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Mr. Rendel: Yes, but this is the last time that I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Allason: May I remind the hon. Gentleman--remind him, that is, if he has the slightest knowledge of Devon--that the Torbay consultation had the second highest percentage return in the country? In the first consultation exercise, Exeter demonstrated complete apathy, and no interest whatever in unitary status. Only the second time round was there some local feeling in favour of unitary status. As a result, there was a further review, which decided, rightly, that there was not sufficient local support for unitary status. The fact that the hon. Gentleman puts Torbay and Exeter in the same bag demonstrates his complete ignorance of everything west of Bristol.

Mr. Rendel: I understand that the concern of the Local Government Commission is that Exeter is an important county centre--certainly that is a reasonable argument--but similar arguments could have been, and in some cases were, advanced for other areas, such as Leicester, Stoke-on-Trent and several other cities.

The somewhat arbitrary nature of the review process, and the failure to match the proposals to the public will, is clearly highlighted in the Devon order. The Government have also ignored the fears of the people of South Hams that they will be squeezed between the two unitary authorities of Torbay and Plymouth, which lie on either side of it.

The Essex proposals that I want to discuss relate mainly to Thurrock and Southend. In the direct responses--sadly, those too are old data from 1994--the public in Thurrock supported a unitary authority, not by a huge majority, but by 41 per cent. as opposed to 35 per cent. In Southend, there was a higher level of support for a unitary authority--61 per cent. to 36 per cent. The MORI poll in Thurrock found a small majority in favour--43 per cent. to 39 per cent. That may not be especially significant, but in Southend it found a rather bigger majority--41 per cent. to 24 per cent.--in favour of at least some modified form of two-tier system plus a unitary Southend.

In the rest of the county, support was not good, with 33 per cent., as opposed to 19 per cent., favouring the status quo. I have two further points to make about the order for Essex, because the Government have missed two opportunities. In Southend, the new unitary authority has only 39 councillors, and it is clear that local feeling is that that is not enough to cover all the new functions.

The second point is about Billericay, which has not been formed into a new joint authority with Brentwood, although there is considerable local support for that idea. That is another missed opportunity, which the Government would have done well to seize.

The plans for Berkshire are a tragedy, because there was a really good solution for the county, which was proposed at an early stage and widely supported--by the county council as much as by anybody else, as has already

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been said. That solution would have been supported not only by the county but by all the districts and by the vast majority of the people of Berkshire.

The solution would have been to create four unitary authorities, one each for the districts of Newbury, Slough and Reading, and another to cover the rest of the area. It would have been widely supported, and to my mind was much the best solution. Unfortunately, at that point, the right hon. Member for Wokingham put his oar in and started to insist on a separate unitary authority for Wokingham--an idea that even the recently elected district council there, which is more sensible, has now rejected.

First we moved to five unitary authorities for Berkshire, then, finally, the Secretary of State decided that we should go for all six, and turn all the current district council areas into unitary authorities. That solution has never been put out to proper public consultation. It was never part of the original consultation process.

The direct responses to the original proposals showed little support for the idea of no change. There was considerable support for unitary authorities in Berkshire, and I am sure that there still is. When the MORI poll was taken, there was still strong support for the Newbury area, in particular, to become a unitary authority, and considerable support, although rather less than in Newbury, in some other parts of Berkshire.

The whole thing has become a dreadful mess. For Reading, Slough and Newbury, the solution is much the same as it was always intended to be, apart from minor changes to some of the boundaries. I am sure that we all wish to support those new unitary authorities, but the mess that has been made of the rest of Berkshire as a result of the intervention of some of the Conservative Members involved cannot be supported by the House.

Mr. Gummer: Will the hon. Gentleman explain why it is such a mess to have a unitary authority in Wokingham, but it is not a mess to have a unitary authority in Newbury? If the arrangement is so clearly a mess, will he explain why, during the 30 minutes that he spent with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration, although he was invited every two minutes or so to tell us about it, he did not do so, but has left it until now to come and tell us about it? Why has he been so slow, so trappist, in his views on Berkshire, when he is so ready to judge everywhere else in the country, which he has not visited?

Mr. Rendel: I am delighted to reply to the Secretary of State. On that occasion, I was part of a delegation from the local area and, as Newbury's Member of Parliament, I had come to talk about what should be done for Newbury. That is why I responded as I did.

Mr. Gummer: Why is it a mess to have a single unitary authority for Wokingham, which has 150,000 people, but not a mess to have one for Newbury, which has 141,000 people? Why, when the councillors who came with the hon. Gentleman to the meeting about Newbury urged him to tell my right hon. Friend about his

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views on the rest of the county, did he refuse to do what they wanted? In the end, they were almost as bemused as my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Rendel: I find it quite extraordinary that the Secretary of State should regard the number of people in a particular unitary authority as the relevant criterion, as I understand that a unitary authority of only 30,000 was recently created--very much smaller than Newbury or Wokingham. The point is not the number of people in the area, but whether the area hangs together as a sensible, viable unitary authority area. That is the question to which we must respond. It is quite clear that, whereas Newbury feels strongly that it is part of a whole, the same is not true of Wokingham, which contains large parts of what in effect are the suburbs of Reading, as well as areas that are much more countrified.

Mr. Redwood: I thought that we might hear a fuller explanation of the hon. Gentleman's views on Berkshire, but I see that he does not have any formed views on Berkshire even to this day.

Why does the hon. Gentleman think that Wokingham and Bracknell, with Windsor and Maidenhead, would make a single area that wanted to be governed together? I can tell him that my constituents and those of my hon. Friends in neighbouring constituencies know that that is not the view of our electorate, and we have represented their views.

Mr. Rendel: I am delighted to hear that that is the right hon. Gentleman's view of what his electorate thinks, but he may take a different view when they begin to turn against him, as I am sure they rapidly will if the proposal goes ahead at his behest.

What is wanted in Nottingham--this is the difficulty with this order--is not what is wanted in the rest of the county, which is one of the great problems with the Government's cherry picking solution to the local government review. Nottingham's direct responses to the commission showed that there was no clear call for unitaries, but there was strong support for no change. The MORI opinion poll showed that, in the county as a whole, 20 per cent. supported the unitary city, 35 per cent. supported no change and 45 per cent. supported something else. In the city itself, there was marginal support for a unitary authority to be set up--24 per cent. as against 21 per cent. for no change--but 55 per cent. supported something else. It is significant that, in this case, the further we have gone, and the more time we have taken over the review, the more people seem to have turned against the solution currently proposed by the Government.

For Cambridgeshire, the direct responses from Peterborough showed that only 19 per cent. were in favour of a unitary city, while 71 per cent. were in favour of no change. Even the MORI opinion poll showed that, in the city of Peterborough, only some 40 per cent. were in favour of a unitary city and 40 per cent. were against it, while in the rest of the county it was 40 per cent. to 30 per cent. in favour of the status quo. It is true to say, however, that it would be a viable unitary authority--it hangs together in a way in which the unitary authority of Wokingham does not--and it is not central to Cambridgeshire, which is a further important point.

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Indeed, Peterborough city council fully supports this order, so there are some good reasons for allowing it to go through.

In Cheshire, the direct responses were interesting. Organisations in Halton were some 2:1 in favour of a unitary Halton, but organisations in Warrington were 4:3 against. In the rest of the county, some 7:1 responses from organisations were against--a much stronger feeling. Direct responses from the public in Halton were 2:1 against. In Warrington, they were 3:1 against--getting stronger. In the rest of the county, 95 per cent. were against. The MORI opinion poll shows that, in Halton, there was marginal support for the unitary authority--39 per cent. to 34 per cent. In Warrington, people were against it by a similar majority--41 per cent. to 33 per cent. In the rest of the county, they were 2:1 against.

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