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Mr. Don Foster: Since the hon. Gentleman is so keen on stressing the importance of opposition, could he make a clear statement as to whether his party will vote against these proposals?
Mr. Hammond: I shall come to that right now. We will not be dividing the House on this issue, and the reason is clear for everyone in the House to see: because of the arithmetic. We know that the Government will get their way in this House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Christopher Leslie): It did not stop you last night.
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman says that, but of course the Government will get their way in this House. However, in the other place there is a real chance to achieve some of the changes that we and the Liberal Democrats sought. There is a real chance to change this Bill and incorporate some of those provisions that we argued for in Committee and on Report.
Liberal Democrats know that they had a real chance of securing a Government compromise in the other place because of the self-imposed time limits—[Interruption.] Let me tell the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) that the single change that he opted for, in preference to all the other changes that he sought, is a poor choice. The Liberal Democrats have not only acquiesced in the matter, but have actively conspired with the Government to ensure the demise of our counties in any areas where elected regional assemblies are set up.
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Mr. Edward Davey: I will deal with all the hon. Gentleman's points in my speech. However, he quoted the noble Lord Rooker in the other place, who said:
- "If this measure is decoupled"—
- "there will not be a referendum because there will not be a Bill. We shall take it away."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 March 2003; Vol. 1905, c. 1515.]
Mr. Hammond: I believe that that is what the honourable Gentleman's noble Friend Lord Greaves described as "threats, bluster and blackmail" from the Minister. Lord Greaves went on to say that, regrettably, his party—the Liberal Democrats—had agreed to be "blackmailed, bullied and browbeaten". That is not the best way to proceed, certainly not in the other place, which is renowned for its gentlemanly—I should say gentle—behaviour.
Liberal Democrats have always been strong supporters of elected regional assemblies, so by extension Liberal Democrat policy should now be viewed as firmly in favour of the abolition of county councils and our two-tier system of local government. It is even worse than that. The original proposal in the Bill was for the boundary commission to make a single unitary recommendation. That would have created considerable disruption and manoeuvring between different parties and different authorities in the area. We all recognised in Committee that disruption at local government level, which inevitably impacts on services, is to be avoided if possible. Now we are to have multiple options and a question that will not be resolved by the time that the boundary committee reports to the Secretary of State, which it would have been in the Commons version of the Bill.
All that will have a negative impact on service delivery and will prolong and deepen the disruption at local government level. It will impact on the ability of local authorities to recruit and retain staff in the face of uncertainty about their future status—indeed, their survival—and it will be a distraction from the real job, which gets harder by the day, of trying to deliver decent services to local people. The Government and—it seems—the Liberal Democrats are still driven by dogma and ideology. They are prepared to sacrifice the issues of real concern to the public—service delivery—for their own arcane agenda of constitutional reform. They want to create assemblies that will impose huge costs, but not deliver a single extra teacher or nurse, or put a single extra policeman on our streets. That message will not be lost on local electors as they go to the polls tomorrow.
Joyce Quin: In an earlier intervention on my right hon. Friend the Minister, I warmly welcomed the amendments and I should now like to expand on my intervention.
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), who was for a long time coy about how he intended to react to the amendments and whether he would vote against them. He then declared that because of the parliamentary arithmetic, he would not vote against them, which suggests that from now on the Opposition will call no more votes. That would certainly provide a big change to parliamentary procedures.
I am glad that the amendment was proposed in the other place and equally glad that the Government agreed to it. Rather than it being some sort of cynical arrangement, as suggested by Conservative Members, I view it as a wholly sensible compromise between the Government's understandable desire not to have too many tiers of government, and their intention to ensure that people living in the areas that will be affected by local government reorganisation are not dictated to and outvoted by people already living in the unitary areas within regions, which tend to be the more populous districts.
As a Tynesider and a Member of Parliament who represents parts of both Tyneside and Wearside, I feel deeply uncomfortable at the thought of voting to ensure a particular local government outcome in the county areas of Northumberland and Durham in my region. I am glad that, as a result of the compromise, I will no longer be put in that position and I can now happily vote
for regional government without feeling that I am compromising the democratic process—my earlier worry—in any way.I have never been, and am still not, keen on the link between regional government and local government reorganisation, because I believe that they are separate issues, which should be dealt with separately on their own merits. Some of the complexities that have arisen—they have already been raised in the debate—somewhat reinforce my viewpoint, but I nevertheless share the Government's perspective on the advantages of unitary local government and their desire to give people in affected areas a degree of choice. Decrying that degree of choice comes strange from Conservative Members, who certainly gave the voters in Tyne and Wear no choice at all about the form of unitary government that they would have when the Tyne and Wear county council was abolished. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) also blew the gaff effectively on the Opposition's claim that they were defending county councils because it is clear that the boundary commissions could recommend the existing county area as the unitary authority of the future. At that point, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge seemed less interested in Durham than in Kent, but I remind him that they are both county council areas.
Mr. Kevan Jones: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the sudden conversion of the Conservative party to the sacrosanctity of county councils is misplaced? The Local Government Act 1972 reduced the number of county councils from 58 to 47, and every major change in county boundaries has taken place under a Conservative Government.
Joyce Quin: My hon. Friend takes the words out of my mouth. I intended to make the point strongly that the Conservatives' reputation as the wreckers of historic counties will remain firmly intact, even after today's proceedings. The major changes to historic counties—and their destruction—were certainly carried out by the Conservatives' local government reforms of the 1970s. Those were added to by subsequent changes granting unitary status in other historic counties such as Berkshire, Durham and elsewhere. Any claim of the Conservatives to be the defenders of historic counties is totally unconvincing.
The amendments would enormously improve the Bill. They would increase the chances of favourable results in referendums on regional government, but in the end, people have a choice about whether they favour regional government. Conservative Members often suggest that people will be dragooned or compelled to adopt regional government, which is far from the case. People will be able to choose whether to move towards regional government, and I greatly welcome the fact that they will have that choice rather than have it imposed on them.
Mr. Hammond: The right hon. Lady will recognise that in several regions, the majority of the electorate already live in unitary authority areas so they will not suffer from the reorganisation of local government, which is the subject of our concern this afternoon.
Joyce Quin: I recognise that. As I said earlier, I have never run away from the fact that I would prefer
regional and local government to be fully decoupled. Even so, it is clear to me that what the amendment offers is a huge improvement on what existed previously. It would give people a degree of choice that they have always been denied in previous local government reforms, and leave them in the happy position that they would not be overruled by people living in the areas already under unitary systems.
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