Draft East Suffolk (Local GOvernment Changes) Order 2018 Draft East Suffolk (Modification of Boundary Change ENactments) Regulations 2018

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 General Committees

[Andrew Percy]

Indeed. My question to the Minister is this: what exactly are the principles on which consent is determined? If it is simply on the basis of people who happen to be in leadership positions on local councils at the time, that may not be sufficient in other parts of the country when looking at devolution deals and other changes to local government.

Will the Minister assure us that the Department will at all times ensure the maximum and broadest support for changes to local government structures or devolution, not only for the councils we are discussing, but for the future of where the Department is going on local government? Will he give us that assurance without referencing Yorkshire—I am sure he will want to assure me that nothing will be forced on my area against the consent of the people of the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire—because the debate is in the context of East Suffolk?

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

rose—

[The Chair]

I am very pleased to see that Sir Christopher Chope has joined us. You are not on the Committee, but I shall be very pleased to hear your words.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Thank you very much, Mr Davies. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I have come along this afternoon so that I can ask a few questions, because this topic is very relevant in my area. I shall not draw on my area at the moment, save to say that a proposal will come before the House shortly for Christchurch Borough Council to be merged with Bournemouth and Poole Borough Councils into one new unitary authority, against the wishes of the people of Christchurch.

Putting that to one side, I am concerned that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the other place has reported on the draft statutory instruments but that we have not yet had any reference to that report. I hope hon. Members will indulge me and allow me to bring to their attention what that Committee had to say. It expressed concerns about the instruments and asked, as a result, for them to be brought to the special attention of the House. The issue centres on local consent or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole said, consent itself.

The Lords Committee said that local support is deemed to have been accepted because a very large number of people abstained, but in the open consultation process in East Suffolk, 114 responses from the public were against the proposal and 17 were in favour. A recurring concern among objectors was that a single council covering a large geographic area would weaken local democracy, and that certain areas would be under-represented. In response, the Ministry said that

“following the consultation, a ‘myth-busting’ document was published on the councils’ shared website to address the principal concerns raised during the consultation process.”

The House of Lords Committee asked for additional information from the Ministry, and it is fair to say that it did not find that additional information satisfactory. In appendix 1 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report, it asked:

“Have the councils published a summary of consultation responses?”

The Ministry responded:

“The councils have published the results of the consultation, which can be found via the following link”.

The second question was:

“Have the councils offered any evidence that the ‘“myth-busting” document’ was widely read by local residents, in particular by any of the 114 members of the public who were against the proposals?”

The answer from the Ministry was:

“The myth-busting document was provided to all respondents to the original consultation who provided details for further contact to be made”—

in other words, it was probably not provided to very many. It continued:

“Therefore, though it may not have been provided to all individuals who objected, it would have been made directly available to those that expressed an interest in further information. It was also freely available on the East Suffolk website. In short, the councils made every effort to ensure the information was available. It may be the case that one of the impacts of the myth-busting document was to result in few people feeling the need to make representations during the period for representations, see below.”

The third question was a reference to the explanatory memorandum:

“‘After the Secretary of State announced his initial decision that he was minded to implement the proposal, there was a period for representations lasting from 7 November 2017 until 8 January 2018. 20 representations were received. Of these 17 were supportive of the proposal, one was neutral and two were opposed.’ The EM makes it clear that only 2 of these 17 responses were from members of the public. Have the councils offered an explanation for why so few members of the public responded at this second stage?”

The answer was:

“These representations did not form part of the council-run consultation but were submitted as a result of the opportunity provided by the Secretary of State to any interested party to send to him directly any representation regarding his initial minded-to decision to proceed with the merger. The Council did make clear locally that there was a period of representations by informing local stakeholders, parish councils and other interested parties directly. As mentioned above, it may be that the intensive distribution of the myth-busting document reduced the need to make representations at that point.”

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said that it was not convinced by that. Indeed, the means by which many of these orders are developed is by the Secretary of State not carrying out the consultation himself, which he is entitled to do under section 2 of the 2007 Act, but by relying on the councils to carry out that consultation. It has been made clear to me by officials in the Minister’s Department that the invitation for representations is a very different proposition from a formal consultation. A consultation is an active engagement by the Government with interested people, and an invitation to them to submit their reviews in response to consultation questions. To invite representations is a much more passive exercise. Unless people have it drawn specifically to their attention that they can make representations, they often fail to do so. The fact that so few representations were made following the Secretary of State’s “minded to” decision does not, in my submission, establish the consent that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole made clear is an important part of such a change.

May I draw the Committee’s attention to one or two of the observations that were made in response to the original consultation, which was carried out by the parties to this proposal? People said that they did not like the idea of boundary changes about which they had not been invited to make any submission. There will be fewer councillors, which means that each will be more remote from local people than they are. Part of one of the statutory instruments is designed to enable the Boundary Commission to make changes to boundaries to reflect the reduced number of wards. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister told us whether the proposals to reduce the number of wards that are set out in that statutory instrument were the subject of proper public consultation. In my submission, they should have been. The effect of that instrument would be to give him retrospective authority to invite the Boundary Commission to make changes. Reading between the lines, it seems that a lot of those changes have already been made and, indeed, will be implemented by the second of the statutory instruments.

I have those concerns about the boundaries, but a lot of concern has also been expressed about the need for local people to be properly consulted. “Why,” they ask, “couldn’t we have had a local referendum?” I understand the strength of that argument. Councils may hold local referendums, which are the best and surest way of establishing whether there is genuine local consent for a proposition. My council in Christchurch held a local referendum following a “minded to” decision by the Secretary of State. On a 54% turnout, 84% of people were against the proposition. That just shows the extent and strength of interest that can be generated in a local community when there is a proper consultation and, as was suggested by some of the respondents in this case, a local referendum.

The difficulty arises when there are two councils that both wish to change but are not necessarily in tune with the wishes of many of the residents of their areas. That is why we legislators have an important responsibility not to allow these statutory instruments to go through on the nod, without proper scrutiny. We have a responsibility to speak not just for the elected councils but for the people who live in the area.

That point was made strongly by the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which states at paragraph 19 of its report:

“We would urge caution in deploying this argument”—

the argument that the councillors support the change. It adds that

“if the views of councillors are a sufficient indicator of local reactions, there would be no need for the programme of consultation and engagement described in the”

explanatory memorandum. It also states:

“Given the strength of concern about the proposal evidenced in the responses to the open consultation of 2016, we are also not convinced that the low level of responses to the late-2017 period for representations reflected widespread acceptance among local residents: it might equally well result from a sense that further objection was pointless.”

That attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of local residents by saying that further resistance is useless is something that many people in Dorset have seen first hand in recent months. That is another reason why we as legislators should be on the ball and alert to ensuring that democracy really does mean that we do not change the rules without proper consent.

In normal circumstances, it is not possible to abolish even a parish council without the consent of the parish councillors and the people living in that parish.

[The Chair]

Order. May I invite the hon. Gentleman to try to focus his comments on East Suffolk? I realise he is making some general principle points and that he has strong concern about Christchurch and Bournemouth, but I do not want a proxy conversation about that. If he could focus on East Suffolk, that would be appreciated.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I was trying to do that, and I am sorry if I failed.

My last point was about the need for consent in relation to the powers being used to merge councils. Where there is consent, it can be a strong card. Indeed, that is why the Opposition support this measure. However, let us look at the consent of not just councils and councillors but the people whom they represent—the people who elect them. In that context, I was drawing an analogy for district councils. Under normal law, even a parish council cannot be abolished without the support not only of that council, but of the people who live in the parish. That is a potent point on which to end my short submission.

I hope hon. Members think carefully before they decide which way to vote. I also hope that they listen to what the Minister says in response to concerns expressed about boundary changes, and whether there has been sufficient consultation. Is the number of councillors, which will be significantly less than it is currently, right? Do people feel—we know they do from the representations of people from Lowestoft—that they will be under the cosh and taken for granted by those in the rest of the new local authority area?

[Rishi Sunak]

It has been wonderful to see hon. Members use the debate as an opportunity to display their extensive knowledge of local government restructuring, stretching back to the 1970s—some time before I was born—and to hear them emphasise and assert their strongly held regional identities. I gently say to my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell that, as a North Yorkshire MP, I appreciate why any community would feel sad about not being included in God’s own county—and, if I might say so, the best part of Yorkshire.

I thank the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish for his thoughtful and constructive comments. I appreciate his support. I will listen to what he says on local government funding and discuss it with the new Secretary of State. He will know that we may have some differences on that score, but I appreciate his commitment to local government in all of its aspects, and I enjoy our exchanges here and elsewhere.

I turn to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole. When I first came into Parliament, I had the job of filling the shoes of the previous Member for Richmond, which was an impossibly tall order, and now I have perhaps the even bigger task of filling my hon. Friend’s shoes—so great was he in his job that it now has to be split between two Ministers. Unfortunately, I cannot fully answer his questions about devolution, as they come under the portfolio of the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), who I know will engage fully with him on them. However, on unitarisations and mergers, the criteria laid out by the previous Secretary of State last year in a written ministerial statement, and further emphasised since, refer to

“a good deal of local support”.—[Official Report, 7 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 48WS.]

That is the test that the Secretary of State has to ensure is met, and he will judge each case on its merits. That is with regard to mergers and unitarisations, rather than devolutions, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will pick up with my hon. Friend.

Turning finally to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it is a pleasure to see him after our discussion last week in the debate on West Suffolk. I will touch on the specific points that he made. Having debated the issue a couple of times with him, the Government simply do not agree with the view that there is not widespread local support for this merger.

As I laid out in my opening statement and then re-emphasised, an independently commissioned poll showed that 72% of local people supported the proposal. That was further supported by almost all locally elected representatives including Members of Parliament, the vast majority of councillors and all major stakeholders locally, including businesses, community groups, health trusts and chambers of commerce. On that point, we may have to agree to disagree.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The Minister is not just disagreeing with me, he is disagreeing with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of the other place, which drew the instrument to our attention on the grounds that there appeared to be “inadequacies” in the consultation processes.

[Rishi Sunak]

As my noble Friend Lord Bourne has said, we do not share the view of that Committee in reaching that conclusion. For the reasons that Lord Bourne and I have laid out, we think there is a substantial body of evidence to support the conclusion reached by the Secretary of State that there is considerable local support for these proposals. One test is clearly the extensive support from locally elected, democratically accountable councillors and Members of Parliament in East Suffolk.

Turning to my hon. Friend’s other point about democracy, I agree that people should feel that democracy is not too remote. He mentioned Lowestoft. I am pleased to tell him that, as a result of all the engagement that went on regarding the proposals we are considering today, new parishes have been created for Lowestoft and Alton. That was a result of the engagement that councils had with their communities, and was a response to their concerns. The creation of new parishes will ensure that the people in those communities have adequate representation.

On my hon. Friend’s point about warding and new boundary arrangements, there is a proposal to reduce the number of councillors by just over a third. That proposal was put forward by the councils themselves, which came to that number based on guidance from the Local Government Boundary Commission. Informal conversations have already been had with commission on the carrying out of a full re-warding should these statutory instruments be agreed to. As part of that process, there will be a full public consultation, as Members would expect from such a formal process.

In conclusion, I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish in paying tribute to all the councillors and bodies involved locally for the hard work they have put in over the past year to bring these plans to fruition. They are to be commended for their diligence, innovation and desire to serve their communities to the best of their ability. I hope hon. Members will join me in commending them by supporting these orders today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft East Suffolk (Local Government Changes) Order 2018.

DRAFT EAST SUFFOLK (MODIFICATION OF BOUNDARY CHANGE ENACTMENTS) REGULATIONS 2018

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft East Suffolk (Modification of Boundary Change Enactments) Regulations 2018. —(Rishi Sunak.)