North Yorkshire (Structural Changes) Order 2022

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Grand Committee

In conclusion, through this order, we are seeking to replace the existing local government structures which were set up in 1974 in North Yorkshire with a new council that will be able to deliver high-quality, sustainable local services for the people of North Yorkshire. This council will be able to provide stronger and more effective leadership at both the strategic and most local levels. It will open the way, with the city of York, for a significant devolution deal referred to in our levelling-up White Paper. I commend the order to the Committee and once again apologise for those minor errors. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for racing through the provisions of this order. I have sat through three SIs this afternoon and it is a matter of regret that each of them has had to have a minor correction. Perhaps if we spent a little longer preparing the SIs before we brought them before the House, we would save all departments some time.

I am possibly in a minority of one, but I am afraid that I am very wedded to the two-tier system. It has served extremely well. My connection to North Yorkshire goes back years. I grew up in an area that, until 1974, represented on my western flank North Yorkshire, on my eastern flank County Durham and, to the north-west, Cumberland. I think that people appreciated and felt wedded to those areas. I went to school in what was then Harrogate, West Yorkshire, and is now Harrogate, North Yorkshire. One begins to see how confusing it becomes with all these changes, and I believe that there is such a thing as voter fatigue.

I was very fortunate to be returned a number of times—I think, four. I served 18 years for two separate constituencies in North Yorkshire. I want to pay tribute to one of my predecessors, my noble friend Lord Jopling, who looked after me during one of the elections. I think we had some fun at the time, so I hope that continues in elections for constituencies. I also stood in Cumbria in 1987, where again my noble friend was my neighbour, took me under his wing and saved me from some of the errors that I might otherwise have made—which I hope he will not remember and repeat during this debate.

According to Wikipedia, there are 159 district council wards across North Yorkshire. That goes to the rurality of what is the largest, most rural and most sparsely populated county in the country. This has led me to believe that successive Governments—I cannot accuse one particular Government—have simply failed to understand how to deliver public services effectively in rural areas. I do some outside work with the Dispensing Doctors’ Association, as declared in the register of interests. Its headquarters is in Kirkbymoorside, which was in my constituency for the last five years that I was in the other place. Dispensing doctors come into their own particularly in rural areas where there is no community pharmacy. That shows to me the lack of understanding of one particular department of how difficult it is to deliver health services in this regard. We are building bigger hospitals that are further away and more difficult for patients to get to.

I turn to the subject of the orders presented to us by my noble friend. If I understand correctly, we are going to have a situation created from 2023 whereby we have a unitary authority for North Yorkshire. At some undetermined time in the future, it will then be possible to have a metro mayor—and I would like to understand whether the mayor will cover the city of York alone or is intended to cover the rural areas as well. I have great difficulty in understanding how a mayor for a rural area such as North Yorkshire can possibly do that work. I still live in North Yorkshire for a good deal of the time when I am not in London, and I think that it has definitely lost out in the stakes to, for example, the Tees Valley mayor. He is a very effective mayor and gets a lot of funding for a lot of infrastructure and other facilities.

My understanding is that we are going to be told in North Yorkshire that we simply will not get these funds if we then do not vote for a metro mayor. Travelling in what was my second consistency—my last constituency— of Thirsk, Malton and Filey, I was easily driving 200 miles a day. I was trying to co-ordinate the meetings as best I could in the particular corner of the constituency I wanted to be in that day, but it often meant that I could not do interviews on television, because they had to be miles away, in Leeds or, heaven forfend, Newcastle, because there were two different broadcasting areas for one constituency.

My first point is that there is a lack of understanding of how this will work in rural areas, yet great pressure will be put on metro mayors for rural areas such as North Yorkshire that, if we do not subscribe to them, we simply will not get the funds. There is also a misunderstanding. We are asking people to vote—and I have had a leaflet from one of the candidates already for the election this year, which I presume is for the county, yet we are told that the existing district councillors will remain in place until next year. Possibly that makes sense, but it is very confusing. I am told that I must vote for the candidate for unitary this year, but I am told that some of the responsibilities may be taken away and I do not quite understand what the timeframe for that would be. It would be helpful to know how long we expect the unitary to be in place before it is to be taken over by a metro mayor.

I would also like to understand what the consultation will be of local people, when they put their views forward. I am slightly concerned that paragraph 10.3 of the Explanatory Note says:

“The Government’s consultation was conducted online using ‘Citizen Space’, the department’s dedicated platform for consultations, with online capture of responses and an alternative option of email responses or post.”


We should bear in mind that we have probably the most woeful internet capability in many of the dales—in Rosedale, Bransdale and all the North Yorkshire moors, and I am sure that it is the same in the Yorkshire Dales. I hope that there was also a more traditional means, perhaps through newspaper advertisements, for people to respond. If there were only 4,297 responses on the two proposals for north Yorkshire, I draw the conclusion that the vast majority of people simply did not respond. I do not think that we can conclude that there is overwhelming satisfaction with the proposals before us.

I could go on, but I think I have made my point. There is no huge demand for this unitary authority. People work closely with their district council. In my experience, in my surgery appointments, most of what I was asked about, with it not being a big area of immigration and that sort of issue, was related to planning—and most of the planning, as we know, goes through the district council. With those few remarks, I look forward to hearing the response from my noble friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, this debate has shown a humongous knowledge of North Yorkshire. I remember a school visit to Scarborough and many conferences in Harrogate, but I have a fleeting knowledge of some of the places mentioned by noble Lords. I thank my noble friend Lord Jopling. In these debates, I have never had covering fire as effective as that provided by him, and I wish that he turned up to every statutory instrument that I had to deliver. I would ask him to please be here more often, with his forensic knowledge of every single part and corner of this country, from Cumbria to North Yorkshire. It is stupendous in every respect.

Noble Lords very helpfully said that there was unanimity of support from MPs representing constituencies in North Yorkshire for this proposal, and it is tremendously helpful to know that. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, it actually preserves the service delivery over a county-wide area and has an established local identity which is easily understood by residence. It maintains the brand of North Yorkshire. That is important as well, and I think it is recognised by the MPs who have been elected in constituencies within North Yorkshire. It also aligns with arrangements in existing public sector partnerships and will allow existing relationships and partnership working to be maintained without disruption.

Responding to my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, when we hear a number such as 4,300, those are not individuals. Very often they are small, medium and large-scale organisations responding to the consultation. Of course we can always make consultations more effective, but we need to see individual responses from groups, not just the individual citizens of North Yorkshire.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for reminding me on the criterion of size that I was leader for only 16 years of my life in a terribly small London borough. She is always tremendously helpful in pointing these things out. We have a population approaching the size of Bern in Switzerland, and it has its challenges, but none the less, I agree with her that it is far smaller than North Yorkshire. The whole of Yorkshire, in aggregate, seems to envelope the vast majority of the north of England. All I will say is that Lancashire has definitely lost the Wars of the Roses when it comes to geography and scale.

However, the criterion is not simply around numbers. The criterion makes a specific point that a credible geography can be outside the 300,000 to 600,000 range if its population is a figure which, having regard to the circumstances of the authority, including local identity and geography, could be considered substantial. I am happy to set that out in writing if the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, wants to understand the issues, but there is a tolerance around the 300,000 to 600,000 figure, in essence. I do not need to write that out.

I enjoyed most the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, which pointed out the horrendous antagonism between Ripon and Harrogate. It is true. My father grew up in Derbyshire and pointed out that there is sometimes antagonism between Long Eaton and Ilkeston. That is just the reality of where we are. You can see it in any part of continental Europe as well; villages that abut each other are often big rivals. Dare I say that it was ever thus?

I thank again my noble friend Lord Jopling for his covering fire. He invoked the name of Councillor Carl Les, who I had not heard of, but I now know is leader of North Yorkshire County Council and is clearly known by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. His assurance that there is an intention to have that strategic authority but to devolve power and responsibility to town councils is incredibly helpful because the unitary will send that funding flow down to the town. Not every leader should be held at the centre. He has strong decentralising and devolutionary instincts, and it is tremendously helpful to have that assurance.

My noble friend Lady Pickering let me know that she would ask about the mayoralty. This order, in and of itself, allows a mayoralty to happen but does not impose it. I assure her that the introduction of a mayoral combined authority and devolved powers requires local support, but it is understood that any such move would require a full public consultation run by the area. A summary would then be submitted to the Secretary of State, who must be satisfied that there has been adequate consultation, so there is that proviso.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, what is the timeframe and is the public consultation more than just online, as in the unitary?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Regarding how the consultation is conducted, I will have to respond to my noble friend in writing. Regarding timeframes, I think they will probably be indicative from other areas, but again it must come from the bottom up, as opposed to the top down. I understand that there is some strong support in the local area for potentially having a mayor, but I will set all that out in a letter.

The last question concerns assets and debts. Within the current structure, although the top layer does not change, all the assets and debts essentially transfer to the unitary. All the assets, liabilities and debts just transfer, so that is a very simple matter.

We have had a very interesting debate. I continue, lord-lieutenant or not, to become a more rounded exponent of the virtues of local government in different parts of the country. I thank noble Lords for their contributions.