Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460-463)
RT HON
LORD HESELTINE
8 DECEMBER 2008
Q460 Chair: Can I just clarify something,
Lord Heseltine? When you were talking about these elected chief
executives, were you thinking about those simply for cities or
do you think that is a universal model that you could have in
rural districts and counties as well?
Lord Heseltine: You may possibly
remember, but I was the person who was responsible for creating
unitary authorities.
Q461 Chair: It did not go far enough
in my view.
Lord Heseltine: In Scotland and
Wales I did and if you ask me a second question—I am not
going to tell you what it is— but if you asked me what it
is, I would have to give you quite an uncomfortable answer. In
England it was not possible to go as far as I would have liked,
but I put in place the mechanisms and I am delighted to see now
that the mechanisms are being used and the counties have become
unitary and of course the big cities always were—or they
have been for a very long time—unitary.
Q462 Chair: Some have suggested that
the distribution of finance between local authorities should be
done by an independent commission. Do you think that is a good
idea or a bad idea or not politically feasible?
Lord Heseltine: It is not politics.
I spent hours looking at the printouts of grant mechanism distribution.
Every government has its own idea of what makes sense by way of
a distribution pattern, but none of us ever found a way of getting
a uniform consistency into the distribution pattern. You thought
you had got it; you damped here and you levered there and you
put in this and that and then up popped one of your safest, most
loyal constituencies that was hammered to hell by this new process
whereupon the official said, "I'm very sorry, Secretary of
State, we have done 45 different printouts and it has to go the
printers tomorrow". That ends your political career in ignominy.
Q463 Mr Betts: Why did authorities
not go further? What stopped it? Is that the question you did
not want to be asked?
Lord Heseltine: It is not the
question but I will answer it. I will tell you what the second
question is because it is quite fun really. Why was it possible
to do unitary authorities in Scotland and Wales? Because there
were not any Tory councillors. The reason why you cannot get the
sort of qualities that I am talking about advanced easily through
the House of Commons is because you would be creating Mr Bigs
more important than the local MP and local MPs do not like that;
they want to be the number one character. I want to see the leader
of the council the number one character.
Chair: Thank you very much, Lord Heseltine.
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