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I want to make a couple of comparisons. When my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Murphy) and I went to see the Prime Minister, he said that he backed a one-tier system in Durham. However, I must remind the Minister that Durham is an entirely different county from Northumberland. She should not fall into the same trap as the Prime Minister and think that Northumberland is the same as Durham, because it is not. Northumberland has one Tory Member of Parliament—the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson)—as well as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who is a Liberal, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck and me. That is the make-up of Northumberland. The make-up of Durham is solid Labour. Whether Durham had five tiers, three tiers, two tiers, or one tier, it would
be Labour. When decisions are being made, those things should be looked at first.
I tried to secure a referendum, but the proposal failed because it was too late. If the county wanted to hold a referendum, it could have done so in March, but it did not go down that road. It huffed and it puffed, but it did not do so. If it had done, we might have had a proper referendum in Northumberland, although we have already had one, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said. That proposal failed, but I have decided to run my own survey in my constituency. In fact, I have the honour of being the first Member in the House of Commons to use the communications money in that way. I phoned the authorities straight away and said, “Can I use it for a survey and an article in the newspapers, and ask people to indicate which tier of local government they want in Northumberland?” That was duly done, and the first advert appeared last week—the second one will appear this week. There was an overwhelming response. I am just counting the responses, which stand at 200 in favour of the two-tier system and 49 in favour of the single-tier system. A pattern is emerging, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said. There is support for a two-tier system. It is a pity that we cannot have a referendum throughout Northumberland. That would give a better picture, but there is already some information from Blyth. As soon as the survey is finished, I will send the results to the Minister, as they are a reflection of people’s views.
Turkeys do not like an early Christmas, and of course members of the county council are fighting. They have good jobs and we all know what happens when reorganisations and boundary changes take place. Even Members of Parliament lose their seats. Council members must accept that such things happen, although I do not blame them for fighting to keep their seats. However, the county council is not a gravy train for them. It is for the people of Northumberland to decide what they want, and they are overwhelmingly in favour of a two-tier system.
I have seen the submission. I do not want to speak untruths, but some of it reads like Walt Disneyland. When I met the Minister to discuss schools in Blyth, I asked him, “Who told you that?” The county council or the civil servant in question obviously told him.
The county council is clutching at straws, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said. The services that it runs are just about zero. It has not got many stars for anything. It has two stars for two services and none for services to the vulnerable, which I mentioned earlier, because it has closed all the homes. The council acted rashly and, I think, made a big mistake. The Government did not give the county money for the schools programme. I believe that all the money, including the £1 million that was supposed to be saved for the old people’s home helps, was put into education.
In the budget a couple of years ago, transport was cut by half and the money put into education. I am sure that that is what the council is doing with all the other services, so all the other services suffer in order to get the schools building programme on the agenda. That is a big, big mistake. When the council said that it
would do that, I remember telling it, “If you haven’t got the money, don’t do it.” The Minister responsible for schools at the time told me to keep out of the argument. How a Member of Parliament can keep out of an argument like that beats me.
I believe that that is where the council went wrong. It has problems because it is overstretched trying to provide transport and schools in rural areas, which is very difficult. Transport in rural Northumberland is almost non-existent, and it is not good in Blyth Valley or Wansbeck. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck and I have been trying to get a train service there. We are having difficulty, although there is a train line. All we have in Blyth Valley and Wansbeck is a bus service, which runs a lot better than in some areas of Northumberland.
The question is the best way forward for the people of Northumberland. I am glad to say that they are thinking the right way. They think the county should be split into rural and urban areas so that something can be done. A lot of cross-border activity takes place. We will work together—that is a racing certainty—and go forward. I hope the Minister and the Cabinet will take that on board.
4.19 pm
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham) (Con): I am grateful for the opportunity to debate local government in the House. I am also grateful for the fact that not many Members of Parliament were interested in discussing empty commercial buildings, so we can have a proper Adjournment on the subject.
I am pleased to see the Minister in her place. After Northern Ireland, the affairs of local government in Northumberland should be much easier to crack. I strongly urge her not to put this to one side and say that it is too difficult.
Local government reform in Northumberland has been around for many years. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that this is the third attempt. Under the Conservative Government, Lord Heseltine, as he is now, had a go at it, but eventually walked away when there was no final agreement about its shape. This time, we have some solid agreement between all four Members of Parliament and all six district councils.
I want to reinforce one or two points that have been made. Local government reform in Northumberland has always been bedevilled by the geography. We have a population of some 300,000—about the size of a small London borough—yet the county is one of the biggest in England. As we heard, students at Berwick take an hour and a bit to get to Newcastle. Getting to one of the hospitals in the east of the county used by my constituents takes a drive of an hour and 20 minutes. We are talking about very substantial distances—probably 70 miles from north to south and 50 miles from east to west.
That makes a difference in achieving a local government system that is efficient as well as local. Getting that balance right has been extremely hard and has defeated us on the previous two occasions. Now we think that we have got it right and that the two-authority system will work. In fact, it offers an
opportunity to do some new things, because it is a model that does not exist anywhere else in the country. It may be possible for two authorities co-operating on several matters to deliver the efficiencies of scale that people say would be delivered by a unitary county. We have heard about the loss of services. In Northumberland, social services are already provided jointly with the NHS. We should also put into the picture—perhaps unhappily for a Conservative—the fact that we now have a fairly strong regional dimension, so decisions on matters such as planning and transport infrastructure, which could have been taken at county level, are taken at a higher level. The two authorities should be more than capable of co-operating to deliver efficient services.
Let me cite a slightly controversial example of where the system would work. The county council has determined that the three-tier school system, which we still have in Northumberland, should change to a two-tier system. There are arguments for changing to two-tier and for maintaining three-tier, but the arguments for two-tier are undoubtedly stronger in the urban, more densely populated areas than in the rural areas. The consequence of moving to a two-tier system in my constituency—I am sure that it is the same for the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed—would be that nine-year-olds would have to travel for more than two hours a day in coaches to get to school. After reorganisation, a three-tier system would have to exist anyway. That is an illustration of how the education system in a rural area would be better determined by a rural authority than by a unitary authority.
I accept that our funding problems arose because the formulae have never properly taken population sparsity into consideration. It always amazes me that Northumberland has a lower sparsity than Norfolk. That is based on some spurious system invented by somebody long departed who took with him or her the secret of how to calculate it. It is apparently calculated on the basis of parishes, but it seems to affect rural areas very much. There is a chance of getting some better funding into our area, which is much needed to provide services.
Mr. Beith: Was the hon. Gentleman surprised that the Government added to their list of consultees the county councils group in the Local Government Association but not the association that gathers together sparsely populated local authorities, which has done a lot of work on this? Does not that make us worry somewhat that the Government are still not taking sufficient account of the factors that are relevant to rural Northumberland?
Mr. Atkinson: Indeed. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It was surprising that that body was left out of the consultation. The provision of services in rural areas has increasingly moved up the political agenda. The Government need to take account of that when they consider the final outcome to the matter.
Mr. Denis Murphy:
The hon. Gentleman mentioned one or two innovations that the two unitaries introduced. Does he agree that one of the better ones is their decision, although they are financially
independent, to share most of the costs that are currently covered by the county of Northumberland? An independent, not-for-profit company would be set up to deliver many of the services on behalf of both unitaries, thus substantially reducing the council tax for the people of Northumberland.
Mr. Atkinson: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Some good ideas have been presented and I believe that the two-tier system will be a model for other parts of the country. I am sure that it will work—the council officers in the district councils, who are enthusiastic about it, will make it work. I am confident that we will end up with a good system that best serves the people of Northumberland.
4.25 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Angela E. Smith): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on securing the debate on what is obviously a key issue for the people of Northumberland. I appreciate the strong feelings that have been expressed. There are few occasions in the House when all three parties agree and it is a rare opportunity for a Minister to respond to such a debate. I am grateful to all four hon. Members who took part—my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Mr. Murphy), and for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) and the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), as well as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed—for their contributions.
Let me first provide some context. As hon. Members know, we initially received 26 proposals from local authorities for the creation of unitary authorities, in response to the invitation that we issued alongside the local government White Paper in October last year. After careful consideration, it was announced that 16 proposals could be taken forward to be short listed and we could then proceed to a stakeholder consultation.
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said that he understood the constraints on what I can say today because we are in a legal process about consultations. Much as hon. Members might like me to go into detail about the merits or otherwise of the specific proposals or the authorities involved, I cannot. The reasons for our judgment were set out in the letter of decision that was sent to councils on 27 March. Many points that hon. Members made tonight are on the merits of the proposals.
I should like to deal with the questions that have been asked in the debate and set out how we reached our current position and the way in which we proceed from here. We published our invitation in response to the views that had been expressed during a long-standing debate on the future of local government. However, as the hon. Member for Hexham said, it has not lasted as long as the debate on the future of Northern Ireland, which reached a successful conclusion this week. Existing arrangements in some two—tier areas do not deliver the governance that places need today. All hon. Members made that point, especially the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. He outlined the risks, challenges and difficulties in a two-tier structure. There can be confusion, duplication and inefficiency between the tiers.
There is a view that moving to a unitary structure could improve accountability, create a stronger, more focused leadership in the local authority, improve the local authority’s efficiency and especially improve the outcomes in service delivery for local people. My hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck and for Blyth Valley stressed that point.
Allowing restructuring was our response to that, and that view was held in several areas, as shown by the 26 proposals that were made to the Government. On 27 March, my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government announced that 16 proposals were being taken to stakeholder consultation, including the two proposals from Northumberland. In making that decision, the Government had to have regard to all the relevant information—the submitted proposals, any supplementary material from the proposers and any other available relevant information.
We have written to all the councils that submitted proposals, setting out the reasons and the basis on which the decisions were made. All 26 proposals were judged against the five criteria that the Government published earlier. Our judgment is that there is at least a reasonable likelihood that the 16 proposals, if implemented, would achieve the outcome specified by the criteria. I shall not comment on the specific proposals, as I have already said, but I would like to set out the criteria and say something about them, while also responding to some of the questions.
First, we were clear that the proposals had to be affordable. The changed unitary structure had to represent value for money and had to be met from a council’s existing resources. They also had to be supported by a broad cross-section of partners and stakeholders. Comments were made about the relative value and relative merits of the amount of support for each proposal, which will be taken into account in the consultation that proceeds. At this stage, all that was being requested was that there was support for the proposal from some stakeholders.
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed asked about the previous referendum in November 2004. I have to say that that took place in a different context and a different backdrop in 2004, but that does not mean that it can be dismissed. It, alongside other information, can be taken into account and it has been submitted in evidence as part of the consideration. The weight that can be attached to referendums and other such polls—the metropolitan area of Blyth Valley has been mentioned—depends on the question asked and how far it can be judged to be impartial and not to lead people a certain way, on how easily it can be understood by voters and the ease with which they can make a judgment on the information, and on the efforts taken to provide a fair and balanced explanation of the complex issues involved. All those matters can be taken into account. Indeed, they have been and are being submitted as part of the consultation on the proposals.
In addition to those two criteria of affordability and support, the proposals have to provide strong, effective and accountable strategic leadership; they have to offer genuine opportunities for neighbourhood flexibility and empowerment; and they have to deliver value for
money and equity on public services. After consideration, it was decided that 10 of the proposals should proceed to stakeholder consultation. Having regard to the relevant information, the judgment was that there was not a reasonable likelihood that, if implemented, the proposals would achieve all the outcomes specified in the five criteria.
The hon. Member for Hexham and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed asked why certain bodies were consulted and others, particularly SPARSE—Sparsity Partnership for Authorities Delivering Rural Services—left off the list. The list of consultees is not a definitive list of the only bodies that can be consulted. The chairs of local strategic partnerships and many other bodies were also consulted. Every chief executive in all the local authorities that had put proposals forward was contacted and told that any other body or group could be consulted and information passed on to others if appropriate. We said that we would have regard to all the representations received from any quarter. No group of organisations was disbarred or prevented from responding to the consultation.
Mr. Beith: May I take the Minister back to the scoring of the criteria? Is she saying that the criteria were established to decide which bids should go forward and that as long as they had a reasonable likelihood of satisfying the outcomes, they went forward—and that that was the end of it, so wider consultation is now taking place? Alternatively, is she saying that the grade achieved in the scoring remains a key factor in the Government’s eventual decision? If she is saying the latter, we will want to question the basis on which the scoring was done, because it is manifestly wrong in relation to cross-sectional support for the county proposal, for example, and in a number of other cases that I cited.
Angela E. Smith: I shall come back to the right hon. Gentleman if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the former is the case and that we have moved forward to stakeholder consultation, which will now inform the decision making. I am receiving an enlightened nod, so I am right that it is the former. Decisions were taken and have since proceeded. Consultation is now under way and judgments will be made about which part of the proposals will go forward, if either go forward, on the basis of that consultation and subsequent evaluation and judgment. I hope that that satisfies the right hon. Gentleman on that matter. He also asked why we are still consulting on the county proposals, but perhaps the answer that I gave to the last question also addresses that issue for him. We are now making a judgment on the relative merits of proposals from the consultation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck mentioned the Electoral Commission’s proposals from 2004. Again, those may be submitted and taken into account as part of the consultation. The consultation will last for 12 weeks, finishing on 22 June. As I have said, we welcome comments, information and views from key partners and stakeholders who have an interest in the areas affected by the two short-listed proposals. As the invitation explains, partners and stakeholders include all local authorities, the wider
public sector, the business community, and the voluntary and community sector. Anyone may respond. There are copies of the consultation document in the Library of the House and it can also be obtained from the Department and from the Department’s website.
After the stakeholder consultation, we will need to consider carefully all the representations that we have received. All the information provided to Ministers will be considered in the course of the examination of the issues. I want to give an assurance to the four MPs who are here in the Chamber that the views that they have expressed today will be taken into account, but they might wish to make formal submissions as well.
The proposals will move to implementation if, and only if, when the final decisions are taken, we are satisfied that they meet the criteria and that they remain affordable. We will also need to be satisfied that they have taken into account all the possible risks involved in the implementation. Careful consideration will be given to the findings of the consultation.
Mr. Beith: I think that we concluded earlier that both bids had passed the basic tests—that they had both crossed the threshold. I have not seen any new information to date, and unless any emerges the Government must surely now be considering what the people of Northumberland actually want—I submit that their view is more important than that of large or outside organisations—and what quality can be achieved. We are not really going back to whether the proposals are affordable, because that has already been established.
Angela E. Smith: We have established the likelihood of affordability, and we are satisfied. That is why the proposals have gone forward. However, we cannot discount any new information that might come to light. We shall take into account the views of the people of Northumberland, and of organisations—there are many organisations in Northumberland that clearly want to make their views known—but I shall not discount any new information that is relevant to all the criteria that have been set out. It would be wrong to write off any information that we might receive on the range of issues that we have to take into account.
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