Clause
5
Boundary
Committee for England’s
powers
4.45
pm
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Robert Syms (Poole) (Con): We are about to discuss several
interrelated clauses. It would help if the Minister would give an
explanation of how he thinks the boundary committee will work under the
Bill. We have heard that it will have two essential tasks, the first of
which is to deal with the bids that have been submitted should the
Secretary of State refer matters to it. The second is to deal with the
boundaries of authorities, some of which will not be part of the
initial process. Clearly the committee will deal with any further bids
that come along.
On
the issue of boundary committee referral, the provisions clearly state
that there may be a referral by the Secretary of State, but will the
Minister say when there would not be a referral to the boundary
committee? Probably the only case that I can think of is that of a
county becoming a unitary authority, with clear boundaries and clarity
on governance and on the number of councillors.
The next provision says that
guidance must be given. It would be helpful if the Department’s
guidance were published before we reach the end of the Bill. I should
also like to know whether the guidance will be general guidance for all
situations, or guidance that is specific to a bid, such as if there is
a cross-county issue or a particular conglomeration when the Secretary
of State will require information on item X or item Y.
Essentially, are we saying that
there will be broad-brush guidance, with certain issues that may need
to be returned to, or will the guidance be specific to particular
proposals? We could have a situation in which the Secretary of State
made a referral, and said, “I am interested in this bid, but I
want to know X, Y and Z.” She would then give guidance to the
boundary committee specifically to research and consider those issues.
There is not too much more that I want to mention, but I shall probably
have further questions as we examine later
clauses.
Mr.
Woolas:
That was a helpful intervention in allowing me to
provide clarification. The answer is that the guidance will be
broad-brush.
The
clause will apply when the boundary committee receives a request for
advice on a proposal. The boundary committee may provide advice. When
it does, it may also do one of three things. First, it may recommend
that the Secretary of State should implement the received proposal,
with or without modification. Secondly, it can recommend that the
Secretary of State should not implement the proposal—full stop.
Thirdly, it can make an alternative proposal to the Secretary of
State.
If the committee
makes an alternative proposal, that proposal must deal with the whole
or part of the area that the submitting authority or authorities could
have included in their original proposal to the Secretary of State.
However, unlike proposals submitted by local authorities, the boundary
committee’s alternative proposal does not have to follow
existing county or district boundaries. So the alternative proposal
procedure is the way for the boundary committee to recommend boundary
change for the relevant area. I refer the Committee to page six of the
explanatory memorandum, which explains the point.
Subsection (6) provides that an
alternative proposal from the boundary committee may not cover an area
that includes part or all of the City of London or the Temples. Had I
not just clarified that point, the power would have existed—so I
hope that Members are paying attention. Proposals additionally may not
extend to Wales. That might be of wider
interest.
The clause
allows the boundary committee for England to provide advice to the
Secretary of State, make recommendations on received proposals, and
make alternative proposals. The Government will be able to refer
proposals to the boundary committee only after Royal Assent—if
the Bill is approved by the House. We can ask the boundary committee
for advice on any matter relating to the proposal, including looking at
the electoral arrangements for that proposal. Again, it is an
extraordinarily devolutionary and permissive framework that we are
trying to create. I hope the Committee will see fit to support the
clause.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 5
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
6
Boundary
Committee’s
procedure
Mr.
Syms:
I beg to move amendment No. 19, in
clause 6, page 5, line 17, leave
out ‘four weeks’ and insert ‘three
months’.
The
amendment is part of a theme, namely the speed of the timetable, that
has been developed throughout this Bill and may last some weeks. Under
clause 6, the relevant period for consultation back to the boundary
commission is defined as four weeks. The amendment would clearly make
it 12 weeks, and three months and is designed to tease out why the
timetable is so tight. At this stage, the Minister usually gets up and
says that this follows the Conservative legislation of 1992. However, I
would be interested to know why four weeks is specified and why a
little more time cannot be left for people to make further
representations.
Mr.
Woolas:
I was hoping to be able to say that it follows the
Conservative precedent in 1972. I will attempt to explain why we think
the amendment is not necessary. Where the boundary committee is asked
for advice on an alternative proposal for a single tier of local
government, the procedure already provides for significant
opportunities for interested parties to make their representations.
Where the committee is minded to make an alternative proposal, it must
first publish a draft of its proposal and must also ensure that those
who have an interest are informed of the proposaland the
deadline for making representations to the committee on that matter.
The boundary committee must take account of those
representations.
Where
the boundary committee subsequently, as a result of that consultation,
makes a proposal to the Secretary of State, we provide for a further
opportunity for interested parties to make representations. The
committee must inform anybody who previously made representations on a
particular proposal that it has made a subsequent proposal to the
Secretary of State. It must also inform those people that they have a
further four weeks to make representations to the
Secretary of State. That will be four weeks from the date, unless
revised, set by the Secretary of State for advice from the committee.
In essence, that means that Parliament has its boundary committee to
consult and look at the proposals and the four further weeks is then
another opportunity to comment on the proposal coming from the boundary
committee. Given that
deep and broad consultation by the independent boundary committee, we
believe that four weeks is an adequate period to comment on the
proposals that arise from the consultation. A further extension of the
period—I think that the hon. Member for Poole’s amendment
refers to three months—would have no other purpose than to
replicate the role of the boundary committee, which is, of course,
independent. That would, I argue, be an inappropriate period of time.
The reference to the Secretary of State’s time period is a
further one on which to comment on the boundary committee’s
proposals, having already had the substantial consultation by the
boundary committee itself.
Mr.
Syms:
Essentially what happens is that boundary committee
publishes a proposal, there is normally an inquiry, it considers the
inquiry, gives a month for people to come back with further comments
and usually goes with whatever the inquiry has decided. Under this
proposal, there does not seem to be any inquiry. That means that if the
boundary committee makes a proposal, having carried out consultations,
there are four weeks for people to respond to it. But what happens
during that four-week consultation, or with the three months under our
amendment, which would give people more time? Does the boundary
committee have to consider that and add it to the representations from
the Secretary of State, or does the Secretary of State have to consider
those further representations when she gets the main boundary committee
submission?
Mr.
Woolas:
The Secretary of State is obliged to consider
those representations, but the purpose of the procedure is that those
would have been made prior to the ones from the boundary committee. I
suspect that the hon. Gentleman is wary of the boundary committee
making an alternative proposal outsidethe expected remit of
the proposals that have been consulted on. The boundary committee, in
its consultation period, has to pay regard to the representations that
are made. The idea of the further four weeks is to give interested
parties time to comment on the tidying up of loose ends in areas that
may have not been foreseen by the boundary committee—the
unintended consequences, rather than the substance, of the proposals
that it is obliged to take into account in its consultation
period.
Robert
Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con): Mr.
Benton, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in these more
familiar
surroundings.
I was
interested in what the Minister said, because it seems to confirm my
hon. Friend’s concern that there will not be public inquiries
under this procedure. If that is so, it would be as well if that were
spelled out specifically. Is that intended to be a departure from the
norm, purely for the circumstances of this small
tranche of changes, or does this presage a broader thought that the
Government would in future not propose to use public inquiries if local
authority boundaries are to be changed? What is the thinking behind
that?
Mr.
Woolas:
On the face of it, the hon. Gentleman makes a
reasonable point, because there are not public inquiries in such
instances. We are not taking about the sort of procedure that is
undergone in relation to parliamentary changes, but about tweaking
boundaries. Indeed, public inquiries do not take place in such
circumstances, so we are not envisaging that that should change. This
is an open and liberal—if I can use that word without too much
criticism from behind me or in front of
me—measure and a reassurance to local authorities. It will put
into the legislative framework, if the House accepts it, a sensible
framework to fit the proposed new arrangement that reflects the
principles that are already in
place.
Mr.
Syms:
This has been a useful debate. Public inquiries
after local government reorganisation have not been a feature in the
past, but we have not had authorities making sometimes competitive
bids, leading to a ripple effect, with one borough making a bid and
another at the other end of the county making another to move things
forward. As the Minister acknowledged earlier in respect of
Bedfordshire and a number of other authorities, the multiple proposals
will lead to a slight headache in respect of what one ends up with. I
wonder whether it might be appropriate sometimes to put such matters to
a public inquiry. My other concern is that the provision diminishes the
work for barristers within our system, and that must be a concern for
us all.
We have had a
useful debate. I still think that the period should be slightly longer
than four weeks. That would be better, given that there is not to be a
public inquiry. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause
6
Boundary
Committee’s
procedure
5
pm
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Mr.
Syms:
I asked earlier whether guidance wouldbe
published. Does the guidance need parliamentary approval under either
the negative or affirmative procedure, or will the Department just
publish it and put it on the
website?
Mr.
Woolas:
I anticipated, from my experience of the hon.
Gentleman on previous Committees, that he would ask whether the
guidance should be published before the Committee has debated the
relevant clause. The guidance will be produced before the end of the
proceedings of the Bill. It is not subject to either the negative or
the affirmative procedure because it is guidance that backs up the
clauses, but he will have sight of it.
Question put
and agreed
to.
Clause 6
ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause
7
implementation
of proposals by
order
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Alistair
Burt:
I am intrigued by subsection (1)(c), whereby the
Secretary of State
could,
“decide to take no
action”.
That would be at
the end of a process where the boundary committee’s views have
been sought, consultation has taken place and the boundary committee
has made its recommendations. Will the Minister enlighten us as to what
in particular is likely to lead him to a decision not to respond to the
consultation and to take no action? I would like him in the context of
the clause to set out what may induce him to take no
action.
Mr.
Woolas:
The short answer to that is common sense. If I
explain what the clause is trying to do, that may help the
Committee.
The clause
allows the Secretary of State to implement proposals for a single tier
of local government, as the Committee is aware. Those may be the
proposals received from local authorities, or alternative proposals
made by the boundary committee. Proposals may be implemented as I said
before with or without modification. That is to allow the Secretary of
State to implement the proposals with changes—for example,
following advice from the boundary commission she may wish to amend the
boundary of the proposed area. Any order for structural change will be
subject to the affirmative procedure, as we will debate under clause
173, if the hon. Member for Lichfield wishes to make a note. Any such
order will therefore be subject to further scrutiny by the
House.
If a proposal
that the Secretary of State has decided to implement has not been
submitted jointly by all the authorities affected by it, she may not
implement it unless she has first consulted on the proposal as required
by clause 4. If she has asked the boundary committee for advice by a
certain date, she may implement a proposal or an alternative proposal
submitted only once six weeks have passed from that date.
The clause also specifies that
the Secretary of State may decide to take no action on a proposal, as
the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire said. She may decide to do
that where she considers that the case for a single tier of local
government for a particular area has not been made. The clause
therefore specifies that the Secretary of State “may”
implement proposals that she receives for a single tier of local
government. The provision to which the hon. Member for North-East
Bedfordshire has drawn attention simply points out the face that the
Secretary of State may decide that the case has not been
made—that even though the alternative route has been used, the
case is not there. I would have thought that he would welcome that
option.
Alistair
Burt:
I thank the Minister for the clarification. I
presume that the same will apply if the Secretary of State finds that
there is not a broad measure of public support for a
proposal?
Mr.
Woolas:
Indeed. The proposal must pass all the criteria.
This is not a cherry-picking exercise. One has to weigh up the
strengths and weaknesses of the proposals, but proposals must pass the
criteria. As I said in evidence to the Committee in Portcullis House,
the value for money criterion is particularly
important.
Mr.
Syms:
We have so far had 26 proposals, of which the
Government intend to run with eight, as I read somewhere—it
might be fewer, or it might be more. However, as I understand the
Government’s intention, they will go forward with a proportion,
so inevitably, no further action will be taken on some. At that point,
presumably, the proposals on which no action has been taken are
dead—gone. What I mean is that the Government are not going to
go forward with eight and have another eight later. When someone has
worked everything out, spent the money and put the proposal together,
it is either success or failure.
Mr.
Woolas:
The hon. Gentleman, quite reasonably, is probing
for an answer to that question. The suspicion of Opposition Members
knows no bounds.
First, the figure of about eight
proposals, as I said in evidence, comes from the fact that
reorganisation to unitary carries up-front costs, and those costs can
be met only from the reserves of or efficiency savings by the local
authority concerned. In either instance, most obviously in the
first—where the reserves are affected—that would have an
effect on local government in its totality’s assets and
therefore its borrowing capacity. The figure of about eight is a
macro-figure to fit in with the Government’s wider economic
policy.
Secondly, a
proposal would be given the go-ahead only if it could show that there
were cost savings to the council tax payer in the form of the council
tax not being at a higher level than it currently is. That raises the
thorny question, if it is a district moving into a county unitary or
districts coming together, whether the lower or the higher council tax
would apply. The answer is that it would be the lower council tax. An
authority would have to show that it was able to keep those costs down,
so whether or not eight turns out to be the correct figure, and whether
or not consequential proposals in neighbouring areas, districts or, in
one case, unitaries take place, one would have to take those wider
costs into account. There is a wider financial judgment to be made, as
well as the specific judgement on each of the proposals or
consequential
proposals.
Mr.
Syms:
This is a slightly tangential point but, however one
looks at it, additional work is going to have to be undertaken by the
boundary committee, which I suspect is not a heavily funded
organisation. Who is going to pay for that? When the boundary committee
gets involved in the process of consultation or in questions of local
governance in relation to the bids that go forward, there will be some
cost. My central question is: will the Secretary of State pay? Will
committee’s current budget cover it, or will the cost have to be
recouped from the good taxpayers of Bedfordshire, Shropshire, or
elsewhere?
Mr.
Woolas:
I commend the hon. Gentleman on an ingenious
question. The answer is that the boundary committee is funded by the
taxpayer and would be charged with the duties of commenting on those
proposals. Of course, in the real world of government, that is another
reason why one has to take decisions efficiently. I do not suppose that
the Conservative party’s leaflets in Bedfordshire—no, I
must not comment on Bedfordshire. However, it is a fair question, and
the answer is that the boundary committee would
pay.
It might be
helpful if I comment on the 26 proposals that have come forward in the
present stage of the procedure. The Government’s initial view on
which bids will proceed to stage 2 of the consultation will be based on
assessment against the invitation criteria, including affordability,
and will be announced in March. The invitation acknowledges that
decisions on restructuring will be taken in the light of overall public
expenditure, and the difficulty for any Government is that one has to
set down that overall cost envelope. However, without knowing which
proposals fulfil the criteria, it is not possible to say how many will
proceed. I believe that that is evidence of the Government’s
good faith and of our genuinely open attitude and devolutionary
approach.
The
invitation adds that if the number of proposals meeting the criteria
exceeds overall affordability, the Government will prioritise proposals
on the basis of a range of factors that include delivery of desired
outcomes by the proposal—benefits in services and so
on—as well as use of reserves and value for moneyand
efficiency. Affordability is thereby locked in as a priority
consideration should we have to choose between proposals.
I genuinely believe that the
provision is a common-sense one and I commend it to the
Committee.
Mr.
Dunne:
Having helpfully outlined the aggregate
affordability envelope, will the Minister help us further by saying how
much it is? What is the value of the affordability
envelope?
Mr.
Woolas:
It is not possible to do that. The envelope
relates to the overall local government borrowing requirement, which is
influenced by a number of factors. The level of assets—of debts
and credits at any one time—is affected by many criteria, so the
answer depends on the extent of the call on reserves by the aggregate
proposals. That will determine the number of proposals that could
proceed.
That approach
is the responsible one to take, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman
will support it given that he wants inflationary pressures to be kept
down, not least in relation to local
government.
Andrew
Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD): The Minister was initially
positive in responding on the clause, but then he wandered off. He said
that if a proposal fails, it fails—that is the end of it. That
probably satisfied the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, but the
Minister then said some other things and I should like to test him on
them. He said that certain members of the Opposition were unduly
suspicious.
Mr.
Woolas:
The Conservatives
are.
Andrew
Stunell:
Well, both they and we are paid to be
suspicious—that is our job and I make no bones about it. Our
suspicion is born from the experience of being given assurances that
are often not 100 per cent. robust. I hope that the Minister does not
mind, therefore, if I push him
further.
We know that
26 bids have been submitted. However, if we look carefully at the list,
we know also that 10 of them are bound to fail because they conflict
directly with others. Without prejudice to which ones are successful,
we know that there are 16 places where things can happen, so we know
that 10 bids will fail. The Minister is to some extent a prisoner of
the public statements that have been made in the past 18 months by
Ministers in his Department. Ministers initially suggested that unitary
authorities were the total solution, but they gradually, and quite
properly, stepped back from that and have taken a much more permissive
and—as the Minister himself sought to claim—devolutionary
approach. We welcome
that.
5.15
pm
At the same
time, we continue to hear language outside the Committee about the
absolute necessity of those areas that do not change to a unitary
structure developing an enhanced two-tier structure. Clause 7 is the
provision that gives cause for suspicion that the Minister, in
implementing
“an
alternative proposal from the Boundary Committee...with or without
modification”,
might, in
turning down a bid, say, “Yes, but we are going to impose other
kinds of change on the way that you work and organise
yourselves.” I want the Minister to say just how far those
alternative proposals might go, how far the boundary committee might
takethose proposals but the Minister will accept
them,and how far that might leave a situation that is
somewhere between the present circumstances and the circumstances
following a bid, but much to the disadvantage of the local
community.
Mr.
Woolas:
I accept, of course, that it is the hon.
Gentleman’s job to be suspicious. To tease out clarification,
which local authorities can look at, is helpful. The situation with the
26 proposals does not contradict what Ministers have said in the period
before the last election and since. There were a number of reports that
credited Ministers with remarks that went further in terms of the
Government’s desire to have more unitary councils. Indeed, some
specialist press reports said that the whole of England would be
covered by unitary arrangements. The Government have never said that.
As we all know, there has been a strong debate inside local government
itself as to what the desirable procedure is. Both those reports and
that debate reflected the lobbying—if I can use that
word—within local government. I remember one newspaper headline
saying that we were going to abolish all the counties. In the same
week, another
newspaper covering local government said that we were going to abolish
all the districts. I kept those two headlines on my desk for reference
when journalists called
up.
Michael
Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Perhaps you are going to do
both?
Mr.
Woolas:
I can assure the hon. Member for Lichfield that we
have no intention to do both. Once one has decided that a permissive
approach is the right one, one does not control what those proposals
will be. Political parties may have their views, which are then
accepted or not by their supporters. I suppose I just have to accept
that. However, by definition, that means the Government could not
prescribe in advance how many, or what type of, proposals should come
forward.
My right hon.
Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) went out of his
way to explain to authorities during the discussions that that was why
it was not logically possible to limit the size, either minimum or
maximum, of population or geography that a successful proposal should
be, which had been the case in previous reorganisations. Once one has
accepted that there are different solutions for different
areas—which might mean a large rural county area is treated
differently from an urban area—one cannot prescribe the
configuration. Therefore, the debate has rendered the Government a
victim of their own permissiveness and genuine desire to be
devolutionary.
Andrew
Stunell:
Again, that was eloquently put, but the Minister
did not answer the question regarding clause 7, namely that when a bid
is not accepted and the boundary committee brings forward some
alterations or modifications, how far does the clause permit the
Minister to impose on a geographical area a form of government that is
neither in the bid nor the status quo, but suits the
Minister?
Mr.
Woolas:
I can only commend the hon. Gentleman for pushing
the point. This clause and the previous one sets that out. An
alternative proposal that the boundary committee makes can include only
the whole or a part of the authority that put forward the proposal in
the first place. The hon. Gentleman’s premise is that the
boundary committee could put a Machiavellian Government bid in. It
cannot. I understand why he is pushing that suspicion, but it could not
be the case.
We debated
earlier the timing, the geography andthe remit of the power to
direct and I hope that I responded to that as clearly as possible. I am
grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his statement about an elegant
reply. I hope that he accepts its honesty,
too.
Alistair
Burt:
We come back to our debate on whether or not it was
possible within a geographical area for a solution to be devised by the
Minister that was not one of the proposals put to him by any of the
parties that had responded to the invitation. The clause seems to
confirm that that is the case. By varying the order, the hon. Gentleman
can produce an answer that
no one had thought of previously because, in his mind, that is the most
convenient and effective system for local government in respect of the
proposals that have been put to
him.
Mr.
Woolas:
We are repeating our previous debate, which takes
us directly to clause 2 and the requirement to direct. It is not
intended that the power should give the Secretary of State the
opportunity to put forward a bid that has not either been first
proposed by a local authority or subsequently, following the direction,
been put forward by a local authority as the best way forward for the
area. The reason for that, as I said before, is that the Government
cannot allow a situation whereby a solution for part of an area is not
viable in another part of the county, as would happen in the case that
we are discussing.
A
Minister cannot impose his or her ideas anywhere. He can implement a
modification of a proposal ifthe boundary committee were to be
involved, or a modification of the proposal from the councils. As hon.
Gentlemen are questioning such matters, a Minister could not put
forward a proposal that did not have the support of the local authority
in the area concerned. It is possible that neighbouring authorities
would not have that ultimate proposal as their first choice. Were that
not the case, we would be able to move forward on a
consensus.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 7
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
| 
