Local Government Reorganisation

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

That is exactly what this is about. This is the most ambitious reorganisation in England for at least 50 years, maybe longer. We need to avoid the sense that this is just rearranging the local government deckchairs. It is not about that. The devolution White Paper is ambitious, and that ambition is about wresting power from Westminster and Parliament and putting it in the hands of communities up and down the country. For far too long, power has been held in a very narrow way by a handful of people, at the exclusion of millions of people in this country. Frankly, people have had enough, so we have to find a different route.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am fortunate to work with two local authorities, Basingstoke and Deane borough council and Test Valley borough council, which, after many decades of careful stewardship, are debt-free and have significant assets on their balance sheets, to the benefit of their residents. What will the Minister do in this local government reorganisation to protect that legacy? Would it not be profoundly unfair if those many years of careful stewardship were wiped out by amalgamation with more profligate neighbouring councils?

[Jim McMahon]

It is not my intention to set one council against another. When areas begin to look at what new unitary boundaries might look like, they will need a view on identity, scale and achieving efficiency, and, ultimately, what construct will deliver good public services, be it adult social care, children’s services or those neighbourhood services that, in many places, have been eroded to the point where people wonder if they exist at all.

We have to rebuild from the ground up. This process, regardless of a council’s debt or financial status, is part of that rebuilding. Let us be honest: nobody in this Chamber, or in this Government, can put a number or this. We do not know what the outcome will be. If this is genuinely about local areas self-organising and presenting to Government their view of what a good outcome would be, we need to be open about that.