Christmas Adjournment

Debate between Bob Stewart and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

This is the season of good will—let us see whether we can change that, shall we?

What I am going to relate to Members is important to anybody in this House and anywhere else. It is about one part of rural Somerset—as most Members know, my constituency is there—where there is a determined effort to hijack public opinion and, I would say, horribly to kill off local democracy. It is a tale of gerrymandering, sharp practice and strong suspicions of corruption. It concerns the plan to merge West Somerset council with one of its neighbours, Taunton Deane, and I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) is not here. It is a merger most foul, and, as in most blood-curdling stories, the real motive is money.

Having won the House’s attention, I shall give Members the background to this sorry saga. West Somerset District Council is the smallest authority in England with a population of 35,000. It is a very beautiful part of the world and includes most of Exmoor. Unfortunately, the local council is perilously close to going bankrupt, partly because there are not enough people to pay the bills. For years the council has struggled to make ends meet and unfortunately it has failed. Three years ago it was lured—rather like a prostitute into a strange house—into a deal with Taunton Deane. For reasons that I do not completely understand, the leadership would not consider taking help from any other neighbour, including its nearest neighbour, Sedgemoor, which happens to be one of the best run councils in the United Kingdom. It has healthy finances and would have helped sort out West Somerset’s problems without neutering that council. But the old guard preferred to do a deal with Taunton. I do not know why.

Taunton Deane was—and still is—desperately short of money. Why on earth would it want to bail out a bankrupt neighbour when it is heading towards bankruptcy itself? Two failing councils together make a successful council? You do the maths. I believe that Taunton wants to get its greedy hands on the business rates that will ultimately come from Hinkley C nuclear power station. [Interruption.] I heard somebody say “Ah!” from a sedentary position. The House is getting the plot. My little council may be on the verge of bankruptcy today, but in 20 years when Hinkley comes on line and produces electricity, it will become seriously rich. There is nothing like the prospect of gold, as Judas would say, to bring out the green streak in neighbouring town halls.

Taunton has always craved a share of the action. It is consumed with envy. When the plans for developing Hinkley were submitted, Taunton Deane put in a formal objection. A bit of an irony, I know. It did so out of jealousy and on the orders of its leader. He is a builder by trade and a sharp and interesting operator. John Williams is his name. He looks a little like Santa Claus, but please do not be fooled in this time of good will. He is more like Rudolph who has been garrotted, but I cannot see him saying, “Ho, ho, ho.” He rules Taunton Deane with a grip of iron and he likes to get his own way, mainly by foul means, so when West Somerset came begging, he spotted his chance and went for it.

Williams’s henchmen moved in like the mafia—horses’ heads in the bed—took over the local council, pensioned off most of the staff and started running everything from Taunton, not Minehead. Since then West Somerset’s 28 councillors have unfortunately—I say this against myself, as much as anybody—become little more than a glorified talking shop. I am not being rude, but the good people of West Somerset now realise that the levers of power are being manipulated elsewhere. There are those who think Scotland has a problem!

All that would matter less if Taunton Deane were a well-oiled machine, but the truth is quite the opposite. It is led by an autocrat and managed by an absentee. Its chief executive has been off for six months—with a bad back, we think, but we are not entirely sure. She has cost £80,000 in sick pay, and nobody knows what is wrong. The House will be relieved to learn, however, that she is coming back soon after seven months. She is to be phased in in January. What is “phased in”? I should try that with my Whip, who is sitting in her place.

The penny has finally dropped! Penny James and Councillor Williams have a long and undistinguished record for getting everything wrong. They were enthusiastic supporters of Southwest One. I will not bore the House. It is an appalling IT project that cost the taxpayers of Somerset £80 million and saved nothing. Taunton urgently needs to replace its IT equipment, but it does not have anybody who knows what to do with a computer, so for the chance of another expensive disaster, watch this space and my place in the House.

Taunton Deane is known as cock-up valley. That is written all over it. One of the latest occurred a couple of weeks ago. I must tell the House about it; it is fascinating.

[Bob Stewart]

Oh, go on.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support.

The planning committee of West Somerset council was meant to be considering a highly controversial building application, but the planning officers in Taunton, forgot—Fidel Castro-style—to inform any of the interested parties. Result: red faces, great anger, expense and—guess what—it had to be pulled. In my opinion West Somerset is trapped in an unfair partnership with an ineffective, overstretched and financially dodgy council. The chances are that there would be only nine or 10 councillors left when the changes come because of the demographics. It would spell the end of local democracy, not something that we want to see.

The plan was sneaked in under the radar, using a new Act of Parliament to get round the involvement of the Boundary Commission. Cunning stuff, as Baldrick would say. The Boundary Commission is an independent body, as the House knows. It always demands a fair referendum to test public opinion when it wants it. It would have gone through the emperor’s maths with a fine-toothed comb and made a fuss if the sums did not add up. However, Emperor Williams decided to push through his plans without bothering to tell Taunton Deane’s councillors precisely how he was going to do it.

In July, Taunton Deane Council approved the merger. That decision has now led to a legal challenge by a number of Taunton Deane’s councillors who insist that they were not told the truth. The legal challenge is powerful and, I can assure the House, is already causing the emperor and his team considerable anxiety. I am not surprised, because this time he has gone too far.

Do not get me wrong: I am not against change and I never have been. Partnerships can work and collaboration between councils is sensible, and maybe there are too many overpaid senior officers and too many people in town halls who do not know what they are doing. But big issues such as these deserve proper and thorough consultation. Instead we are getting a cheapskate confidence trick dreamt up by a cheapskate confidence trickster—try saying that quickly.

Through my door at the weekend came a questionnaire seeking my opinion, which will then be conveyed to the Government. Oh yeah? Golly! The plan is that money is so tight that something had to be done, so at a stroke, and without consultation, they ruled out the possibility of any partnerships. They are now looking to see how these councillors will work. Basically, there will now be a high-level business transformation document, which presumably is deliberately phrased to convince everyone that the only way is a full-blown merger.

With mergers come costly dreams, such as Southwest One, the multi million pound IT scheme. You name it, they’ve got it. This time Taunton Deane wants to put services online and trim back the staff, but that will not work because in West Somerset broadband is intermittent —in my house it is under a megabit—or non-existent, so the population do not have computers because they do not work. Pigeons are quicker. My constituents need to be able to talk to real human beings, not robots in Japan.

Unfortunately, the architects of these great schemes never do their homework. The business plan was riddled with financial guesswork, half-truths and downright lies. The document never offered the most sensible solution, which was to go back to the drawing board, talk to neighbouring councils—exactly what the Government told them to do—and find a more imaginative way forward. That is what I want and what the Government want, but Emperor Williams does not much fancy working with top-flight councils, because he could not cope with it—he is not that bright—so he has done everything in his power to prevent constructive talks taking place. Now he wants a Greater Taunton, a sprawling new authority with no separate identity for West Somerset.

The questionnaire asked me just about everything, from my favourite colour to my inside leg measurement, but at no point have I been invited to provide my name and address, even though it is a consultation in two councils, so anybody could respond. In fact, please write in—you can all take part and it is great fun—but do not opt for the merger in West Somerset and Taunton Deane.

The whole of this is ridiculous. These forms could be filled in by Mickey Mouse or even Emperor Williams. They have set up a new website with similar questions. It is not doing the trick. People are not conned, and we should know that in this House—we have seen Brexit and Trump. But it might not stop Councillor Williams and his mates trying to skew the results by making multiple entries from different computers on his own—yup, it happened before. It is a consultation sham designed to be abused, and it was ordered and approved by a council that claims to be democratic.

No wonder the electors in the Taunton Deane ward of Blackdown last week voted out the Conservative candidate after 42 years—it has always been blue, but no longer. They actually went and got a Liberal Democrat; that is how bad the council is. People in Taunton Deane are sick of the way the council is working, and it is getting worse. It used to be the county town, but its famous market has moved to the far better Bridgwater, the old site is still derelict and ugly, the whole area is overrun with unpopular housing schemes and there seems to be a determination to build for the sake of building.

But guess what? Emperor Williams is a builder. He looks great in a yellow hard hat and reinforced boots, and he is often photographed alongside prominent local developers—I will leave that hanging. They looked like a happy family in their ceremonial Day-Glo regalia. This month, “Brother John” was seen with the bosses of Summerfields, a local housing association, which recently completed Taunton Deane’s brand new Direct Labour headquarters—it sounds almost like something from the other side of the Chamber. It is located on a business park owned by Summerfields—funny, that—but most of the council’s workload is actually in Taunton, another town, so the staff have to go from one place to another to do their work. It is absolute madness. So why was there no reference to the extra cost when these plans were considered? One does not know. Ask Brother John.

A year or so ago, Summerfield applied for permission to build affordable homes just beside the M5—the famous M5. Guess what? Taunton Deane let it slip through. I am told the construction work was subcontracted to a company owned by, guess who, Brother John himself. Such a relationship is a bit too close for comfort, but, guess what, nobody has ever said there is a conflict of interest—they would not get away with it in most places. There is absolutely nothing in Taunton Deane’s constitution that obliges councillors to declare an interest when a subcontract is awarded. That is not good. We need openness in local government—I do not need to tell anybody here that.

I have highlighted these things simply to give the House a sense of perspective about what is going on in my part of Somerset. My constituents will not have the wool pulled over their eyes. They can smell a rat, and they know what one looks like, and I am sure they will reject this half-baked merger scheme. They want to keep their council—and so they should.