Draft Somerset West and Taunton (Modification of Boundary Change Enactments) Regulations 2018 Draft Somerset West and Taunton (Local Government Changes) Order 2018

Debate between Christopher Chope and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

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

It does not give me great pleasure to stand before my colleagues to say what I have to say, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for Makerfield, who spoke for Labour, because she hit a lot of nails on the head.

I found the Minister’s opening statement to be almost Cinderella-like, as so much of it is not correct, and unfortunately this Committee is dealing with two statutory instruments that could affect my constituency—indeed, they will affect my constituency—very badly indeed.

The amalgamation of West Somerset Council with Taunton Deane Borough Council, its urban neighbour, will mean the loss of more than half our councillors; we will go from having 28 councillors to probably 12, and the same is true of Taunton Deane. There is a massive deficit. This is an area that Greater London could easily be fitted into that has 35,000 people. It is a huge geographical area. We do not think the price will be worth paying in respect of democracy. We will literally have people covering areas the size of half of Greater London.

West Somerset is sparsely populated and contains more than its fair share of retired folk. I believe that we have the second highest number of retired folk in Britain; my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch probably has slightly more than I do, but not by many. West Somerset is a very old area. We do not have very good phone signals; we do not even really have very good internet. We are an area that is still catching up and we have a long way to go.

To merge our area with Taunton—the county town, which has roughly 120,000 people, when we have only 35,000 people—does not make any sense whatsoever. This is a shotgun marriage that will lock us into a future of playing second fiddle to Taunton’s tune. We just would not have enough councillors to change anything. It does not matter what colour or persuasion those councillors will be; that will be irrelevant. They will never be able to stop Taunton from doing anything it wants.

I have good reasons to oppose both the draft instruments. First, they contain significant errors. The local government changes order refers to Taunton Deane as a district council. In fact, Taunton Deane is a borough council; it was granted borough status 43 years ago. The order also reproduces a schedule of wards and the number of new councillors to be elected in the future. Some of the names of these wards are displayed incorrectly and the number of new councillors is out of line with what we have been led to believe will be the case.

I understand that these things may seem trivial to some people, but I suggest to the Committee that we have a solemn duty in this House to pass legislation that is accurate in all its details. If this was a classroom and you, Ms Buck, were the teacher, I think that we would hear the words from you, “Not good enough. Take it away and do it again.

The Somerset West and Taunton (Modification of Boundary Change Enactments) Regulations 2018 are accompanied by a written report that the Secretary of State was legally obliged to supply. Without that report, the draft statutory instrument would be unlawful. However, the report itself contains material inaccuracies and deliberate omissions, which I feel obliged to point out this morning.

I hope that all the members of the Committee have that document. It runs to six pages. I will begin on page 4, section 4, in which the Secretary of State describes the process of consultation; quite rightly, the Minister referred to consultation as well. There is no dispute that the two councils conducted a consultation exercise of sorts. It was done very late in the day, several months after both councils had voted on the proposals and it was not—I repeat, not—a referendum. My argument is that the consultation has been deliberately misrepresented by the authors of the report that is before the Committee.

We are dealing with some other dismal mistakes. Paragraph 4.5 is about responses to an online survey organised by the two councils, and says there were

“76 written and 528 questionnaire responses that displayed a good level of support”.

The numbers may be spot on, but I am sorry to say that the Government’s explanation is completely false. The large majority of the 528 people who filled in the questionnaire clearly said that they did not like the plans. That happens to be a matter of fact.

The next paragraph, paragraph 4.6, states that

“some town and parish councils…expressed support for the proposal.”

Is that true? No. That is another deliberate effort to spin a yarn. I have revisited all the documentation—it has been going on so long. In direct response to the consultation, 25 towns and parishes submitted written opinions. Of those, 17—well over half—were dead against or expressed serious reservations. I am therefore curious to learn how the consultation demonstrated a “good level of support”. That assertion is nonsense.

Last November, when the Secretary of State announced that he was minded to approve the proposals, which the Minister was again quite right in putting forward, there was another chance to lobby him. The report catalogues 114 representations in favour and mentions, almost as an afterthought, that there were 123 against, including those of 15 councillors. Once again, that does not represent a “good level of support”.

The thrust of the Government’s argument seems to be that those who opposed the plans were ill-informed and did not fully understand what they were talking about—it almost sounds like the Brexit debate. Paragraph 4.7 states that

“it was made clear in the joint business case submitted to the Secretary of State that both councils stand to make savings and improve their financial sustainability through the merger.”

Of course, that would be the very detailed business case prepared by Taunton Deane and West Somerset and published in July 2016. It set out, without any proof, the kind of savings that might be achieved if they invested almost £7 million in a new IT system, cut staff by 30% and then amalgamated. It was the stuff of dreams—fairy gold at the end of the rainbow.

In September 2016, the two councils trooped to London to see the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). I got an invitation at the last moment, which was somewhat galling to say the least. They outlined their ideas and had the cheek to ask for money in the meeting. I assure hon. Members that the then Minister sent them away empty-handed and said, “No. You’ve got to be joking. You have come up here to say this is a good idea and you want money. Something doesn’t smell right.”

The councils outlined their ideas, but by the time they got round to submitting formal merger plans last year, their business case was 12 months old and woefully out of date. The price of transformation, as it is called, had shot up. The promised savings had tumbled. The whole scheme was running way behind schedule, and it still is. However, like a lot of people, the Government did not read the small print.

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee came to precisely that conclusion when it examined the two draft statutory instruments. Its report said:

“Projections of the financial benefits…of the proposed merger are ‘jam tomorrow’”.

I could not have put it better myself, and I do not think anybody else could. That report from the other place also had a big dose of criticism for the public consultation, stating:

“If a consultation exercise is to carry credibility, those who organise it must be open-minded about its results.”

We are dealing with the fag end of a deeply flawed legal process. Frankly, we should not be here at all. This is not what this House, or this Delegated Legislation Committee, should be about.

The Department deliberately encouraged Taunton Deane and West Somerset councils to submit plans under the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, which was passed to create mayors, not to fast-track little local mergers. It bypasses the long-established scrutiny of the Local Government Boundary Commission and turns a blind eye to shoddy consultation. In short, the Act is being misused.

As the Minister will be acutely aware, the danger of all this is scrutiny. The final section of the report shows where the Government got their information from to judge the merger’s value. Most of it—guess what—came directly from the councils. If the Department did any analysis, it took it straight from Taunton at face value. It did not look carefully enough at the business case and ask the right questions, even when the councils updated their financial information. The Government assumed that all the projected savings would be unchanged. This is what a court would call negligence. By any token, it is an incredibly stupid way of dealing with things. I will lay down some proof of that before the Committee.

Last month, the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked for hard evidence of cost savings. The Government replied, as they always do:

“The business case, submitted jointly by both councils, details that becoming a single council will secure on-going savings of £3.1 million per annum”.

That is ridiculous. All the promised savings have already shrunk because of updated financial information supplied by the councils themselves. In any case, the savings of £3.1 million were never per annum. Perhaps officials failed—dare I say it—to read the documents properly. If I was paying for their advice, I would want my money back.

It comes as little surprise to discover that the Government face the prospect of a judicial review by disgruntled local people. I warned the Minister and the former Secretary of State, before he shifted, that that might happen. I suggested that it would be sensible to postpone this sitting while we sort this out, but he said, “No, the juggernaut of badly drafted statutory instruments must roll on.” I hope the Committee is getting a flavour of my disgust at the position I find myself and my constituents in.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

If there is going to be a judicial review, and if its outcome is that the courts strike down these instruments, will that not create absolute chaos in the area? Is that not a good reason in itself for the merger to be postponed?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friend is going through exactly the same situation that I am, for exactly the same reasons: tin-pot people decided that they had a better idea of how to run things. I have absolutely no doubt, having looked at what we have submitted, that we have a very good chance of—dare I say it—undermining the Government, of which I am a member. However, that does not mean that we should not do it. My hon. Friend has quite rightly put in his own papers.

This proposal has to be reviewed. The Government cannot ride roughshod over local government all the time. We have only to look at what is happening around the country. I believe there have been challenges in Norfolk, Northampton and other areas. Either local government means something or it does not. If it does not, get rid of it. If it does, it is worth fighting to save it. I strongly believe that, unless people like myself, as a constituency MP, stand up and make these points, we will just not be listened to. The Government have to wake up.

Taunton Deane Borough Council—not a district council, remember; it is just a borough—is led by, I am sorry to say, an appalling bully with a very dodgy business background and a very nasty and cavalier attitude to planning, which is now becoming rather obvious. He promoted this merger at the expense of honesty and common sense, and I am afraid that the reputation of his regime as tin-pot is now beginning to stick. I will give a flavour of how my constituents will suffer. I hope the Minister is listening.

That council is going to borrow £11 million pounds to tart up its HQ in Taunton, which will be worth—based on figures from reputable local estate agents—less than half of that. My constituents will be paying for a tarted up HQ that is worth 50% of what was spent on it. The leader of the council also wants to borrow £16 million to build a hotel. A district council is borrowing £16 million to build a hotel in Taunton that has no end user and will take 16 years to pay back. Again, my constituents will lose out. I think that I would trust Basil Fawlty rather than these characters, I really do.

The leader of the council’s burning ambition is to concrete over everything in sight and allow developers to put up 17,000 new houses in Taunton Deane. I represent an area in west Somerset that includes the Quantocks, Exmoor, a stunningly beautiful coastline and—believe it or not, coming from Somerset—quite a lot floodplains. We therefore cannot afford, in an area like ours, with literally one road in and one road out, to have more housing. However, the council next door—I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) is not here—is building 17,000 new houses in a tiny area. The leader of the council makes his living as—guess what—a builder. He now fancies branching out into west Somerset. The draft instruments are allowing him to do that. I invite the Committee to reflect on that.

I would like to address a couple of other points mentioned by the hon. Member for Makerfield. One in three jobs will go. There will be massive redundancies between the two councils. We do not have a figure yet, because they have not done the work. The IT system alone will cost £7 million. The democratic deficit and the jobs deficit—in an area that has stubbornly high unemployment, unfortunately, because work is very seasonal—will continue. I find it even more difficult to understand why a Government that pride themselves on enterprise, championing small and medium-sized enterprises, and standing up for the little business are now saying that we should have not only a political deficit, but a jobs deficit in an area like ours. I just do not get it. I am sorry to say that I find their entire argument spurious.

Taunton is not precepted—it never has been. It has a mayor, but it is not precepted. The mayor has been Labour, Liberal and Conservative, therefore it does it properly, but it wants to be precepted. Why on earth should my constituents be paying for a mayor in Taunton? We are miles from Taunton. Taunton, even from where I live, is half an hour away. From Minehead it is an hour away. It is not next door. We will be paying to have a mayor that we do not have. This whole thing, therefore, shows a completely cavalier attitude from the Government.

I ask the Committee to be brave and to stand up for local government and the little person, because at the moment that is not happening.

Russian Membership of the Council of Europe

Debate between Christopher Chope and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record. I know that within the Socialist group, strong, differing views have been expressed, but the UK delegation in the Socialist group has been solidly supporting the notion that we must have application of the rules of law to the Russian Federation’s membership of the Council of Europe.

What has the Russian Federation done to put itself in fundamental breach of its obligations? First, it has illegally annexed the territory of another member country of the Council of Europe through the use of armed aggression. To make that worse, its President this week finally admitted that he ordered that annexation, and that there was no free will involved on the part of those living in Crimea. However, as recently as January this year, Mr Putin’s poodles in the Russian state Duma were trying to equate Crimea’s referendum with that the one that took place in Scotland last year and to say that the annexation was equivalent to the Federal Republic of Germany’s annexation of East Germany in 1989.

The hon. Member for Portsmouth South asked what is new, and I have here an article from a Russian newspaper, dated 28 January 2015, with the headline “Russian lawmakers to consider declaration on 1989 ‘annexation of East Germany’”. It states:

“Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, has asked the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs to look into the possibility of adopting a declaration which denounces the reunification of Germany in 1989”.

He goes on to say that the Parliamentary Assembly’s reference to the events in Crimea was unlawful and that

“‘97% of Crimean residents voted for reunification with their motherland’”.

The article continues:

“Following the logic of those who call this historical event an annexation, the Federal Republic of Germany annexed East Germany, Naryshkin stated.”

We now know, from Putin’s words a year later, that he ordered that, so all the subsequent bluff and bluster were lies, as we knew they were at the time, and as most of us on the Parliamentary Assembly realised.

The second thing that I hold against the Russian Federation is that it has deployed Russian troops across the border in eastern Ukraine who have used and continued to use heavy weapons against the Ukrainian people. I ask the hon. Gentleman, is that not enough?

Thirdly, Russia has brazenly defied the rule of law by harbouring Andrei Lugovoy, one of its own MPs, who was involved in the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. As has become clear at the public inquiry currently taking place, Lugovoy achieved a score of minus 2 when asked during a polygraph test in Moscow in April 2012 whether he had handled polonium, yet at the time Russia claimed that the test had emphatically established his innocence. To add insult to injury, on Monday this week, President Putin awarded a state honour to Mr Lugovoy for what was described as “services to the fatherland”. That is putting the proverbial two fingers up to all the other members of the Council of Europe. What are those members doing in response?

The fourth charge that I levy against the Russian Federation is that it has refused to honour its obligations under international law to release from custody Nadiya Savchenko, who was an elected Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She was illegally abducted from Ukraine last July.

Then there is the Magnitsky case. That is a case of the Russians exercising impunity in relation to the killers of Sergei Magnitsky. A recently published book by Bill Browder, “Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No. 1 Enemy”, is, according to the inside cover,

“a searing exposé of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky’s imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths… With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking but true political roller-coaster that plays out in the highest echelons of Western power.”

On the back of the book, which, not surprisingly, has been banned in Russia, there is a quote from Bill Browder:

“I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed some day… If I’m killed, you will know who did it.”

That is, sadly, rather reminiscent of what Boris Nemtsov’s mother said before his assassination in Russia last month.

In addition to all that, there have been multiple breaches of the accession document that Russia signed when it joined the Council of Europe. As Russia is still in deliberate breach of its obligations under article 3, why is nothing being done by the United Kingdom Government to trigger action against Russia under article 8? Indeed, one might ask what the purpose is of belonging to an organisation that manifestly shows so little respect for the values espoused in its founding statute.

There are precedents for suspension or expulsion from international organisations, and I want to touch on what happens in the Commonwealth. On Monday, Her Majesty the Queen, as head of the Commonwealth, attended the annual service at Westminster abbey, and her message for Commonwealth day was that the organisation’s values are

“more important and worthy of protection than perhaps at any other time in the Commonwealth’s existence.”

The same is true of the values of the Council of Europe. The principles of the Commonwealth were set out in the Singapore declaration of 1971 and restated in the Harare declaration of 1991. In essence, they talk about peace, democracy, liberty and the rule of law.

Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth in 1995 for breaching the Commonwealth principles. It was reinstated in 1999, when it had a democratically elected President. Fiji was suspended in September 2009 for being in breach of the principles and is still suspended. Indeed, I think it has now left the organisation. Zimbabwe was suspended in March 2002. That resulted in its leaving the Commonwealth in December 2003. There are well established precedents for exercising the power of suspension from an international organisation when a member of that organisation is manifestly in breach of the principles.

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

I have a word of caution for my hon. Friend, who is making a very powerful and correct point. I am a member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and one problem that we have had is that we are losing countries from the CPA because of the problems that we are facing. Australia is an obvious one. The problem in this case is that we may split the Council of Europe if we are not careful. The idea that my hon. Friend is putting forward is absolutely right—we have to have sanctions—but we do not want a polarised Council of Europe, in which countries feel that they are so bullied by Russia that they cannot continue to be within the Council of Europe. Does he see that that may be a problem, rather like what the Commonwealth has been facing over the last 20 years with the countries that we have had to suspend?

[Mr Chope]

There may be parallels. I defer to my hon. Friend’s superior knowledge of what happens in the Commonwealth. However, if we and the other founding members of the Council of Europe do not stand up for our belief in the principles of the Council of Europe, we make things much more difficult for other countries, particularly those that were formerly in eastern Europe and part of the Soviet bloc. It is much more difficult for them to try to comply with the principles of the Council of Europe if they can see that the bully boy next-door to them is being treated with impunity, which is exactly what is happening with Russia at the moment. We could send a very strong message if we took effective action and used sanctions against Russia. We would be sending a message to those other countries that we were on their side and would help them to stand up against their bully-boy neighbour.