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Norwich and Norfolk (Structural Changes) Order 2010

My Lords, if you are the Bishop of Norwich it seems a bit superfluous to declare an interest. I was born in Torrington, Devon, but of pure Cornish parentage. They apologised to me for having their principal residence in the wrong place. The diocese of Norwich covers nearly all Norfolk and much of north-east Suffolk; namely, the Waveney valley. Apart from some parishes in west Norfolk which are in the diocese of Ely, the diocese of Norwich is as near as you can get to the shape of the initial proposal of the Boundary Committee that there should be a unitary authority for Norfolk and Waveney. We have come some way since then. It is the diocese of Norwich and not the diocese of Norfolk. My title is an indication of the significance of the city of Norwich for the great diocese it has served for more than 900 years. I am not quite sure whether a diocese counts as an ecclesiastical unitary authority. I shall consult the Archbishop on that. We are not short of tiers of local government with archdeaconries, three episcopal areas, two of them looked after by my suffragan bishops, 30 or so deaneries overall, 577 parishes and 642 churches. Whatever else may be its shortcomings—I am sure they are many—the Church of England knows something about sustaining, refreshing and reshaping historic structures over the centuries. We might even have been of help to the Boundary Committee, for the reason we are in this undesirable situation today is largely due to the serious misjudgments of that body. While it initially recommended a unitary authority on the scale of the diocese of Norwich, I doubt whether it knew it was doing so since its sense of history seems so limited. And in the matter of local government, history, place and context matter. When those are ignored, which seems to be a recurring feature of local government reform, the resulting structures do not work. I have now been in Norwich for 10 years. On my arrival, I found myself president of the Norfolk and Norwich Association for the Blind. I went to the then Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, now the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with a new medical school. These institutions were founded in the 18th century. So, too, was the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, one of the oldest and best cultural festivals in the country. There are other organisations that use both Norfolk and Norwich in their titles. Coming as I do from Cornwall, it struck me how unthinkable it would be to give any of the great institutions of that Duchy names like the "Cornwall and Truro Hospital" or the "Cornwall and Truro Association" for this that or the other. Yet it is natural in Norfolk because of the scale and significance of the city in relation to the county both historically and in the present day. More than 40 per cent of all the jobs in Norfolk are to be found in Norwich. Norwich’s significance in relation to the county can sometimes be resented, but it simply cannot be ignored economically, culturally or even spiritually. The trouble with the proposal before us is that it is not the city as it is today which would have a unitary authority. It is the city as it would have been in the late 18th century or even earlier. Under this structural order, a significant proportion of those living or working in Norwich would not find themselves within the boundaries of the city. They would be in the city but not of it, or of the city but not in it. At least a third of what any observer would nowadays call the city of Norwich does not lie within the proposed boundaries, coterminous as they are with the city council at the moment and, in truth, largely with the ancient medieval city. This is the wrong sort of history; it is one which is fossilised rather than dynamic. The consequence of this is that we would have an education authority with just six secondary schools, one of them a voluntary-aided Catholic comprehensive and two others which are already academies. Four major secondary schools in the city, including the biggest, would remain in the county. This seems to me to lack coherence. I think there are good grounds for a city unitary and still believe that a unitary city authority on the real boundaries of the current city would make good sense. A couple of years ago, people would have worked together in city and county to make such a proposal work. It was expected by many, feared by some, but could have been worked through. But the process has been so mishandled that you would have thought the Boundary Committee and the Government wanted to ensure as much dissension as possible and aimed to build tensions between city and county. We are very fortunate that the leaders of both Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council are bigger men than this and continue to maintain good relationships, but you have only to read the local press to see the unnecessary conflict which this process has generated. Within the city of Norwich there are people, especially in our more deprived communities—sadly, we have many of them—for whom the issues we are debating today must seem arcane and the politics incomprehensible. What they need are good local services and strong and well resourced local government. If this proposal were to deliver such things, I would be pleased, but it does not start from a strong base. I shall continue to work in partnership with whatever local government arrangements are in place in Norfolk and Norwich, so I am not inclined to vote today. But the story of the past three years has done little to build trust in our political processes or indeed faith in their transparency. That is the problem, whatever the outcome this evening. The people of Norfolk and Norwich really do deserve better than this.