on this process could have been channelled into front-line services for the communities affected. It seems that everyone apart from Ministers is unconvinced of the existence of any value-for-money benefits from the unitary proposals for Norwich and Exeter. Tonight hon. Members in all parts of the House have repeatedly expressed concern about the proposals and made clear that they are desperately keen for them to be dropped. A future Conservative Government would ensure that that happened. My hon. Friends the Members for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) and for East Devon (Mr. Swire) and the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) all said that the proposals should be ditched, as indeed they should be. Interested parties have been equally scathing about the Government's claim that unitary structures would lead to public service improvements. Both the permanent secretary and the House of Lords Merits Committee felt that there was a distinct lack of evidence for that claim. As we heard from Members representing seats in Norfolk and Norwich, communities there are fundamentally worried about what will happen to their local services if the plan goes ahead. We heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Chloe Smith). She has not been in the House for many months, but she did a fantastic job in representing her constituents this evening. It is bad enough that the Government fudged and then ditched their own criteria, and that they failed to make the case for the new imagined benefits from unitary councils in Norwich and Exeter, but the proposals could have even more damaging effects. As we have heard, they could lead to a rise in council tax across the county of Devon, and we need to see them dropped. Once again, however, we have heard from the Minister that she will press ahead with these deeply unpopular measures on the eve of a general election. This decision is born of Ministers' ignorance of everyone. They have ignored the boundary committee, they have ignored the House of Lords Merits Committee, they have ignored their own criteria, they have ignored their own permanent secretary, they have ignored Members of this House, and, most of all, they have ignored members of the public. That is a totally unacceptable way of going about the business of government. The Minister talked about the duty and rights of government, but this Prime Minister has no mandate. It is time for us to vote against this undemocratic measure.