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for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), he made it clear that that would have to be found from other elements of the Scottish Office budget, will he tell us which parts of that budget will be cut?Which services will lose £200 million to pay for the schemes? When the Treasury is clawing back every penny, threatening pensions and benefits, imposing a new tax on people heating their homes and so on, why does the Secretary of State feel that it is the right time to spend £200 million on such an exercise?
All that unnecessary expenditure will not provide a single extra police officer on the beat, a single extra teacher in a school or a single extra home help for the most needy. There is nothing in the proposals that would save a single Tory seat. The Government are unashamedly offering us a two- tier system, but it is based on joint boards, on buying in services and on competitive tendering--a system in which the Secretary of State takes decisions and even makes appointments. Few Hon. Members understand how he can justify that on the basis of democracy.
Only one of the many organisations providing services will be directly accountable to the community. When numerous submissions were made to the Secretary of State, why did he disregard the importance of accountability? Was not that the strong view of the local community councils, of the elected councils, at district, regional and island level? Was not that the strong view of virtually all the voluntary organisations in Scotland, which see the need for positive local government and for co-ordinating activity locally and nationally?
The fact is that the Government are seeking to impose on the people of Scotland without adequate examination or independent assessment a system of government which, as we have seen in the gerrymandering of the proposals for Stirling, Eastwood, Lothian, and even Aberdeen, could have been thought up only by narrow-minded people in Conservative central office. That is not a recipe for success for the future of democracy or local government in Scotland.
The Secretary of State may not wish to be reminded of this, but it was Wheatley himself, who had more experience in these matters than the whole Tory Front Bench put together, who defined local democracy as
"to ensure that the effective power of decision in local matters rests on an elected council directly accountable to the electorate for the exercise of that power."
How can we have that measure of direct accountability over education, the police and the fire service in Strathclyde, not to speak of the assessor's role? How can we have that measure of accountability when sprinkled throughout the document is the Secretary of State's determination to take upon himself even more powers, especially in relation to joint planning, than those he has now?
The Government's proposals are not about reforming local government, but about enfeebling it. It is about the betrayal of Scotland, yes, and Conservative promises to listen to the Scottish people. Above all, the latest in a series of cynical manoeuvres by which the Conservative party has overridden the wishes of local people expressed through the ballot box is the Government's response of removing the ballot box itself.
This is a foolish and dangerous course to follow. I hope that the Secretary of State will not mind if I refer to my
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local government experience. There are many who have contributed to local government and who in a democracy are entitled to expect their views to be heard. Democracy depends on consent. Consent depends on those in power playing by the rules. By changing the rules to suit itself, the Conservative party is putting democracy itself at risk. That is the reason why we have tabled this motion today.I call upon the Government today, knowing that we carry the overwhelming support of the Scottish people
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clarke : No, I will not give way--to recognise the importance of Scotland's deep commitment to these democratic principles and to withdraw their proposals.
Mr. Riddick rose--
Mr. Clarke : If they will not do so, I call upon the people of Scotland to resist and oppose them in every way and to stop them in every way possible. In that, they can be assured that they can depend on the support of the Labour party, and in due course of a Scottish Parliament-- which the right hon. Gentleman's absurd proposals, happily, have made even more inevitable.
4.23 pm
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang) : I beg to move, to leave out from House' to the end of the motion, and to add instead thereof :
welcomes the publication of the White Paper "Shaping the Future-The New Councils" ; and considers that its proposals will lead to better and more efficient local government in Scotland, based on a single tier of strong and accountable all-purpose authorities.'. I welcome the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) back to Parliament--safe back from his little jaunt to Downing street. Last Thursday, he quoted what Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament in 1653 :
"In the name of God, go!"--[ Official Report, 8 July 1993 ; Vol. 228, c. 35.]
I thought that it was singularly inapt, but when he picked up his papers and left the Chamber I realised that he was talking to himself. It is a pity that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was not at home. He is back from Tokyo now, if the hon. Gentleman would like to go again. Certainly the cameras were there in plenty. Indeed, the cameras were everywhere.
Mr. Tom Clarke : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Lang : No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman now. Mr. Clarke rose --
Madam Speaker : Order. The Secretary of State appears not to be giving way. Is that correct?
One of my hon. Friends at the St. Stephen's entrance was greeted by a cameraman asking, "Is this the entrance for the spontaneous Labour walk- out?" When the hon. Member for Monklands, West got to Downing street, he had his photograph taken with the policeman on the door, just as Harold Wilson once did when he was a boy. When Harold Wilson grew up, he went into politics, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman should do the same.
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Mr. Clarke rose --Mr. Lang : No, I will not give way.
I understand that the hon. Gentleman has his troubles at present. After all, we have it on the authority of the Daily Express in an article of 14 June headed, "Labour enemy within". It says : "Militant is on the march again. When Labour's shadow Scottish Secretary, Tom Clarke, turned up to canvas support during the Easterhouse council by-election, he was cheered to the rafters." It turned out that it was thought that the right hon. Member was the comedian, Andy Cameron. When it turned out to be the comedian, Tom Clarke, the article said :
"Their tears turned to unprintable forms of welcome."
All the comings and goings of the hon. Gentleman remind me of the doggerel by Mr. Hughes Mearns :
"As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again to-day.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away."
Judging by the hon. Gentleman's speech today, he was not there again today.
I am glad that we have this early opportunity for a debate, but it is a pity that the Opposition thought that it was only worth half a day of debate. [Interruption.] It takes half a day to read the motion, which is perhaps why Opposition Members have not bothered to read it.
The motion talks about inadequate consultation. The hon. Member for Monklands, West tried to make much of that. I remind the House that we have had no fewer than four consultation papers over the past two years on different aspects of local government reform. We have had nearly 9,000 replies, some of them immensely thorough and detailed, and we have looked at them carefully. In addition, there have been many newspaper and media articles and surveys.
If one doubted the need for single-tier local government and the advantages of it, and the confusion and difficulty that arises from the two-tier structure, one need look no further than the ICM poll in The Scotsman of 9 March. It revealed that one quarter of Scots did not know that cleansing was a district council responsibilty ; one third of Scots did not know that housing was a district council responsibility ; and no fewer than 40 per cent.--getting on for half the population--did not realise that education, the biggest single local authority service, is a regional authority.
Mr. Robert Hughes (Aberdeen, North) : I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. Perhaps he will now answer the question that he did not answer last week about how he arrived at the conclusion that Westhill should be incorporated into the city of Aberdeen. Since then, there has been outrage in the daily newspapers in Aberdeen--and from many Tory councillors--that he is gerrymandering. Westhill does not want to be part of Aberdeen. Is not that typical of the way in which he has totally ignored the views of ordinary people in every part of Scotland ?
Mr. Lang : If the outrage is coming from Tory councillors, I am not quite sure how I can be accused of gerrymandering. The fact is that there are many proposals on aspects of local government reform for which there is support and opposition in different parts of Scotland. We shall have ample opportunity to debate all of those during the passage of the Bill through Parliament, and the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to make his point.
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Mr. Dennis Canavan (Falkirk, West) : Will the Secretary of State care to comment on the remarks made by one of his Scottish Tory colleagues, Mr. Brian Meek, a former distinguished Tory group leader on Lothian regional council? Writing in The Herald on Monday of this week, he said :
"So let us go on to the gerrymandering argument. Did Mr. Lang and his Ministers seek to give their party the best possible chance under the new set-up? Of course they did. Why shouldn't they?"
Is that not a remarkable confession of guilt by one of the Secretary of State's own party colleagues?
Mr. Lang : It is not for me to decide whether the correspondent of The Herald, Mr. Meek, is confessing to guilt of anything. He is answerable for what he says in his columns. I am answerable for what I propose to the House.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) rose --
Mr. Lang : No, I must make a little more progress. As for the popularity of single-tier local government, the System 3 poll in The Herald showed support for single-tier up from 37 to 46 per cent., substantially the most popular option of those addressed. The Labour party's contribution to the debate during the consultation period was almost zero. It is the party of scaremongers and has made no constructive contribution to the debate. We have had nothing but talk of hidden agendas. It was said that we would create a national police force, but our paper today demonstrates that to be wrong. Not only will there be no national police force, but there will be the same number of police forces as before.
The Labour party said that we would privatise water and sewerage--wrong again. We have established three public water authorities firmly in public ownership, maximising the efficiency gains to be had in the delivery of water and sewerage and benefiting from private sector funds for investment.
The Labour party said that there would be massive spending cuts--wrong again. Local authority spending will continue to rise. Private sector investment in water and sewerage will relieve pressure on our resources by billions of pounds.
Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie) : The Secretary of State says that this is a single-tier system. Will he explain to the ordinary person in the street how his water, sewerage, education, police and fire services will be run in a single-tier system?
Mr. Lang : If the hon. Gentleman listens to my speech and subsequently takes part in the debate on the Bill as it goes through Parliament, all those questions will be answered. At the moment, I am dealing with all the scares and alarms raised by the Labour party in the past few months. Labour Members should be hanging their heads in shame at the sort of things they have said to cause scare, alarm and anxiety among the Scottish people.
Labour Members talked of a massive increase in joint boards. We had it again from the hon. Member for Monklands, West today. The fact is that the only major services that will be subject to joint boards will be the police and fire services, as at present. They talked about huge centralisation. Again, we had it today from the hon. Gentleman. Again, that is not so. All the major services, with the exception of water and sewerage, which we had clearly flagged as being subject to unavoidable alternative
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arrangements, will stay with local authorities. The greater integration of services and the decentralisation from the regional level to the single-tier, all-purpose authorities will, in many cases, be the reverse of the centralisation that was proposed.Mr. Tom Clarke : Will the Minister give way?
Then there was the scare of the great Treasury veto. In The Herald on 3 September the hon. Member for Monklands, West said : "The Scottish Secretary, Ian Lang, will not be able to deliver the changes because of a Treasury veto."
That was around the time that he came forward with three successive forecasts of extra costs ranging from £400 million to £500 million to £600 million--wrong, wrong and wrong. There has been no Treasury veto and no extra costs. Rather, there will be savings of up to £1 billion over 15 years.
Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus, East) : Does the Secretary of State intend to transfer all existing water services to the new water boards, or does he intend to write off part or all of that debt? What categories of person will he be nominating for those water boards?
Mr. Lang : Those are precisely the kind of points that it is perfectly proper to raise and which we shall consider when we draw up the proposals that we shall bring forward in due course, when the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to debate them.
On costs and savings, I was interested to see that Dundee district council estimated that the new arrangements proposed in Tayside would save some £1.8 million per annum. Angus district council, the hon. Gentleman's own authority, estimated a saving of £2.3 million for the same arrangements. In Fife, Dunfermline district council estimated a saving of £8 million per annum from an all-purpose Fife authority, and North- East Fife district council estimated the same. Therefore, there is a cross- party consensus across those authorities on the kind of savings that will be available.
With regard to job losses--another scare raised by the Labour party--it turns out that rather than the substantial number of job losses of which Labour Members spoke, there will be a maximum of some 2,200. If one compares that with the burgeoning employment figures and bureaucracy in local government that I discovered only yesterday--last year alone, employment in local authorities rose by no less than 4,854, a rise of 2 per cent. at a time of recession and public expenditure restraint--one puts into clearer perspective the kind of saving of less than 1 per cent. that it has been suggested will be the result of job losses arising from reform.
Strathclyde's Labour leader surpasses even the hon. Member for Monklands, West when he talks about extra costs and extra job losses and plucks out of the air a figure of 20,000. He might have had some tiny shred of credibility had he argued for one or the other, but he cannot have it both ways. If reform can save 20,000 jobs, local authorities must be inefficient at present, in which case savings--not extra costs--are a certainty.
Mr. Thomas Graham (Renfrew, West and Inverclyde) : If the Secretary of State is so sure that his proposals are
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right for Scotland, why does not he test them at the ballot box and give Scotland the opportunity of a multi- referendum that could include his proposals for local government? Is not it the case that he will not do that because the proposals would be binned by the people of Scotland?Mr. Lang : The Government are answerable at the ballot box by elections to this Parliament for everything that we do.
The Opposition have been scaremongering about jobs, costs and other issues that they have raised to create distraction and
misunderstanding about the proposals. It is disgraceful that Labour leaders seek only to instill alarm and despondency among local government staff whose interests they claim to protect. Now, as if the palpable failure of all their scares was not enough, the Opposition raise the spectre of gerrymandering. I reject that charge. Our proposals are largely based on the existing building blocks of regions and districts. Four existing regions survive largely intact and many more districts have had their powers enhanced greatly.
lishing the two-tier structure and by lifting the baleful socialist shadow which stretches across the central belt of Scotland and far beyond to the outlying areas, we shall enable those areas to break free and assert their own varied political allegiances, whether thosmay be Liberal, Conservative independent or nationalist. That is notgerrymandering--it is a healthy strengthening of local democracy in all its diversity. Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Cromarty and Skye) :The Secretary of State's last phrase was about the "healthy strengthening of local democracy". He specifically mentioned many cases from the blueprint of the enhanced powers that are to be given to the districts. Does he recognise that neither description can be applied to the highlands, where all existing districts are to be abolished and one council is to cover the region?
The Secretary of State's statement last week laid great emphasis on the way in which he would require decentralisation within the new authorities. He did not emphasise paragraph 3.5 of page 5 of the White Paper, which concerns decentralisation schemes. The White Paper is, interestingly, coloured blue. It says :
"Guidance will be issued to local authorities on how they might develop these schemes but the initiative will rest with the new councils and schemes will not require the approval of the Secretary of State."
What possible satisfaction or guarantee can constituents across the highlands take from that worthless statement?
Mr. Lang : I have considerable sympathy for some of the circumstances in the highlands. I also note the hon. Gentleman's interest in imposing control over local government. I believe that local government should be allowed as much discretion as possible. I draw comfort from the words of the convener of Highland regional council. He has made it abundantly clear how strongly his local authority, like many others in Scotland, is committed to decentralisation.
I was addressing the baleful influence of socialism across the central belt of Scotland and beyond. I suggest that the Labour party is gerrymandering in reverse. It seeks to keep in place the distorted instruments of its unfair hegemony over central Scotland. [Interruption.]
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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris) : Order. So many hon. Gentleman are rising that no one can hear who wants to intervene.
Mr. Lang : The Opposition do not like the truth--they know how much it hurts.
Under the two-tier structure, Scotland has suffered double jeopardy under Labour. Labour has exercised control, if not through the districts then through the regions, in ways that have smothered local politics and local economies.
Since the Opposition's claims last week--this point was raised by the hon. Member for Monklands, West in his speech--I have checked on some figures. In the regional elections in 1990, the votes cast and seats gained revealed that it took 3,133 votes to elect a Labour councillor, 6,419 to elect a Conservative and even more to elect a Scottish Nationalist. That means that it is more than twice as hard for a Conservative councillor to be elected as it is for a Labour councillor. The picture in district councils is broadly the same, so what we are hearing is not the high tone of principle but the shrill cries of vested interests being dislodged.
Mr. Tom Clarke : I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way at long last. It was rather unfortunate that he cited personal attacks, probably leaked by the Scottish Office itself to cheap newspapers, in defence of his speech. He said that one should become "adapt" at responding to the facts--I think that he meant "adept". He gave figures on voting at local elections, but will be explain why the Conservative party contests so few seats? Why is it that where it contested seats there seems to be more representation but where it did not field candidates the local authorities seem much larger?
Mr. Lang : I said neither "adept" nor "adapt" when referring to the hon. Gentleman's quotation ; I said inept-- [Laughter.] --inapt, but I could as easily have said "inept". The hon. Gentleman proves it again.
Dr. John Reid (Motherwe, which perfectly describes his speech?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : If all sides are agreed on what was said, Hansard will have recorded it--
Dr. Reid : Even if there is no such word?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I do not need any help from the hon. Gentleman. If all sides are not agreed, we shall have to go by what Hansard says.
Mr. Lang : I welcome the Labour party's predictions about the Conservative success that it thinks will flow from the proposals, although the Labour party's attitude is strangely defeatist. Let us consider what the claim of our likely political success under the new system implies : either it means that thousands of Conservative voters have, in effect, been disenfranchised by the present structure and will now be liberated or that our proposals will be popular and will win support in Scotland. I can face either conclusion with complete equanimity.
I will take no lectures on gerrymandering from any Member of Parliament for Monklands, an area in which one group of Labour councillors stands accused by
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another group of Labour councillors of showing bias in capital allocations. How does that administration explain the fact that for every £1 of capital resources allocated to Airdrie, £10 is allocated to Coatbridge? We will protect the interests of all residents of all parties in Monklands, and under our proposals Monklands district council will be abolished.Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Lang : No, I will not give way because I have already done so many times.
Where do the Opposition parties stand on our proposals for local government reform? The hon. Member for Monklands, West said on television last week that the Labour party was absolutely committed to reversing our reforms. Yet in the House the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) expressed his
"great satisfaction at the restoration of a single tier authority for Aberdeen".
The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) said that he had "always advocated an all-purpose authority for the city of Dundee".
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. McAvoy) welcomed our recognition in the White Paper that
"Cambuslang and Rutherglen are separate communities in their own right."-- [ Official Report, 8 July 1993 ; Vol. 228, c. 478-82.] The hon. Member for Monklands, West is committed to blocking, frustrating and sabotaging our proposals, yet only last Friday the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities had a productive and constructive meeting with my hon. Friend and myself at which it asked for a further meeting and agreed to co- operate through a working party on finance in studying costings.
Only today in The Herald, under the heading "Labour Councils Smooth Lang's Way", we learn that four councils in the Central region yesterday announced
"that they had signed a management agreement designed to smooth the way for the creation of single tier councils in their area." The Daily Record, which is no friend of the Conservative party, states :
"A giant hole has been blasted in Labour's campaign against Scots local government changes."
Yet it is the chief executives who have made the agreement, although the Daily Record states--so I presume it is true--that they were backed by their political leaders, the council leaders, even though Central, Clackmannan and Falkirk are Labour controlled. That is less than 24 hours after Scottish Labour leaders pledged a non-co-operation pact involving Members of Parliament, the Scottish Trades Union Congress and COSLA. The fact is that the Opposition parties are all over the place, but those local authorities are being a great deal more responsible.
Mr. Martin O'Neill (Clackmannan) : Perhaps the Secretary of State has not heard that the chief executives of the four authorities, including Stirling which is Conservative controlled, have today issued a statement saying :
"We reject any implication that our actions in issuing the joint protocol provide either support, co-operation, corroboration or agreement with the Government proposals."
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