House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 Nov 1993

Mr. Hain : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State for Scotland announced that Ystradgynlais was going back into Powys from the West Glamorgan authority, which affects my area. He made no statement about Tawe Uchaf. That may be because he cannot pronounce it, but I would like to know.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : That is not a point of order either.

Mr. Redwood : I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene. I thought that it was for the benefit of the House if the Secretary of State for Scotland outlined the changes that I am proposing. I have put the statement on the Board. I believe that there are further details in the Vote Office so that we can have an informed debate. I thought that that would be to the benefit of the House because I thought it much better that hon. Members should see what I was going to say later this evening and be able to discuss it rather than being in ignorance. I hoped that hon. Members would appreciate that.

Mr. Ron Davies : Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy. May I put on record the fact that I made recommendations to the Secretary of State and I am grateful that he has at least seen in part the wisdom of the case that we put to him. It would be impossible for us to have a reasonable and rational debate today without foreknowledge of the changes that the Secretary of State was proposing to make. I am grateful that he has taken steps to ensure that we are all aware of them.

It would be helpful, however, in furtherance of the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) is making-- and helpful to the rest of us--if the Secretary of State would clarify two outstanding matters. The first is whether he is prepared to reconsider changes in addition to those that he has announced. The second, which is of fundamental importance, is whether he intends to stick with the timetable that was announced by his predecessor to have elections in 1994, with the new authorities taking effect in 1995.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : It is still not a point of order, but I have no doubt that the Secretary of State will take note.

Mr. Rowlands : We all know about the nature of government ; we know the nature of legislative processes. We have all, in one way or another, been involved in them

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for a long time. We know that the Secretary of State, having heard all the representations, will not make new proposals during the parliamentary debate.

I have made the case for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney ; I argued that as powerfully as I could in the Welsh Grand Committee, and I am trying to argue it now. I cannot, therefore, produce any new arguments for the Secretary of State during the parliamentary stages of the Bill. If a process of repetition works, I shall repeat the argument over and over again until the right hon. Gentleman surrenders, but there must surely be a more rational way to change the Secretary of State's mind. That is to tell him that he has heard our case and I do not understand why he has not heeded it. He cannot possibly claim that he has any representative authority to introduce a local government unit of the type that he has proposed. It was not proposed by his predecessor ; it has not been proposed by anyone to him and it has not been supported by anyone since he announced it. In the spirit of the back to basic values consensus, therefore, I do not know why the Secretary of State is being so stiff-necked about the issue of the heads of the valleys, especially as there is in this case-- unlike others--a virtually agreed alternative. He could take some refuge in refusing to change, if he were to say, "There are too many discordant voices offering too many alternatives. I will stick to my original plan because it is the least contentious--everyone else cannot agree on the alternative."

In this case, however, there is virtual agreement on the alternative, which is to divide the so-called heads of the valleys authority into a Merthyr Rhymney and a Blaenau Gwent authority. Its size would be of the same order as that of Monmouthshire, next door to us. What is behind it? I said it before and I repeat it to the Secretary of State. We have the same right of feeling about a civic sense, about roots, about identity, about the relationship between those identities and those roots with local government and local government reforms, as any shire county.

Why does the wonderful word "shire" apparently roll off the mouths of Conservative Members as if it had magical properties, allowing authorities the size of Monmouthshire in Wales? The Government do not heed our views when it comes to an urban community with an equally powerful sense of tradition, civic pride, identity and roots. Our people believe that their community is the basis from which local government services should be delivered. We are not a shire, so we cannot exercise the functions that an authority of a similar size, such as neighbouring Monmouthshire, can exercise.

What is the prejudice against the concept of an urban community with traditions as strong as any shire? Why are those traditions being ignored? Why do they not have the same force in the argument? Is it because we tend to be socialist and because we voted against the Tories? I hope that it is not from any sense of party. Mr. Redwood indicated dissent.

Mr. Rowlands : The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. If it is not, why does he not listen to us and heed what we are saying? It will not do much damage to his Bill or to the system of local government. I think that we were delivering local government services in Merthyr Tydfil long before the Secretary of State knew where it was. [Hon. Members :-- "You think?"] No, I am sure that that is so. We really believe in local government--we believe in

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ourselves and in the concept of our borough status. That status survived 1972, although we lost powers to the county, and it even survived the attempted changes in the mid-1930s. I am writing a book on that period. So why, in 1993, does the Secretary of State abolish us just like that, without any meaningful support for his alternative?

Mr. Rogers : Surely the answer to my hon. Friend's question is that it is straightforward political gerrymandering. The Secretary of State may not be concocting boundaries to get a Conservative vote in Wales, because he will not get one in our areas, but he hopes that, by appealing to the people of the shire counties, maintaining shire boundaries and being biased towards them, he will scrape

Mr. Alex Carlile : He will get no votes in Montgomeryshire.

Mr. Rogers : Yes, I know that we have a couple of odd ones here and there, other than Tories. The Secretary of State is hoping to keep Monmouthshire and he is hoping that he will be able to do it with his own little bit of gerrymandering.

Mr. Rowlands : Perhaps I am naive, but I am not accusing the Secretary of State of gerrymandering, because that is a futile exercise in our neck of the woods. I therefore do not understand why he wants to be so offensive to us, and why he insists on driving through a proposal that offends us so deeply and which has no support.

Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central) : On the subject of the Conservatives' apparent affinity with the shire counties, I invite my hon. Friend to comment on this anomaly. The shire county of Monmouthshire is to be shorn of all its urban parts. What could be the reason ?

Mr. Rowlands : My hon. Friend is tempting me to stray into other territory. I understand his point. That change has aspects of gerrymandering, but I do not think that that could be the purpose for the change in the case of the heads of the valleys authority.

Mr. Jonathan Evans : Will the hon. Gentleman concede that it would be difficult to establish an accusation of gerrymandering in my constituency? As I understand it, every community being returned to my area is represented by Labour councillors.

Mr. Rowlands : The hon. Gentleman is making my case for me. If the Secretary of State can make a sensible and rational decision in Ystradgynlais why, in the name of heaven, can he not do so on behalf of the communities that I represent? That is all that I am asking. Why can he not do that for us? I am a great believer in the shires ; I am not against them. My wife is a Carmarthenshire girl and was a most bitter opponent of the changes. She has frequently bent my ear on the absurdity called Dyfed and some members of the Government seem to have recognised and acknowledged that absurdity. It was pointed out to them way back in 1972 that it was nonsense.

Let us not create another nonsense called the heads of the valleys authority, which has neither support nor consensus, except a consensus against. If the Secretary of State's nods and so-called pleasant approach to these

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matters, and the changes he has made already, are to mean anything, I hope that he will say to us tonight that not only will we have future parliamentary processes but that he has listened to our case, not only in the Welsh Grand Committee but in the House this afternoon.

Our case is backed and warmly welcomed by the majority of Members on the Opposition Benches, and I hope that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans)--who lives adjacent to our communities and knows them very well --and the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans) will support us in an all- party plea to the Secretary of State to change one fundamental aspect of his proposals : to abandon the absurd merger of the heads of the valleys authority and to restore and retain the powerful civic sense represented by the names of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney.

4.40 pm

Mr. Rod Richards (Clwyd, North-West) : The Gracious Speech was widely welcomed in Clwyd, North-West and by all sensible people, particularly the passage which referred to the reorganisation of local government in Wales.

This is perhaps the fourth time that Welsh Members have discussed the reform of local government in Wales and I had hoped that, as the Opposition wanted the debate, we would hear something new from them. Alas, it was not to be. As the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) said--it seems to be the Opposition's view--repetition works. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that repetition will not work as far as I am concerned, not even if he becomes blue in the face.

Mr. Rogers : The hon. Gentleman said that sensible people would welcome the changes that have taken place in his area--so I am not sure why he is accepting them. Our arguments are repetitious because they are the best arguments ; they are arguments which need to be consistently and properly made. We will not fabricate arguments just to make them new. The values on which our arguments are based are there to see ; they were transparent to the Secretary of State's predecessor and to the Secretary of State and have been completely and utterly ignored.

Mr. Richards : Conservative Members would be more inclined to listen to the not to co-operate with the borough and district councils in Wales, thereby making life more difficult.

The publication of my right hon. Friend's Bill is eagerly awaited, certainly in my constituency. Colwyn borough will form a new unitary authority with the neighbouring Aberconwy borough and Rhuddlan borough council will form the new unitary authority of Denbighshire. There will be a sigh of relief from my constituents when this comes about because they are sick and tired of not being able to identify which local authority is responsible for which service, as are constituents elsewhere in Wales.

One of the concerns of my constituents, particularly in Colwyn borough, is that when the new unitary authority is formed, the number of members from Colwyn will equal the number of members for Aberconwy. There is some concern about that equal status. As to the rural areas of Colwyn borough, there is a general acceptance that

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Trefnant will and should become a part of the new Denbighshire. My constituents are anxious that the five wards in Colwyn borough should continue to exist, because fewer wards in the rural areas of Colwyn would make it difficult for the new represenatives to operate. My constituents are also concerned about the status of the county boundary between Clwyd and Gwynedd. There are rumours that it will change. Those rumours have been taken seriously and local health authorities and others are vying for influence in the areas of Aberconwy and Colwyn boroughs which may come into that new health authority area. My constituents would be pleased to know whether the boundary will change.

My constituents' greatest concern about the proposed reform of local government is the point that I mentioned in response to a question from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers)--the disgraceful way in which the Opposition have been organising their surrogates in the county councils in an attempt to undermine the proposed reform of local government. It is an undemocratic modus operandi, but it is not unique. I accept that the Opposition may not agree with Government policy, but they seem to be trying to undermine that policy instead of trying to make the most of it and make it work. The Opposition have been in opposition for some 14 years and no longer seem able to distinguish between opposing the Government and opposing the country.

Another example of the Opposition trying to undermine Government policy can be found in grant-maintained schools. Their attempts to prevent schools, governors and parents from exercising their democratic right to decide freely whether they wish to opt for grant-maintained status is quite disgraceful.

Mr. Rogers : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Richards : In a moment.

I urge my right hon. Friend to use all his powers and to take steps to prevent the Opposition from operating in that undemocratic way.

Mr. Rogers : The hon. Gentleman mentioned me specifically before he made his outrageous accusations. County councils have a right to make up their own minds. I do not know whether Conservative county councils are controlled from central office, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Labour county councils make their own decisions and not on instructions from Members of Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman's other outrageous point related to people confounding Government policy on grant-maintained schools. The hon. Gentleman is well known for his wild accusations : will he give some credit to the House and give an example of Labour-controlled authorities, or other people, specifically doing what he has accused them of doing? Let us have a few names.

Mr. Richards : There are several schools in my constituency where the Labour party has specifically attempted to undermine their attempts to become grant-maintained. Ysgol Emrys Ap Iwan is a particularly noteworthy example, where not only the county councillors but even council officials were campaigning against its becoming grant-maintained.

My complaint against the Labour party is that, although the borough councils and the districts are trying to get themselves organised to accept the reorganisation of local

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government, the counties are refusing to transfer the information that is required by those authorities to prepare themselves for that event. The Labour party is also ignoring the future careers of many senior officials within those councils, who may well wish to be employed by the new unitary authorities. Obviously the Labour party has no regard for those people.

Mr. Alex Carlile : If, as we expect, an announcement will be made later today that the elections to the shadow unitary authorities are to be delayed for one year, does the hon. Gentleman agree that that will cause great damage to and uncertainty among local government employees in Wales? Does he share the view that, first, we should be told now what announcement will be made so that we can debate the matter and, secondly, that the elections should take place according to the original timetable?

Mr. Richards : The hon. and learned Gentleman is speculating, and if he wants me to speculate upon his speculation, he is taking matters too far. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will make a statement in a few hours and I doubt very much whether it will add to the uncertainty that the Labour party has already created. Why has the Labour party created such uncertainty? It is not as though the Opposition are against the principle of unitary authorities--they are not. They have embarked upon this particular campaign for one reason alone--they want an elected assembly for Wales. All of a sudden, the Opposition have changed their mind. They have been converted by the colleagues of the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) and have now adopted the nationalist agenda. They have taken up that agenda not because they believe in an assembly for Wales, but because they are afraid of the nationalists at the polls. That is the one and only reason for the adoption of that agenda.

Mr. Rogers : The hon. Gentleman is indulging in a flight of fantasy. I had a majority of more than 30,000 over my nationalist opponent, so one can hardly say that the Opposition are running scared.

Mr. Richards : The one thing that the Welsh people will want to learn from the fourth re-run of the debate on this issue is the difference between the Conservatives and the Opposition parties. Every one of those parties wants an assembly for Wales, but the Conservative party does not. We are the party that believes in the United Kingdom, but all the Opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, want to break up the United Kingdom. Amazingly, they want to break it up into small pieces which they would then insert into a united states of Europe.

Mr. Alex Carlile : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it right for an hon. Member to mislead the House, apparently deliberately? The Liberal Democrats are in favour of retaining a strong United Kingdom.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : That is not a point of order for me.

Mr. Richards : I understand that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) will reply on behalf of the Opposition. Anyone who was present when he last wound up a debate will remember that occasion for ever.

My hon. Friends and I have heard the hon. Gentleman speak on several occasions and he always refers to what he describes as the underspending on various services in Wales. He always says that more money should be spent on

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roads, schools and hospitals. Bearing in mind the fact that the Labour party wants an assembly for Wales which will have tax-raising powers, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can aggregate what he believes that underspend to be and tell us how his assembly in Cardiff would set about raising the funds to cover that deficit. Would it be made up through direct taxation, indirect taxation or corporate taxation? Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has plans to raise taxation through all those means.

If the hon. Gentleman finds it a little difficult to provide that aggregate, he can merely look at the existing budget of the Welsh Office. Given that he disagrees with the way in which that money is spent, perhaps he will tell us how he would redistribute the budget. It is a great pity that the sole representative of Plaid Cymru, the hon. Member for Caernarfon, seems to have left the Chamber. For the nationalists, an assembly in Cardiff is the first stage in their campaign for an independent Wales. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to reveal at his recent party conference that his party wants not only an independent Wales, but an independent republic. He appears to have gone so far as to work out the details of the ceremony for the inauguration of the president. If I am correct, I understand that he has it in mind that the archdruid of the National Eisteddfod should inaugurate the president. I can only assume that the arch-druid would be wearing his Sunday best bed linen.

Should the hon. Member for Caernarfon ever succeed in creating an independent republic, he should think carefully about how he would attract inward investment. Given what the hon. Gentleman said at his party conference, anyone with a connection with Surrey or anywhere else in England would not be happy to invest in a republic over which he had any influence, because he seems to object to their drinking habits.

The counter-proposals of the Opposition parties to the reorganisation of local government in Wales are totally unacceptable to the Conservative party and totally unwanted by the people of Wales, as they showed in the 1979 referendum on the issue when they voted 4 : 1 against them.

4.48 pm

Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland) : One of the consequences of a linked Scottish and Welsh debate is that those of us who usually contribute to Scottish debates have an opportunity to hear our Welsh counterparts, and vice versa. While the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) was speaking, I could not help reflecting on the contrast between him and his distinguished predecessor, who, in 1989, had the political courage and integrity to stand up and fight Lady Thatcher. I understand the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West to be calling on the Secretary of State to stop Labour county councils having the audacity to campaign against Conservative party policies. Such is the fate of pluralist democracy under the Government.

Although the Gracious Speech attributes only 12 words specifically to Scotland and Wales, it is useful to have today's debate. We shall no doubt be told that other measures in the Queen's Speech will affect Scotland and

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Wales. That worries us and many students, who see the basic services enjoyed by university students threatened by the proposals that will affect the future of student unions.

I am also worried that the Government may try to insert, in a criminal justice Bill substantially designed for England and Wales, measures that will affect Scottish law and that, because of the nature of Committees, many Scottish Members will be unable to examine the proposals in detail. If that happens, it will be a big step away from even the limited advances which the Secretary of State announced in his "taking stock" proposals.

I suppose that teams from Scotland and Wales, like the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, will attend the Commonwealth games in Canada, and we wish them well.

In introducing the debate, the Secretary of State for Scotland announced some modest but nevertheless welcome changes to some of the boundaries.

Mr. Kirkwood : Not enough.

Mr. Wallace : As my hon. Friend says, those changes are not enough. We are in a different position today from when the Secretary of State made his original announcement on the boundaries. Before that, we had had only four maps with general illustrations on them. Only since 8 July this year have the people in the Scottish communities had an opportunity to consider specific proposals. It is clear from what my hon. Friends the Members for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) said, that the proposals to lump Berwickshire with East Lothian, put Westhill with Aberdeen and have Fife as a single unit and not allow diverse local authorities within Fife are all strongly opposed in those localities.

The Secretary of State has a duty to tell the House what criteria he will apply in changing the proposals that he is presently stuck with. Will the views of the communities to be affected by the proposals have a bearing on the Government's decisions when the matter comes before Parliament ?

In a radio interview that I did with the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) last week, the hon. Member said that the Secretary of State had told him that Parliament would decide. I hope that that means that the Whips will be off when we debate detailed boundary proposals, and that the views of the people will count for a lot.

Ultimately, the important question when deciding whether to support local authority reform is not whether we should have one or two tiers ; nor is it about the details of boundaries. Rather, we should examine the legislation to see whether it will lead to greater self-determination for local communities, how communities and individuals can exercise effective control over their localities, and whether the local authorities will be genuinely democratic, providing voters with genuine choice and an opportunity for local determination.

If we pretend that what we have today is an example of local democracy, we shall deceive ourselves. As the Secretary of State said when he addressed the House on that issue on 14 July 1993 : "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."--[ Official, Report, 14 July 1993 ; Vol. 228, c. 1001.]

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He stalled on showing what electoral injustice did for the Liberal Democrats.

That perfectly legitimate point is answered not by gerrymandering boundaries but by a fair and democratic electoral system. Under the present system, even the party that gains the most votes in a local authority will not necessarily form the administration. At the latest district council elections in Edinburgh, 29 per cent. of the vote was won by the Labour party, for which it was rewarded with 30 seats, but 40 per cent. of the vote was won by the Conservative party, which was rewarded with only 23 seats. That is a fundamental injustice and if we are to have local democracy, we must change our voting system. At best, the proposed changes will lead to a different system, but the outcome is more likely to be a worse situation with more power in the hands of unelected quangos and central Government.

The comments of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) on the situation in Greater Glasgow health board in recent weeks were extremely pertinent. I noticed that the Secretary of State nodded in agreement when the hon. Member for Hamilton quoted the Secretary of State for Wales about the need for considerable scrupulousness in how those public authorities conduct their business.

Mr. Redwood indicated assent.

Mr. Wallace : I think that the whole House would agree on that. If the Secretary of State for Scotland agrees, he is duty bound at some stage- -preferably today--to give detailed answers to the pertinent questions put by the hon. Member for Hamilton.

The Government have increased quangos in Scotland year in and year out. In 1988, they were spending £500 million of public money and are now responsible for £1.6 billion of public money. The trouble is that they shield Ministers from direct accountability to the clients of those services. They must remain accountable to the House, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland will say clearly that he plans to answer the pertinent questions of the hon. Member for Hamilton.

What is coming down the track but the creation of more quangos in the form of three water authorities proposed for Scotland? The Secretary of State did not refer to water in his speech. It is understood that water proposals would be included in a local government Bill and it is important to recognise that such proposals command no widespread support in Scotland. In the opinion poll referred to earlier in the debate, 95 per cent. of respondents said that they wanted water and sewerage services left in the hands of elected local authorities ; only 4 per cent. said that they wanted the three larger water authorities ; 85 per cent. believed that privatisation would ultimately result if the Government's proposals were adopted ; and 82 per cent. wanted a referendum on the issue. That raises important questions about democracy : first, about adhering to the overwhelmingly expressed views of the people ; and, secondly, about the lack of democracy that will result if powers currently exercised by democratically--albeit not as democratic as most of us would wish--directly elected councillors are handed over to appointed quangos. Those three water boards would be made up of appointees and would have no democratic legitimacy.

Will the Secretary of State agree, even if he intends to set up unelected bodies, that there is a considerable case for allowing the three islands authorities to continue to have

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their water and sewerage services determined locally? I cannot believe that anyone sitting in Dundee--or wherever he chooses as the headquarters of the board that will represent the north of Scotland--will have the slightest interest in the details of the water supply needed on the islands of Rousay, Papa Westray or Whalsey. I fear that all that we have in common is the water that divides us--either the Pentland firth or the North sea.

I hope that common sense will intervene at that stage and that the islands areas, at least, will not be lumped in with the mega-authorities. The main principle is that water and sewerage services should remain in the hands of directly elected councillors who will be answerable to the people for whom those services are provided.

We want local authorities that are free from outside interference to decide for themselves how to discharge functions. If the Government are trying to say that they want strong local government, those who are elected must have an opportunity to decide. On a simple matter like refuse collection, a local authority can decide whether the refuse will be collected by its work force or whether it will engage contractors. Alternatively, it may wish to devolve some of the responsibility to community councils or have a combination of all threee.

If local authorities are told that it is compulsory to put out refuse collection to competitive tendering, the reason for having local democracy almost evaporates. How can people judge whether councillors are doing a good job if those councillors cannot decide such a fundamental question as who will collect rubbish? If we let the local authority decide such questions, at an election the people will decide whether that authority has done a good job. That is what democracy is all about.

When the Secretary of State suggests that the great problem with the two- tier system has been the confusion between region and district, he does not recognise that the biggest confusion in local government is where local authority responsibility and power end and central Government responsibility begins. Often, the opportunity for local authorities to take decisions that they want to take in the interests of their local communities is frustrated by the big hand of central Government.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) misreads what the Scottish Constitutional Convention and those of us who support a Scottish Parliament want. My party wants to take power from Westminster and to give it to national Parliaments in Scotland and in Wales. We want to go beyond that by increasing the power that is given to local authorities.

Given that, in the past 14 years, the Conservative party has introduced 160 measures taking power away from local authorities and concentrating them in Westminster or St. Andrew's house, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South probably cannot understand that some people believe that power should reside in the communities in which they live. Given his background of Toryism, it is likely that he would not understand such a democratic concept.

We want local government to have a power of general competence. Restrictions on it should be applied by voters through a fair electoral system at the ballot box. A majority of voters should install councillors who will work to provide decent quality services and who will not protect cosy municipal practices, but will try to achieve the best delivery of services for those whom they represent. They

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will be judged at the ballot box by those whom they represent. One looks in vain for such a policy from a party that does not have a great commitment to democracy.

Today, The Independent reports a briefing from a senior Minister at the Department of the Environment suggesting that English county councils will be the next to get the boot. It suggests that that will not cause the Government any political difficulty because, with the exception of Buckinghamshire, the Conservatives lost control of every county council at the latest county council elections. As we saw with the Greater London council, when the Government cannot win power through the ballot box, they change the rules and gerrymander or legislate a democratic body out of existence.

One would almost believe that, if they were faced with certain defeat at a general election, the Government would introduce a Bill to extend the lifetime of a Parliament. They would do so in the name of efficiency, using the argument that money would be saved by avoiding a general election. The Conservative party has no real commitment to democracy. Against that background, one cannot believe that any Bll introduced to reform local government in Scotland will do anything to improve the quality of our local democracy.

5.13 pm

Mr. Phil Gallie (Ayr) : I apologise to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for not being here at the start of the debate. Perhaps, if the Strathclyde region had ensured that we had a reasonable link between the A77 and the M8, I would have made my plane on time. Once again, we are provided with a good reason for bringing about a change in Scottish local government to ensure that the interests of my constituents in Ayrshire will be looked after. I welcome this debate and the fact that so much time has been made available to discuss Scottish and Welsh interests. There was much talk about the local government proposals having been brought forward without proper consultation, but we have had two major consultations on the matter, one before and one after the last election. It is time to act and I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has faced up to the task. Instead of talking and talking, as the Opposition would want us to do, he has acted in a firm, decisive and, in the main, sensible manner.

When we enter the debate, discussions will be localised, which is as it should be. Of course, Scottish interests as a whole will be of interest to every hon. Member who represents a Scottish constituency, but ultimately each one will be looking at his or her own constituency requirements. That is how it should be, and I offer no apologies for taking that approach myself.

At the last election all the parties promised single-tier local government. It was a Tory party manifesto pledge, and I am delighted that we are now presenting it. It was also a Labour party pledge--the party policy document stated :

"All-purpose councils facilitate the move to an integrated approach to service provision and also decentralisation through a local one-door approach."

That statement appeared in a Labour party document before the last election and, for a change, it contained an

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element of sense. The one-door approach is wise. It is a pity that the Labour party seems to have thrown it out of the door now, but that does not surprise me.

What did the Liberal party have to say in its 1992 Scottish manifesto? It said :

"We will introduce a single-tier of local government, to deliver most of the services currently provided by districts and regions." We should notice the word "most"--the Liberals thought that a Scottish assembly would have pulled in many of the services. Those were the words of the Liberal party manifesto, not mine. That manifesto continued :

"This will end the confusion about who is accountable for what and bring local government effectively within the reach of the local citizens."

That is right--but what happened to those principles? They seem to have been abandoned.

The Scottish nationalists not only supported the idea of single-tier authorities at the last election, but have done so since. The Scotsman of 1 October stated :

"The SNP believe that the single-tier structure will be the most effective"

form of local government. I totally go along with the SNP's vision.

When we consider local government reform and the fulfilment of Tory manifesto pledges--a mark of Tory government since 1979--we see that those issues cannot be put behind us. I was shocked the other day to hear the Leader of the Opposition suggest that English Members of Parliament had no part to play in the current debate. The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) is supposedly the leader of the United Kingdom Labour party, speaking for all parts of the United Kingdom. However, he suggested that English Members of Parliament should play no part in the debate on the procedures. Hansard of last Thursday gives the facts at column 24. I suggest that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) reads it.

Mr. Win Griffiths : As we were reminded earlier, under Standing Order No. 86--under the present rules of the House--the legislation would be handled by a Committee of Scottish Members in Scotland and of Welsh Members in Wales. That will happen unless the Government decide to set aside a Standing Order that has been in existence since before the first world war.

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