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Mr. Kevan Jones : Will the boundaries used for the county of Durham be the existing county council boundaries or the previous county council boundaries, which included, for example, Darlington, which was removed as a unitary authority?
Mr. Raynsford: The boundaries will include the existing county council area, excluding those parts that are now in separate unitary authorities, as part of our principle that only those people who are affected should determine the future structure of local government. Those people in Darlington are already in a unitary authority; they are not in a two-tier authority. There would therefore be no change to the local government arrangements affecting them, so they are excluded.
The one caveat that I would add is that if—I am not suggesting that this would happen—there were to be a decision by the Secretary of State that the north-east should be an area that should proceed to a referendum, and if the boundary committee recommended that one of the options should involve crossing the Northumberland and Durham boundaries, there could be a wider county, which would cover both Northumberland and Durham. I do not raise that matter to alarm my hon. Friend. I mention it only because that is implicit in the proposals. There are other parts of the country where I suspect that such an outcome might be more likely, so he should be aware that that is a possibility. [Interruption.] I have clearly been unwise in raising that spectre, so I shall give way to my hon. Friend.
Mr. Jones: May I caution my right hon. Friend, and not just in terms of going over the border into Northumberland? Some people will argue that Darlington, for example, should come back into the traditional county of Durham, as it was until a few years ago, but my right hon. Friend should resist such a temptation because that would simply unpick local government in County Durham.
Mr. Raynsford: I am happy to give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks.
I should add one caveat. We have also taken the view that, although we do not intend existing unitary authorities to be otherwise affected, in some circumstances it might be appropriate, as part of local government reorganisation, to suggest that a part of an existing two-tier area might become part of an existing unitary authority. We have not ruled that out. That would not mean unravelling the existing unitaries, but it might involve them having additional areas attached to them. That option is there and we think it sensible.
Mr. Hammond: I was about to ask the Minister about that issue, which we shall come to later, but in those circumstances, by his own logic, should not the voters in the unitary area that is about to have attached to it part of a two-tier area also have an opportunity to vote on that proposal, because it will affect them? The nature of their local authority will change.
Mr. Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman is right that there is some effect, but it is not the same as the consequence of a change from an existing two-tier to a unitary structure of local government. The effect is much more peripheral. The fear and the concern was that the future of local government in two-tier areas might be unduly influenced by the votes of people not in two-tier local government. On balance, we felt it right that the vote should be restricted to people within existing two-tier areas.
Were it suggested, for example, that parts of North Yorkshire might be annexed to existing unitaries in west Yorkshire, if the vote was to be extended to the people of those big metropolitan authorities in west Yorkshire, an overwhelming vote could be accorded to those people. We simply did not feel that that was right. It was not in keeping with the spirit of what we sought to do. I accept the hon. Gentleman's point that there is some, largely peripheral impact, but it will not change the structure of local government and we felt it right to keep to the principle that it is the people within the two-tier areas who should have the vote in such referendums.
Mr. Stringer: I might surprise my right hon. Friend when I say that I welcome this group of amendments, which removes one of the worst aspects of the Bill, but until he started his explanation I had not really understood that the amendments would allow for the possibility of an amalgamation between Lancashire and Cheshire. Is that right? Can my right hon. Friend help me on that?
1.45 pm
Mr. Raynsford: No, it is not envisaged that there should be an amalgamation between existing counties, but let me give the example that has already been suggested by one of the county councils in the north-west region. If it was proposed as part of the structure for unitary local government in Cumbria and Lancashire that a single unitary should be created in the Morecambe Bay area, which crossed the boundaries between Lancashire and Cumbria, the second referendum, in which people would be asked to vote on their preferred option for unitary local government in
their area, would have to embrace the voters in both Cumbria and Lancashire, because one of the options crossed the border. That would be the one area where the two would come together. Usually, our objective would be that the second vote would be on a county basis within each individual county, but where a boundary committee proposal crossed county boundaries there would be a need for a mechanism to allow people in the affected areas to vote, and the only way that we could see that operating would be for the two counties to vote together. Only in that sense would they be brought together. There would be no question of a reorganisation of the two counties into a single county. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend.The options put to voters in the referendum will be based on recommendations by the boundary committee. We are quite clear that those must be independent recommendations from the independent boundary committee. It will be required to produce at least two different unitary options. There may be more. In some cases it might be sensible to have more than two options, but there must in all cases be at least two.
Mr. Hammond: The Minister has just emphasised the importance of the recommendations of the boundary committee being independent. Will he confirm that before those recommendations are put to the referendum the Secretary of State will have the opportunity to reject any of the boundary committee's recommendations or direct it to make further recommendations to him? That is not most people's definition of fully independent recommendations.
Mr. Raynsford: I would say that it is, and it is entirely consistent with the existing framework of the relationship of the boundary committee with the Secretary of State, because the Secretary of State has the responsibility of implementing proposals. If the Secretary of State does not believe that one of the options is workable in practice, it would be curious if he had no option to request the boundary committee to review the matter. The Secretary of State has that option, but it is the boundary committee that ultimately decides. The Secretary of State cannot tell the boundary committee what option to come up with; he can only say that, in a particular instance, he feels, for the reasons spelt out, that the proposal is simply not workable and should be reconsidered. If the Secretary of State were to do that he would have to have sound grounds indeed, because it would be public knowledge and it would be open to challenge. Clearly, it is not something that would be undertaken lightly. However, there must be that safeguard because it is the Secretary of State's responsibility to implement the arrangements, and if there are genuine concerns that in the course of its considerations the boundary committee had not necessarily considered all the factors, there must be an option to refer it back to the committee. It will then reconsider the matter and make proposals, which will be put to people in a referendum.
Mr. Beith: May I counsel the Minister against contemplating using the power to reject radical approaches by the boundary committee on the basis of traditionalist conceptions in Whitehall about the appropriate size for a local authority? Such conceptions
may not take account of the fact that local authorities now contract out much more of their work rather than provide all their services directly. For example, if the committee makes the radical recommendation that unitary authorities can be relatively small, will he not simply reject the proposal out of hand because it does not fit the traditional philosophies of his Department?
Mr. Raynsford: I can give the right hon. Gentleman exactly the assurance for which he is looking. We have no preconception about the potential outcome. We have been very clear about not putting such criteria into the guidance about size, which we have already consulted on and which we intend to issue to the boundary committee. There is a strong focus on the need for local government to be effective. Clearly, the boundary committee will need to take into account factors relating to size when considering that need. There is no preconception one way or another and certainly not against a radical solution, but there is a practical concern: as the Secretary of State has to implement the recommendations, we must be able to query a proposal that does not seem satisfactory or implementable.
Mr. Edward Davey: For the benefit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), I should like to clarify that point. Will the Minister confirm that the guidance given to the boundary committee does not specify the minimum size for a unitary authority? As he will recall, we probed him about that and were keen to ensure that that was the case.
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