Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall am 12:10 pm ar 2 Mawrth 2010.
No, I am saying that that would make life significantly more difficult for the efficient and admirable Norfolk county council, which is doing its best, despite having had bad funding settlements from the Labour Government, as has Devon. It cannot be said that there would be no knock-on effect from such a loss to the tax base. The leader of Devon county council calculated that the removal of Exeter could cause band D council tax to increase by about £200 per year. There are potential impacts on surrounding areas.
The other point that must be stressed is that the procedure has been utterly lamentable and is wholly indefensible; even the right hon. Gentleman conceded that it cannot be defended. The two that we are discussing are part of a round of unitary proposals that started in 2007. Like all the others, they had to meet the five clear criteria set out by the Government and the boundary committee. In July 2007, the then Minister for Local Government, John Healey, made it clear implicitly that the Norwich and Exeter bids were not capable of meeting the criteria. That was endorsed by the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears. They were right to say that the bids did not meet the value for money criteria. I recall that there was also concern about whether Exeter met another criterion.
The small unitaries were ruled out at the beginning of the process and alternative county-wide unitaries, which were objectionable on other grounds, were proposed. What has happened since then? Nothing has changed in the evidence base. What happened was that the Labour party lost a seat in Norwich. There has been a great deal of effective lobbying to get certain Members of this House off the political hook. The Municipal Journal described the situation thus:
"Unitary plans descend into a Whitehall farce."
It is a shabby deal. The columnist, Mark Smulian, writing in the Local Government Chronicle, was spot on in invoking the ghost of Governor Elbridge Gerry. This process is scandalous gerrymandering; it has nothing to do with good governance and is being done for political purposes.
I feel sorry for only two people: the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Barbara Follett, who is here to stand in for the Minister responsible for this matter and is picking up the tab for it, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Mole, because it is apparent that Cabinet Ministers and former Cabinet Ministers manage to get unitary authorities, whereas Under-Secretaries of State get merely a constitutional convention and a talking shop. Life is unjust even in the workings of Government.
As has been observed, Mr. Housden, the permanent secretary, has behaved with absolute propriety. The attacks on him are wholly unjustified and would be withdrawn by any reasonable person. As well as the passage of his letter that has been quoted, he made two other important points. Having concluded that the unitary bids still did not meet the Government's original criteria, Ministers sought grounds to justify their departure from them. Mr. Housden wrote:
"My main concern about your proposed course has to be value for money for the public purse. It would impact adversely on the financial position of the public sector as compared with the alternative courses of action open to you."
Mr. Housden then referred to the Ministers' grounds for departing from the criteria, in particular the suggestion that the unitaries would be able better to achieve economic gains and regeneration potential:
"The evidence for such gains is mixed and representations that you have received provide no evidence to quantify such benefits. I also recognise your proposed approach may open the way for improved public services through the Total Place approach, but this will be dependent on the collaboration of all the councils concerned and as yet there is no clear evidence of the costs and benefits that may arise."
The permanent secretary destroyed comprehensively the two grounds that the then Secretary of State and Minister of State gave for departing from the original criteria. There were no grounds to justify doing so. In passing, it is worth saying that shared service arrangements in all three county councils and a pathfinder scheme in one are already improving services. That has been done without any of this nonsense.
Mr. Housden went on to write:
"Moreover, any departure from the criteria when taking your statutory decisions also raises feasibility, as well as value for money, concerns. Whilst there is no statutory basis for the criteria, there is a legitimate expectation that they will be the basis of your decisions. Your proposed approach of implementing a unitary Exeter and Norwich, and not implementing a unitary council for Suffolk would be a departure from the criteria, and whilst I recognise you could adduce your reasons for this...my clear legal advice is that the risk of"- these decisions-
"being successfully challenged in judicial review proceedings is very high. You have been advised that there is every likelihood of such judicial review proceedings being commenced."
We now know that judicial review proceedings have been commenced. He went on:
"The probably nugatory expenditure which this would entail, particularly in the case of Exeter and Norwich, could only exacerbate the worries I have described about value for public money. And it would also put pressure on departmental resources, altering priorities."
One cannot be much more damnatory than that, yet the Ministers still persist and do not come along to defend themselves in person.
The pros and cons of unitary authorities in local government can be argued in a decent fashion. However, what has happened in this process is not decent. That is why my party has said that, should it come into Government, it would reverse the decision and put all of the documentation and advice into the public domain following any unsuccessful freedom of information requests. The proposal is a shabby gerrymander and is a disgrace to those who introduced it. I am sorry that Under-Secretary of State, who is not personally responsible, has to defend the decision today. The best one can hope for is that she takes the decision back and, at this very last minute, Ministers remove the shame they have brought upon themselves and abandon such an ill-conceived proposal.