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Amendment proposed: No. 186, in page 1, line 12, after excluding, insert
(i) Article 2, paragraph 289, replacement Article 308 TEC (TFEU) relating to action within the framework of policies defined in the Treaties where the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers; and
(ii). [Mr. Cash.]
Question put, That the amendment be made:
To report progress and ask leave to sit again. [Mr. Blizzard.]
Committee report progress; to sit again tomorrow.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the draft Cheshire (Structural Changes) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 31st January, be approved.[Mr. Jim Murphy.]
The Minister for Local Government (John Healey): Tonight we are considering the draft order to implement the proposal to establish two new unitary councils for Cheshire. The proposal was originally made to us by Chester city council, subsequently endorsed and enjoined by three other district councilsEllesmere Port and Neston, Macclesfield and Vale Royal. This is not the Governments proposal; it is not the Governments prescription for local government arrangements in Cheshire. It has been made to us by democratically elected and accountable councils, and it has been drawn up by those councils, which have discussed these views in their areas. They believe that it will put in place for the people and the businesses of Cheshire the best form of governance for the future of the area.
Ann Winterton (Congleton) (Con): May I tell the Minister that in fact what he has just said is absolutely untrue in that the people of Cheshire do not want this? What was the Governments preferred option for Cheshire?
John Healey: If the hon. Lady checks the record tomorrow she will find that precisely what I said is correctthat this was a proposal not from the Government but from local councils, that it was proposed by them and that we considered it alongside other proposals, including one from the county council, according to the five criteria that we set out at the very start of the process back in October 2006.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): Is the Minister in effect disowning responsibility for the proposal and saying that he is no more than a delegate of Chester city council in regard to this proposal, rather than a Minister in a Government with a democratic accountability and a judgment that should be scrutinised?
John Healey: Far from disowning the proposal, I come to the House with an order that proposes to put in place the arrangements that have been drawn up and put to us by councils in the Cheshire area.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab): Come now!
John Healey: The city of Chester first submitted the proposal; it was enjoined and is now supported by three other district councils and by other bodies that I shall detail in a moment.
Mrs. Dunwoody: The Minister is being disingenuous, to say the least. Why is he not proud of the arrangement that he has made? Six district councils are involved. Why have we suddenly become the whipping boy and handmaiden of Chester? Why does he not say plainly that he and his Department proposed this in the first place and have constantly changed the goalposts to progress this very shoddy matter?
John Healey: Let me be clear. My Department certainly proposed the process and invited councils in two-tier areas across England to submit proposals for unitary arrangements. The minority of areas and councils submitted proposals, and the minority of those proposals have got to the stage of our looking to implement them.
My point is simply this, and I make it first to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody): this process of putting in place unitary council arrangements is entirely different from the processes established by previous Governments. Those processes were centrally defined and the proposals came from the centre. In this instance, we have assessed what has been put to us. I have come to the House proposing to put this proposal into law because we believe that it and the arrangements offer a form of governance for the people, businesses and communities of Cheshire that will suit the future.
Christine Russell (City of Chester) (Lab): Will my hon. Friend confirm that the bid of January 2007 was submitted by Chester city council on behalf of the six districts of Cheshire? All six districts signed up to it, including [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Members must cease intervening from a sedentary position. If they want to intervene, they should do so in the normal way so that we can have a sensible debate.
John Healey: Cheshire was in a relatively unusual situation compared with other parts of the country. Not only were two competing proposals submitted under the same single process but, uniquely, both proposals met the five criteria that we established at the outset. That was not the situation anywhere else in the country.
We had to set out a way of making a judgment between the two proposals, and in June we published our arrangements and made clear how we would carry them out. It was to be on the basis of which of the proposals, based on the evidence submitted to us, would deliver to a greater extent the benefits for which we were looking in three principal areasfirst, strategic leadership; secondly, the empowerment of local people and local neighbourhoods; and thirdly, quality public services. Those made up our yardstick to try to distinguish between the relative merits of the two proposals.
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con): The Minister drew a comparison with the ways that previous Governments had handled local government reorganisation. Will he confirm that last time the current Government considered this in the north-westin relation to what would happen if people voted for a regional assembly in the north-west, which never took place because the Government did not hold the referendumthere was a commitment also to have a referendum question on local government reorganisation? Why have the Government abandoned the practice that they advocated just a couple of years ago? The Minister talks about empowering the people; why has he decided on this occasion not to let the people decide?
John Healey: Because we set out in this process to approach the matter in an entirely different wayto be prepared to entertain proposals that were drawn up by elected councils representing their area and put to us as a Government. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that in 2004, under this Government, there was a question of potentially reorganising local government in Cheshire as part of the consideration of the wider referendum question on an elected regional assembly for the north-west. It was in the mid-1990s, under the previous Government of his party, that Cheshire was subject to potential reorganisation under the Banham proposals. As hon. Members who represent these parts of the county will know much better than I do, this is the third potential local government reorganisation in under 15 years. There comes a point when that continuing uncertainty starts to be a disadvantage, and there is a case for saying that it is important to make a decision and then allow those in the local areas to get on and try to implement it.
Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD): I am obviously not a Cheshire MP, but I was born in Cheshire. Let me express a concern that I sense is felt by many colleagues of all parties. This proposal, yet again, does a further job of breaking up an historic shire community that has already been sliced off at one edge around Manchester and sliced off at the other edge. It absolutely will not create what the Government say elsewhere that they wanta sense of real community cohesion. In that respect, it is the worst option, not the best option.
John Healey: I hope that I will get the chance to come to that a little later. However, that is not the assessment that we have made of the potential for offering local areas a greater opportunity to be involved and to have an influence over decision making. The hon. Gentleman may have been born in Cheshire, but he misrepresents the nature of that unified, integrated, remaining historic shire county. It was the mid-1990s reorganisation that led to the carving out of Halton and Warrington.
Truth be told, the historic county of Cheshire has been broken up into bits previously. The question now is what is the best form of governance for the future within the area that is covered by Cheshire county council. I recognise that several Opposition Members argue for the status quo, but our starting point is that the general case for unitary local government is strong. It is a way of overcoming some of the well- established problems with county and district local government. The public are generally confused. The delivery of services can be fragmented. Local leaderships are sometimes competing. There is often duplication and inefficiency in the way that things are delivered. In the case of Cheshire, without imposing a unitary arrangement, we are close to arriving at a potential set of arrangements that will allow unitary local government for its people, based on the proposal that was originally put to us by City of Chester council.
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