Local Government Bill [Lords]

Debate between Gavin Shuker and Keith Simpson

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

In cases such as this one, it is important that we come back to first principles, and those first principles strike me as being quite straightforward: do the people of Norwich and Exeter want this, is it rational that they should want it, and is it appropriate for unitary status to be conferred?

Norwich is the closest city to me of those that are under discussion. Does it want this? Yes, it does. Norwich city council currently has 34 Labour, Green and Lib Dem members, and they were in favour. Only the Tories, with five seats, were against. Earlier, the hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) claimed that the two seats of Norwich South and Norwich North changed hands at the election because the Labour Government had been pushing to try unitary status there. He should have more faith in his colleagues who represent those constituencies. They represent the new generation of MPs, and I am sure they would attribute their success to much broader reasons to do with their appeal.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give me an example, either orally or in written evidence, in this place of the former MP for Norwich North, Dr Ian Gibson, coming out in favour of the unitary proposal?

[Gavin Shuker]

Dr Gibson is no longer a Member of this House so I do not see the relevance of the question. I can, however, assure the hon. Gentleman that when I was campaigning in the elections that were forced as a result of the Secretary of State’s decision, many of the people to whom I spoke were very much in favour of the proposal.

[Gavin Shuker]

I completely agree.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Let me explain the flaw in these arguments. What I am about to say does not necessarily apply to Exeter, but the only way in which Norwich could get unitary status and also fulfil all the economic criteria—one problem is that Secretaries of State have changed their minds about that—is to enlarge Norwich and bring in all the outer suburbs, including large parts of my constituency. They did not try to do that for the simple reason that the majority of the people there were totally against it, and they were totally against it because of the complete and utter incompetence of Labour-led Norwich city council. Therefore, even their economic criteria did not add up.

[Gavin Shuker]

Much as I am enjoying this conversation with the hon. Gentleman, I should point out again that he claimed the only reason why the two Members were elected to the House was because of the supposed opposition to the Labour Government’s strategy for introducing unitary status. If he wants to talk about election results we should talk about those of last month: in Norwich, the Lib Dems were down one and the Tories were down one, while both the Greens and Labour were up one. If we want to draw lessons from the electorate, we could begin with those results.