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Mr. Jonathan Evans (Brecon and Radnor) : I begin by referring, if I may, to an omission from the Gracious Speech as it relates to my constituents and one of their
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primary concerns. I refer to the debate about Welsh local government reorganisation and its impact on the national parks in Wales. There are 11 national parks in the United Kingdom and three of them are established in the principality of Wales. There is a consensus that there should be a change in the status of national park authorities. They control important planning functions, especially in a large section of my constituency in the Brecon Beacons park area.Ever since the production of "Fit for the Future", it has been recognised that legislation should be introduced to change the status of national parks. I believe that there is cross-party support for that change and also disappointment that, at the moment, there does not appear to be a slot in the timetable for that change to be undertaken. I am mindful of the fact that legislation is being introduced in a private Member's Bill in the House of Lords and that the Government may be intending to support that measure.
I should be grateful to have clarification of that support. I understand that in another part of the House today, a Minister has said that that may be so. There has also been an indication that the Bill produced to deal with Welsh local government reorganisation will make some changes in the status of national parks. I emphasise that that is a matter of concern to my constituents and ask for some clarification--perhaps even today--in relation to that important issue.
The debate has largely concentrated on the Government's proposals for local government reorganisation in Wales. I have made several representations to successive Secretaries of State concerning that issue. Today we heard of boundary changes that the Secretary of State is minded to propose. I welcome those boundary changes as they affect my constituency. It is well known that I have always opposed the proposal that the communities of Ystradgynlais and Tawe Uchaf should be removed from my constituency. I rose in the House to oppose it on virtually the first occasion on which it was made and whenever the matter has been debated since, I have informed successive Secretaries of State of the strength of local feeling concerning that issue. In a referendum held in the Ystradgynlais area with cross-party support and participation some 97 per cent. voted to remain within a Breconshire or Powys authority. I am therefore pleased that, having heard from delegations brought by me to see him, the Secretary of State has decided that Ystradgynlais and Tawe Uchaf should remain where their long- standing roots and sense of community lie. The position in relation to the second part of the announcement on boundaries is slightly different. For some time I have known that the community of Llanelly Hill was displeased about being part of Blaenau Gwent authority. I understand that that community has made strong representations to the Welsh Office to the effect that it wishes to be removed from the Blaenau Gwent area. I think that the community is divided on whether it wishes to be associated with a Monmouthshire authority or to return to the county local authority area of which it was part until 1974--namely, Breconshire. It has been my view that the Gillwern community should come to Breconshire. That being so, I welcome the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, although I recognise that some people in that community will be disappointed by it and would have wished to have been placed within a Monmouth local authority area.
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Sadly, we could not debate this matter without further accusations of political gerrymandering being made in the House. [Hon. Members : -- "It is true."] Hon. Members say that it is true, but I find it extraordinary that accusations of political gerrymandering should be levelled at me. I suppose that if I had been in a position to welcome the original proposal to remove the Ystradgynlais and Tawe Uchaf communities from my constituency, I would have been accused of gerrymandering, because the communities are predominantly Labour communities--indeed, I think that every ward is represented by a Labour councillor.But my opposition to the move is also presented as being for political advantage or as gerrymandering. I remind the House that the community of Llanelly Hill, which is now to come within the local authority area that I represent, also has a Labour councillor. I hope, therefore, that there will be no accusation of political gerrymandering in respect of that community. In fairness to the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), I should say that he made it clear that no such accusation could be made and I thank him for that.
The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney spoke eloquently about the position regarding his own local authority area and the proposal for a merged Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent authority. There is a responsibility on all of us who represent Welsh constituencies to examine the sensitivities of each area. In the weeks ahead I shall certainly be looking specifically at the arguments that are presented in relation to the hon. Gentleman's area and to Blaenau Gwent, which, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged in his speech, I also know very well.
I would say, however, that is it somewhat misleading to say that the communities of Rhymney and communities in Tredegar and Ebbw Vale are totally unconnected. We well know that Aneurin Bevan, when he represented the Ebbw Vale constituency, represented those three communities. I had the honour to fight my first failed electoral contest in Wales against his successor, Michael Foot, in my home town of Tredegar in 1974.
I repeat that we need to examine the proposals sensitively. The proposal to put together Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent involves two areas of roughly equal size. There may be some slight disproportion, but the two are roughly of equal size. How much greater would be the hon. Gentleman's anger if one of those areas were half the size of the other? That could be viewed along the lines of a takeover and that is one reason why I have strongly opposed the proposal that there should be a joint Brecon and Radnor authority--an alternative proposed by some to deal with the difficulties that we face in mid-Wales.
I make it absolutely clear that, ever since local government reorganisation started to be considered, I have been a strong supporter of the proposition that there should be separate local authorities for Radnorshire, Breconshire and Montgomeryshire--a recognition of those three shire counties.
I will not go over all the history of Radnorshire and Breconshire. We have heard on many occasions of the history of Montgomeryshire from the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). There are considerations even more important than history--geography and demographic range and the huge size of a
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Powys-wide authority. I have had to consider carefully the reasons why I am opposed to Powys. My opposition is based on a recognition of the extent to which people identify with the local community in which they live. One of the reasons--whatever the politics of the matter--why I argued so strongly for my constituents in Ystradgynlais and Tawe Uchaf was that they had that strong connection with Breconshire. Similarly, the strength of connection that people feel with Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire is important.I welcome the willingness of the Secretary of State to seek to change the proposals. I have examined carefully the model that he has produced, which he describes as the Powys model, but which is derided, in rather less grand language, by Opposition Members. The Secretary of State has shown that he is moving towards a recognition of the strength of local feeling. But real questions about that model remain and they are questions with which we shall have to deal during the debate.
For example, what powers will be exercised at local level in Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire and Breconshire? Another issue that I consider to be crucial is that of financial control. Unless we find a proper method of financing devolved down to the Breconshire and the Radnorshire area, the devolution of power will be meaningless.
Mr. Alex Carlile : Let me take the hon. Gentleman back a paragraph. Does he accept that, during the previous general election campaign, at a public meeting in the Banwy valley in Montgomeryshire, the then Secretary of State for Wales gave an unqualified promise that Montgomeryshire would be a unitary authority? Does he also accept that he made out that Radnorshire would be a unitary authority? If either of those statements is true, may I ask the hon. Gentleman how he squares a broken promise with the present situation?
Mr. Evans : In relation to the hon. and learned Gentleman's first proposition, he will understand that I was not in Montgomeryshire to hear those observations because I was busy fighting in the south. However, in relation to my own campaign, I have made it absolutely clear throughout, as I hope I have today, that I remain a committed supporter of separate unitary authorities within the areas that I represent.
Mr. Carlile : In the general election campaign, the hon. Gentleman said that that would happen.
Mr. Evans : The hon. and learned Gentleman says from a sedentary position that in the general election campaign I said that that would happen. I was a parliamentary candidate who was no part of the Government. The hon. and learned Gentleman is stretching the point if he says that I could have made any such claim. He knows that that could not be the case. All that I could do in the campaign was honestly to state my own position : that I did unequivocally then and that I have done unequivocally throughout the debate on the occasions when the hon. and learned Gentleman has been present to hear it. I return to the point that I was making before that intervention, which was on financial control. It is very important to have proper means of devolution of financial control to shire levels. It was perhaps inevitable that the Opposition parties would seek to attack the legitimacy of local government reorganisation in Wales on the basis of
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their now familiar claim that we cannot deal with local government reorganisation unless we have a parliament for Wales. I unequivocally oppose the creation of a separate parliament for Wales.In my maiden speech I made it clear that the establishment of any such Welsh assembly would be a major challenge to the constitutional integrity of Wales as an integral part of the United Kingdom. The arguments today are the same old, tired, familiar arguments that we heard in 1979.
It is said that an overweening bureaucracy of quangos runs Wales. We heard that again today. That is the very same argument that the Assembly for Wales campaign presented in 1979, after five years of Labour government. Of course, the result of the vote in Wales at the time was a resounding dismissal of the proposals that were put forward by all the Opposition parties combined. Only one political party in Wales argued against the establishment of a Welsh assembly in 1979--the Conservative party. The Conservative party's case was supported by more than 80 per cent. of the Welsh electorate. It has also been said that the matter is all to do with bureaucracy and quangos and that quangos are all run by Tories. It is as though the Labour party had never appointed a Labour supporter to a quango in Wales. My word, what short memories Opposition Members have. In the circumstances, I am bound to say that I would be hard put to come up with the name of any Conservative who was appointed to any quango in Wales until 1979, although, to the embarrassment of Opposition Members, we know the names of many of our political opponents who sit on public bodies in Wales today and did so during the 1980s. We heard the fact of the matter from the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson). There are not enough trade unionists, he said, on quangos in Wales. That is what Opposition Members think the matter is all about. Having made the point that I regret the omission of reference to reform of the national parks in the Gracious Speech, I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the Government on omitting from the Gracious Speech any reference to the creation of a divisive Welsh assembly which would be the first step in separating Wales from the United Kingdom.
9.2 pm
Mr. Denzil Davies (Llanelli) : I will be brief because it has been a long debate and other right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak. It is strange that we are debating Welsh local government when we have not yet heard the speech of the Secretary of State for Wales. That has made it rather difficult for us to debate the subject constructively, especially when we do not have a copy of the Bill. I hope that the Secretary of State will confirm that the long title of the Bill will not be drawn so tightly as to debar any amendments that will increase the number of unitary authorities beyond the 21 that he has in mind. I hope that he will give an assurance that the long title will not say "to reform local govvernment in Wales by establishing 21 authorities", because right hon. and hon. Members will not be able to increase the number by tabling amendments. As has been said, the Bill should not start in the House of Lords. I have always believed that there was a convention that only non-controversial Bills, and certainly not semi-constitutional or constitutional Bills, would be started in the House of Lords. However, mention of the
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conventions of the constitution always falls on stony ground. Since 1979, the Government have ridden roughshod over those conventions. They are not written down, but prople know what they are. The Government have taken a Leninist approach to the House of Commons and its conventions and they have ridden roughshod over them. One of the conventions is that such Bills should not be introduced in the House of Lords.Another convention of the constitution was that there was an attempt to keep some sort of political balance when appointments were made to quangos. Certainly, when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) was Secretary of State for Wales, he was too fair--he appointed too many people from other parties. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans) was not in the House at the time. We bent over backwards to keep a balance in appointments to quangos in Wales. That is another unwritten convention over which the Conservative Government have ridden roughshod. It is one reason why there has been no consensus in government in Wales over the past 14 years.
I was in the House when the previous Local Government Bill was introduced in 1972. That Bill related to the reorganisation of local government in both England and Wales. The two Ministers in charge of the Bill for England were Lord Walker, who was Secretary of State for the Environment, and the President of the Board of Trade, who was merely a lowly Under-Secretary at the Department of the Environment. I was a member of the Committee that dealt with the Bill. When we said that it would cost a lot of money, the Government shook their head in exactly the same way as the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister of State were shaking their heads earlier when Labour Members said that this will cost a lot of money. It will cost a lot of money in redundancy payments, index-linked pensions, reorganisation, closing down some buildings, construction of new buildings, moving computers and all the paraphernalia of change. The taxpayer about whom we hear so often from Conservative Members will have to pay. The income tax payer, the council tax payer and the VAT taxpayer will have to pay for another attempt by the Conservative Government to reorganise local government in Wales. However, they should leave it alone. I do not know why the Government--and, certainly, the ideologues from 1979 onwards--are obsessed with local government. They simply cannot cope with local government. They do not want it. They want to centralise economic authority --it is almost bureaucratic centralism in the case of Wales. They simply do not like local government and cannot cope with it.
Mr. Richards : Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, if the Labour party's policy had been implemented after the general election, all the costs that he has referred to as being unnecessary and unwarranted would have been incurred because it was the Labour party's policy to have unitary authorities in Wales?
Mr. Davies : Our policy is clear. It is to reorganise government in Wales and create a parliament. In 1979, there were deep divisions in the Labour party. If we mentioned the word "parliament", there were all sorts of problems, so we devised the rather odd word "assembly".
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The consensus has moved on and there is general agreement in Wales. If Conservative Members believe that, simply because a referendum was lost in 1979, the position is the same today, they do not know what is going on in Wales. Having watched the centralism that has gone on in economic policy and in the government of Wales since 1979, the people of Wales have no doubt at all about who would vote for a parliament. Within the context of establishing a parliament, we would establish unitary authorities.We all agree that unitary authorities are a good thing. However, at some stage--perhaps not now, but during debates on the Bill--we must address the question of checks and balances on unitary authorities. In the present system--in my area it is Dyfed county council and Llanelli borough council, Carmarthen district council and the district councils in Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire--there is a check and a balance, albeit not very sophisticated. In relation to planning matters, for instance, one authority deals with housing and planning ; another deals with highways. Quite often, that check and balance prevent the abuse of power.
My hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) mentioned Germany. How do we create checks and balances when all that we have are powerful unitary authorities? For example, local authorities are often able to give themselves planning permission and the Secretary of State is not interested and does not want to call the matter in. How do we create checks and balances when there are no elections for four years? If one third of a counbut we have to address our minds to the creation of the large and powerful unitary authorities to which we agreed. Where is the check? Where is the balance?
Planning law is the last area in British jurisprudence where there is very little rule of law. There are plenty of circulars and plenty of statutes, but practically anything goes in terms of planning decisions. Perhaps that will have to be dealt with in some Committee other than that which deals with the Bill.
I shall now mention my constituency. In 1972 the then Conservative Government decided to abolish Carmarthenshire, which was old-fashioned and which they did not want any more. It was abolished in 1972 and they created Dyfed. Dyfed has worked quite well. It was not the historical area of Dyfed --they got their history wrong there, but one does not expect a Conservative Government to understand Welsh history and the history of areas like mine.
When the Government abolished Carmarthenshire they abolished the old Llanelli borough council, which covered the town of Llanelli. The hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Mr. Richards) knows the region well. They also abolished Llanelli rural district council, which covered the old anthracite mining areas of the Gwendraed valley. There was a reason for those two councils, because they related to the economic tradition and the economic activities in the area. They abolished Burry port urban district council and the old borough of Kidwelly, which had a long history. They abolished them all. I do not know why. Local government has not necessarily improved as a
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result and I do not know whether it is cheaper as a result ; but there we are, they abolished about four councils in my constituency. Now the Government are bringing back the county of Carmarthenshire and abolishing Dyfed. They will now abolish the sole remaining council in Llanelli--Llanelli borough council, which covers the old areas of the town, the Gwendraed valley, Burry Port and Kidwelly. Llanelli will be left without any councils, apart from the community councils. Although I do not denigrate them, I do not consider that to be a satisfactory situation for an area with the traditions, history, spirit and sense of community that Llanelli has.I have to ask myself, what have we done? What have two Conservative Governments got against Llanelli that from 1972 onwards and in 1993 they wipe out one council after the other? Will the Secretary of State tell us why--if not in his winding-up speech, perhaps later?
Mr. Richards : Is the right hon. Gentleman trying to tell the House that in those years Llanelli borough council discharged its duties and responsibilities impartially and fairly to all?
Mr. Davies : Llanelli borough council does a reasonably good job, as do most councils in Wales, in difficult circumstances, with all the constraints that the Government place upon local authorities. It is easy to find mistakes and easy to criticise local councillors who do a difficult job--much more difficult, in many ways, than that of a Member of Parliament. Why was it necessary for Conservative Governments from 1972 to 1993, to wipe out practically all the local authorities in my constituency?
We will see what happens in the Committee stage of the Bill. I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to assure me that it will be possible to increase the number of authorities and that the figure 21 will not be written on to a tablet of stone so that we are unable to amend it.
The Government should have introduced a Welsh assembly and a Welsh parliament, with the metropolitan authorities underneath. They do not wish to do so and they will make another botched job of Welsh local government reorganisation.
9.15 pm
Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus, East) : As a councillor who served during the previous reorganisation, I know exactly what the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) means. It is a pity that some of the same mistakes are being repeated. Central Government have consistently failed to understand the importance, the stature and the status of local authorities- -more's the pity.
This Government of a million mistakes is about to make another. Having completely fouled up over the poss tax fiasco, the Tories are rushing into an ill-thought-out restructuring which will not last. These proposals do not meet the needs of Scotland's local government. They do not mirror local communities, nor do they conform with the wishes of the Scottish people. This is a rushed reorganisation which no one wants and with which no one has identified. It could, and should, have been so very different. I must ask why this is happening against the wishes of the people and in such a rushed and hassled fashion. The Government have set impossible timetables and imposed their gerrymandered proposals. This is a
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Government of haste and waste, rushing proposals through, and throwing money at them that would be better spent on providing local government services.Many of the boundaries have no basis in local communities. One authority is split by the Firth of Forth, another by a land corridor and another by the Lammermuir hills--a geographical fact that the Government seem not to have noticed. The proposal for the highlands will create a local authority that is geographically larger than Wales. Whatever kind of government that is, it is certainly not local. There is no sense in the proposals. That is especially true because there has been no real local participation in them. England gets a commission and a budget of £12 million. All we get is a botched scheme that will not last precisely because it does not reflect the reality of the Scottish communities which it is supposedly designed to serve. Because of that, the Government's proposals are fatally flawed.
The Secretary of State has said :
"Parliament will decide the boundaries".
But using the lottery of amendments in Committee and on Report is surely the worst way to approach an issue that is fundamental to the success or failure of the changes. The Secretary of State was actually hinting to his Back Benchers that, if they moved in the right direction, they might get some concessions. I hope that the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) takes the hint. I am sure that the people of Kincardineshire will welcome it if he takes advantage of such an offer. However, I regret that the Secretary of State's offer will probably not extend beyond the Conservative Benches.
The truth is that the people of Scotland and the nature of our communities should decide the boundaries, not the Government, through diktat or some sort of lottery by amendment in Committee and on Report. The Scottish people should have been consulted properly and at length. As I said, England gets a commission and a budget of £12 million, but we get gerrymandering, and it is not good enough. On the size of the authorities, may I draw the attention of the Secretary of State to the report of the Rowntree Foundation entitled "The impact of population size on local authority costs and effectiveness", dated June 1993. From studying England, the report concluded :
"Evidence does not suggest a straightforward and consistent link between population size and cost and/or effectiveness There are some statistical links between population size and cost and/or effectiveness but such links can point either way".
The foundation found that, on housing, there was
"a tendency for smaller authorities to be more effective", whereas in education a
"consistent if weak link suggests that population size influences both costs and performance of services".
The main finding in the report was that
"such links can point either way".
The report also points out that there is no perfect size for the delivery of local government services. Therefore, if, within reason, the size of the authority is not crucial, we are free to concentrate on relating councils to established local communities. The Government's failure to do this is an irrecoverable error. We are about to see an unnecessary period of dislocation and disruption in a local government system which provides a vast range of high quality essential daily services to every family and individual in Scotland. In addition to parallel authorities, staff changes, property
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transfers and the other disruptions that we have seen in the past, the Government are adding the extra destabilising burdens of compulsory competitive tendering and service provision changes. The reorganisation is not the only major change facing councils and council staff. Devolved school management, school development planning, and five to 14-year-old development programmes are all happening at the same time as community care, reform of the police service and the extension of CCT. All those changes are central Government measures which have been heaped upon local authorities. The Government have a lot to answer for in their attitude towards our local authorities.The Government claim that there will be simplicity in the new system, but that is simply not so. There is an inbuilt recipe for confusion in their proposals. The Government are replacing a two-tier system with a multi-tier system containing confused responsibilities, and a reduction in the numbers of elected councillors to preside over the changes.
There will be 28 new councils, of differing sizes, while the size of the police and fire services will remain at their regional levels ; and who knows what size the water boards will be? To that will be added new joint boards of all sizes. It is a patchwork quilt of a system in the making.
There is a problem of democracy at the heart of these proposals, which will leave Scotland with the lowest proportion of elected representatives per head of population in western Europe. That is what the Government are doing to us. Fewer councillors allied to more responsibility can only mean an increase in work loads for the new system, and it will be hit with problems at the most vulnerable settling-in period.
There has been no mention of a timetable for CCT, but it was mentioned in the Queen's Speech. The White Paper speaks about the "need to avoid overloading the management of Councils during the transitional period."
What do the Government intend to do, because CCT will hit those councils when they are at their most vulnerable?
In conclusion-- [Interruption.] I am tempted to continue, because there is a message that Conservatives should hear.
Scotland will be run by a series of non-elected, non-accountable quangos, which are the opposite of democracy. That is what the Government are forcing on the Scottish people, and that is why they have been rejected by them. Under these proposals, even children's panels will be herded off to another non-elected quango appointed by the Secretary of State, which no doubt will be packed by his cronies. That is the way the Tories run Scotland. They cannot get elected, so they do it by back-door, undemocratic methods.
The Government's proposals to hive off Scotland's water services to quangos is entirely unacceptable--no one wants it or supports it. It illustrates the arrogance of the Government towards the people of Scotland. The water boards are a paving measure towards eventual privatisation. The out-of- touch Government are wrong about the issue, which the Secretary of State avoided mentioning in his speech. He may hide, but he will have to come out into the open and explain what the Government will do about it.
This is not an enabling reform ; it is a disabling one. It is a blatant attack on local government and local democracy, and it is, quite simply, a mistake.
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9.23 pmMr. Ron Davies (Caerphilly) : We got off to a good start this afternoon when we had the farcical situation of the Secretary of State for Scotland making a statement on behalf of an English Member of Parliament who happens to be the Secretary of State for Wales. That statement clearly illustrated to us all what we have come to understand over recent months-- that the process of local government reform in Wales has been an absolute shambles.
It is clear that the introduction of the reforms to Wales will be delayed. That represents intense embarrassment for the Government and the complete humiliation of the Secretary of State. That delay is due to the failure of the right hon. Gentleman to get agreement in Cabinet to present the Bill first to the House. The right hon. Gentleman and his Cabinet colleagues are aware that the timetable for the Bill is now unpredictable and that therefore the Secretary of State is unable to guarantee the introduction of the new authorities by 1995 as promised.
The problem is that Wales is now paying the price for the fact that the Secretary of State is an outrider in the Cabinet. He lacks influence and the confidence of his colleagues. As a result, two precedents have been created. First, a controversial Bill, which undoubtedly affects the constitution of Wales, will be presented first to the House of Lords. That will encourage opposition and will result in a lengthy and detailed examination of the Bill in this House and in the other place. I do not believe that the cause of local government in Wales will be served by the process to be followed in the next 12 months.
Today we have also witnessed the extraordinary precedent of a statement being presented at the conclusion of a debate. If the Secretary of State had an announcement to make about the timetable for the legislation, I should have thought that there was some logic--we attempted to press the Secretary of State to understand this--in him intervening at the start of the debate to say just that. We have listened to the contributions from the Front-Bench spokesmen and have sat here for more than six hours. At no time, however, has the Secretary of State attempted to intervene, despite our encouragement, to make his intentions clear. It is a matter of great regret that he did not do so.
It is also a matter of regret to me that the Secretary of State has not yet come to realise that there is a large measure of agreement in Wales on the reform of local government. I do not understand why on earth the Secretary of State is not prepared to consult and, on the basis of that consultation, to work with the existing consensus. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) stressed that point. What on earth are the Government afraid of? Why is the Secretary of State frightened to consult and to work on the basis of consensus?
What the debate has emphatically demonstrated is that the Government's proposals for local government reform in Scotland and Wales will not command any support from the people of those nations. They are also overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of Members of Parliament who represent constituencies in those countries. If the legislation reaches the statute book, it will serve the interests of the Tory party, at the whim of a Government with no mandate in Scotland and Wales. It will be voted for by hon. Members who represent English
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constituencies who have neither sought nor received votes from the people who will be exclusively affected by the proposed changes. Those changes have nothing to do with improving local government. They are not designed to foster civic pride nor to enhance the sense of community. They are not intended to improve the quality and range of public services. Since they are devoid of public or popular support, they are nothing to do with improving or extending the democratic process in Scotland and Wales. If they will do anything, they will help to frustrate the legitimate aspirations of our two nations for greater control of our own affairs. The proposals run counter to all the tides of politics, public affairs and government, not only in Britain but in the whole of western Europe. They will therefore be met with robust and unremitting opposition when the Bills are eventually presented to the House.Of greatest concern to those of us who value the democratic process is that the proposals are solely for Tory party political interests. It speaks volumes for the Tory party and its representatives in Parliament that they will put their names and, ultimately, their votes to a process that is at best gerrymandering and at worst corruption.
It is broadly agreed in Wales that the existing system of local government needs reform. The system itself is a result of reform foisted on Wales in 1974 by a Tory Government who would not listen and insisted that the way forward was not by seeking consent but by centralist prescription. It is now the height of cynicism for the Government to use their past failures as an excuse to meddle further in the affairs of Wales when they have neither a mandate nor a consensus and when their guiding principle is nothing but a shabby attempt to shore up the slender majorities of the remaining Tory Members in Wales.
Both the Secretary of State and his predecessor have made much of the fact that there is broad agreement in Wales for the creation of unitary authorities and that they have consulted widely. That assertion is untrue and disreputable, and the Secretary of State knows it. At the last election the Opposition parties in Wales were united in advocating reorganisation and in a determination that the most important reform of government in Wales was to democratise the Welsh Office. Without an all-Wales elected body to provide a co-ordinating framework, it is impossible to construct a system of unitary authorities that can reflect the variety of natural communities in Wales while ensuring that services such as education, social services, transport and planning are effectively delivered and co- ordinated.
If the Secretary of State has listened to the answers to the questions that he has asked, he will know that. The overwhelming majority of parliamentarians and, almost without exception, the whole of local government in Wales have told him that, but he knows that the Tory party can never concede to Wales greater control over its own affairs.
The Conservative party is now in terminal decline in Wales, which is why we have seen the disgraceful manipulations of the quango system referred to devastatingly by my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson). It is only by the nepotism of a system that can parachute into public office people who would never be elected that the Tory party can hope to retain an influence over our public affairs.
The events of the past 14 years in public life in Wales give the clearest indication of the arrogance and contempt
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shown to Wales by successive Conservative Governments. The democratic and accountable public sector--elected local government--has seen its powers limited and its resources cut. From 55 per cent. in 1979, local government expenditure has fallen as a percentage of total Welsh Office spend to 45 per cent. in the current financial year.At the same time, there has been an explosion in the number, power and influence of quangos. They have doubled in number from 40 in 1979 to 80 in 1993, and there will be more to come as our health and education services are taken further out of public control. In cash terms, there has been a 246 per cent. increase in quango expenditure from 1979 and quangos now account for one third of Welsh Office expenditure.
Mr. Redwood : If people, in a free vote, decide that their school should be differently governed and that their governors should then have more powers and more direct control over the budget, how is that less democratic than the system that the hon. Gentleman recommends? Surely that is the very essence of truly local democracy.
Mr. Davies : I trust two things--first, that the Secretary of State and his colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for education, will be even-handed in their treatment of education in Wales and ensure that local authorities and schools that decide to remain in the public sector will be treated on the same basis as those which decide to opt out ; and, secondly, that the Secretary of State will recognise decisions taken by local government and by individual schools to remain in the public sector, as undoubtedly they will increasingly do.
The nepotism is bad enough, but in Welsh politics the picture is even more corrupt. As Wales has voted more solidly anti-Tory, the Tory influence has been extended by patronage. In the county council elections in 1993, the Tory party managed to win 21 of the 502 seats available. If the present local government plans go through, for the first time there will be more appointed quango members--1,400--than elected local authority members-- 1,150. I remind the Secretary of State, since he is proud of his 100 per cent. rating as an unreconstructed Thatcherite, of what his mentor said about the matter in 1980. Referring to quangos, she said :
"There will always be pressure for new bodies. We shall be robust in resisting them."
We know what the present Prime Minister thinks about the present Secretary of State for Wales. The Secretary of State would be well advised to stay out of handbag range of the Prime Minister's predecessor.
Of course, we have not heard a defence of the local government changes. No one has argued that they will provide better local services or that the new authorities will be more identifiable with the communities that they serve. If that is true, when the Secretary of State decides to take Coychurch out of the proposed Vale of Glamorgan, how can he decide to leave in the communities of St. Brides, Ewenny and Wick? In public referendums, those areas had turnouts of more than 75 per cent. Each community had a positive vote of 85 per cent. to remain with Bridgend and the borough of Ogwr. What price democracy? What price can there be?
Mr. Walter Sweeney (Vale of Glamorgan) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Davies : No. I am sorry, but if the hon. Gentleman had wanted to make a speech, he should have done as I
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have done and remained in the Chamber since the start of the debate. I have no doubt that, if he had risen, he would have been called to speak.Last Friday, the Secretary of State had the chance in the Western Mail to defend his proposals. In an article quaintly described as "John Redwood outlining his vision for the future", he said not one word about the new councils. His defence of his refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming case for an assembly was contained in one small paragraph. He said :
"They want to charge you extra tax for the privilege of being Welsh."
No one has suggested that extra tax will be paid, but I will not take that criticism from a Tory party that was re-elected last year on the basis of lies and deception about its proposals for tax increases. The party which gave us VAT, extra VAT to pay for the poll tax, extra VAT on fuel to meet the spending deficit, and an extra £8.50 for each family from next April is in no position to lecture anybody about tax increases.
The Secretary of State went on to say :
"They want to spend more of the money on bureaucracy".
Last week the right hon. Gentleman caused private panic in the Tory party and a public rebuke because he drew attention to the unique ability of the Tory party to do just that. We have a new system of government in Wales. The Secretary of State does not make speeches but calls representatives of the press and gets his press officer to read them a handout.
It makes interesting reading. It starts :
"I am a child of the National Health Service."
We know that the Prime Minister questions the Secretary of State's parentage, and I am sure that the Secretary of State is getting his retaliation in, but he shows great vision. He goes on to say : "The task before us is to create a Health Service for the next century".
That is startling. It is 1993. What does he think the task before us is--to create it for the 19th century? He continues :
"There is a restlessness among some of the medical staff about the number of men in grey suits".
I thought that it was the men in white coats who were causing problems in the Tory party. The men in grey suits have seen, as a direct result of the reforms of the Tory party, a 262 per cent. increase in their number and a 900 per cent. increase in their salaries. The Secretary of State is in no position to lecture us about an increase in bureaucracy.
The Secretary of State showed remarkable insight. He went on to say :
"The doctor and nurse, all the clinical staff, are there as the most important people dealing with the patients."
That is reassuring. He concludes :
"Some will say my view is too simple minded".
I think that he will find a measure of agreement on that. The problem facing the Secretary of State is an inheritance from his predecessor. There is no clear vision and no understanding of why and how local government should be reformed. They have fallen between the trap of a larger number of smaller authorities and a smaller number of large authorities.
I refer the Secretary of State to some advice that was reported in The Independent this morning. It was advice given to the Local Government Commission in England : "Unitary authorities"--I commend this to the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans)-- "covering either a very large area or a very small population will need a specially strong justification".
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