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Norwich and Norfolk (Structural Changes) Order 2010

My Lords, we have in Norwich an excellent Eastern Counties press. Its morning paper, the Eastern Daily Press, is county-focused; the Evening News is the city paper. Both are from the same stable. On the day that the Secretary of State made his announcement proposing unitary status for Norwich, the morning paper quoted in its headline a Tory Norfolk MP, describing it as, ""the worst of all worlds"." The Evening News, from the same stable, had as its headline: ""A New Dawn for Norwich"." Those views, of the counties and the cities, as we have already heard today, are probably irreconcilable, even though I know that when Norwich thrives, so does Norfolk. I should here declare my interest as a former leader of Norwich City Council, a former Norfolk county councillor, a three times parliamentary candidate for a Norfolk constituency with a large rural population, an honorary freeman of Norwich as well as a DL for the county of Norfolk. Given my commitment to Norfolk, as well as to Norwich, I would not support unitary status for Norwich if I did not truly believe that it would benefit Norfolk people, half of whose rural population, according to the Audit Commission, experience deprivation and look to the city for their jobs. More people commute into Norwich for their work than into any other city in the UK apart from London. Norfolk people—not just Norwich people—need a vibrant, strong, unitary Norwich if they are not to be left behind. When Milton Keynes became unitary, it enriched Buckinghamshire. When Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Southampton became unitary under a Conservative Government, no one talked about ripping them out of the heart of their counties; no one now would say that they should be district councils; everybody now believes that they have enriched not just their cities but their county and their rural hinterland as well. At least 10 unitary councils, from Hartlepool to Blackburn to Reading, are no larger than Norwich is today, and they are driving forward their local economies. Norwich is the largest district council that is not a unitary. We are suffering as a result and, with it, the people of Norfolk. The Work Foundation states: ""Other cities have benefited from single tier arrangements, and have used these to strengthen relationships with the rural hinterland"." If Parliament agrees, Norwich will be able to go into bat for the people of Norfolk, who along with people in the north-east and Cornwall are among the poorest in the country. They need that body on their side. Why am I so sure that Norfolk’s people need a unitary Norwich? Much was made of what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said—and she was right—about there being a sparsity of forward-looking evidence for economic development under a unitary authority. But why look in the glass, when one could look at the history book? I joined the city council in 1968, when we were a unitary county borough. I helped woo a major company, then Bland Payne, part of the Sedgwick Group, to Norwich. I helped organise the site, the planning consent, 150 key-worker houses, the roads, the training support and the transport. It was a one-stop package, and it has become the second-largest reinsurance company in the world. Fifteen years later, as leader, I was approached by another major financial company. I offered it the site and key-worker houses, but I could not guarantee it the highways and planning consent that it needed for its package, as it was a county function. When it understood that we were two-tier, and that it would be dealing with two sets of offices, to and fro, it walked; it did not want the hassle. Because Norwich was not unitary, I lost 600 jobs, not just for the people of Norwich but for the deprived people of Norfolk as well. That is why these orders matter. Cities like Norwich and Exeter are not leaving their county and erecting walls. On the contrary, they want to power their counties with good knowledge economy green jobs, as cities have always done over the centuries. After all, Norwich is the regional capital of East Anglia—but we cannot do this on the revenues, resources and powers of a rural district council. As Professor Ron Johnson of the Boundary Committee wrote, when he left it, Norwich's economic development has a multiplier effect well beyond its boundaries. At the moment, the Work Foundation says that economic planning is schizophrenic at best and dysfunctional at worst. It is balkanised. When Norwich was unitary, we built the prestigious city college and, later, the county bought in. We developed an international airport and the county joined us. We rebuilt the theatre royal and the county bought in. The city campaigned for a new university, the UEA, and gave up its municipal golf course for it. Indeed, the factory girls in Norwich's Rowntree Mac gave up half a day’s pay for the University of East Anglia to start. The county generously and properly backed it. I have no criticism of the county coming in behind the city; unitary cities are focused, fleet of foot, innovative and entrepreneurial; the county council, on reflection, over time, usually joins us. But now we are fettered. The city is planning for 30,000 new city jobs by 2026. It needs 100,000 square metres of office space in its city centre—and we are fettered. At the core of these statutory instruments is a recognition that since medieval times city and countryside are different. City density and rural sparsity need different responses. That is why we have local government at all—to recognise that difference. If local government is not about local difference it is not local government. Indeed, precisely because the city of Norwich, or the city of Exeter, is one district council among many under the county council, understandably and reasonably enough the county seeks to offer a standard, uniform service that is a rural-level service across its acres. The result is to raid and run down the cities. As the Merits Committee said on page 12 of its report—much quoted tonight, there are, ""genuine concerns that the differing needs of city and rural dwellers are not being adequately met by the current arrangements"." Precisely. We have been badly served. I can give some examples. In the past six months alone our street lights will have been turned off in the city of Norwich, apart from a few central streets, between midnight and 5 am, because of works in the rural areas. The county proposes to close two day centres built by the people of Norwich to redistribute resources elsewhere in the county. The city and local business, particularly local business, wants to pedestrianise a medieval shopping street through the centre of Norwich, and county councillors who live 20 or 30 miles away are forbidding it. The county’s ruling 10-member cabinet contains not a single Norwich county councillor—not even a city Tory county councillor. It has just established an employment and skills board for Norwich, yet, despite such a high proportion of jobs being in Norwich, the city council will not be represented on that body. How can the county understand the needs of the city with its very different rural experience? Let me touch on education. When the city ran education before 1974, there were six comprehensives in Norwich. From four of them you could get to university, and from three you could get to Oxbridge, as my son did. As former teacher, Mr Corney, wrote to the local press, under the council’s watch one school is closed and of the other five four have been in special measures, three have had to restart with new names and two have been handed over to private providers. We estimate that something like £12 million a year is being redistributed away from city schools to help rural schools. I do not deny the right of the county to support rural schools, but I deny it the right to run down Norwich at that expense. Much has been made not of whether the outcomes of unitary status are desirable but of the processes, and it is to that point that I now turn. Back in the summer of 2006, the White Paper outlined five criteria for unitary status: value for money, affordability, stakeholder ownership, strong leadership and neighbourhood empowerment. Those criteria were not statutory; they were not in the legislation. They were in consultation documents along with the White Paper; they were guidance, four years ago, from which the Secretary of State was entitled to depart. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, has raised value for money and affordability. Four years ago, the Liberal democrat administration that we, the Labour Party, inherited in Norwich, had a projected £2 million deficit. Now we are saving £4 million a year and have £8 million in balances, and we estimate that the transition costs will repaid in three years, with further savings of £4.5 million a year to follow. I have crawled over those figures. The Permanent Secretary, as accounting officer, rightly pointed out, in a letter much quoted today and published by the Secretary of State, that none the less value for money came from the cheapest option. No one today has said what the cheapest option was. I shall tell the House: it was, and this was favoured by the Boundary Committee, a unitary Norfolk. The savings, and the best value, came from abolishing all the district councils in Norfolk, including Norwich, and producing a unitary council with a population almost the size of Birmingham and almost the size of Cyprus—and we call it local government. No doubt we could make even greater savings by abolishing local government altogether. A second criterion was stakeholder ownership. There was no support whatsoever for a unitary Norfolk county council. Even the Norfolk County Council would join a judicial review against giving the powers to itself. So two of the original five criteria, in ways that could not have been foreseen in 2006, cancelled each other out. Meanwhile, although unitary cities had the support of key stakeholders across the parties, business and universities, we are told that we should have had a referendum and consulted the whole population. Who would vote? Norfolk dwellers unaffected by the proposals, living 40 miles away? After all, Norfolk’s population is five times larger than Norwich’s. During the debate in Westminster on 2 March, Norfolk Tory MPs stood up one after another to demand this consultation. Of each one Charles Clarke, the MP for Norwich South, asked, "In what way are your constituents disadvantaged if Norwich becomes unitary and the rest of Norfolk’s local government structure is left unaffected?". From those Tory MPs, answer came there none. Instead, four years on and after a deep recession, the Secretary of State rightly adds two additional considerations: economic development, which is what cities like ours and Exeter do—fettered though we are—and a commitment to Total Place, a holistic and unitary approach to all public services. I remind the House that in two-tier counties, services that should be integrated, like housing and social services are splintered. Where does the adult Down’s son who needs supportive housing go? Where do the frail elderly who wish to stay in their own home but need support go? Other services, like planning, are concurrent. Still other services, like weights and measures and environmental health, overlap. Where do you go if you want to complain about some mouldy cheese that you have bought? Yet other services, like highways, are done by agency. At Norwich’s ancient—indeed, probably Anglo-Saxon—Freemen ceremony on Friday, someone told me about their recent council tax bill. "It’s a complete muddle," he said. Nobody in Norwich knows who does what, to what standards, to what price or to what accountability. Therefore, under the present structure, they cannot hold city or county to account. Instead, we get confusion and inconsistency—and, sometimes, ignorance, duplication and disagreement. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, cannot be here today but, with his local government background, he was the founding chair of the Merits Committee. He has asked me to say that, ""strong central cities like Exeter and Norwich need the better governance and clearer accountability that comes from unitary status, to address the challenges within their boundaries and to contribute positively to the wider needs of their areas"—" wise words from the former chair of the Merits Committee. My regret is that it has taken so long to reach the Floor of this House, as the Boundary Committee kept proposing a unitary county that no one wanted together with five judicial reviews. Otherwise, these proposals would have been before your Lordships 18 months ago. I have one last point. In April 2006, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, a man experienced in local government, opened a local government debate from the Conservative Benches. Said one speaker in that debate, ""I understand entirely the concerns and frustrations … about the status of Norwich. Most people"," this speaker said, ""apart from a few diehards in the counties at the time would have conceded unitary status to the former county boroughs".—[Official Report, 27/4/06; col. 356.]" That speaker was the Conservative, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. He was right then; I hope that the House will agree that he is right tonight and support the Government’s Motion.