Draft Dorset (Structural Changes) (Modification Of The Local Government And Public Involvement In Health Act 2007) Regulations 2018 Draft Bournemouth, Dorset And Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018

Michael Tomlinson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry, or at least to appear before you with you in the Chair, and a pleasure to see such great interest in Dorset in the House of Commons. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends. I agree entirely with my hon. Friends the Members for Poole and for Bournemouth West and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. I, too, pay tribute to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch; I well remember him campaigning alongside me on the streets of Wimborne for the one vision that we had for the Conservative party, and also for Dorset locally. I pay tribute to his campaign and I am sorry that we are on different sides of this argument.

My constituency is unique for many reasons, but it is also unique—in Dorset at least, I believe—in that four local authorities serve it. They are Dorset County Council, the Borough of Poole, East Dorset District Council and Purbeck District Council, and all four have worked hard to deliver high-quality services to residents while recognising the budgetary pressures that affect all local authorities.

As we have heard, of the nine local authorities that we are discussing, eight support the plans for reorganisation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West said, this issue has been going on for some time. Last year, the Borough of Poole and Dorset County Council strongly supported the initial submissions, alongside Bournemouth, West Dorset, Weymouth and Portland and North Dorset. Following the former Secretary of State’s letter in which he said that he was minded to support the proposal, East Dorset and Purbeck followed suit. The changes have the support of the vast majority of councillors, councils and, as you have heard, Sir Henry, Members of Parliament. They are also backed by the Dorset local enterprise partnership; I do not think that point has been mentioned, but if it has, forgive me, because I missed it. Nearly 90% of local businesses recognise the opportunities that this reorganisation and joined-up local government can bring.

This is a key moment for Dorset, as other hon. Members have said. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Poole, my constituency neighbour, that historically we have not been as successful when bidding for larger-scale projects as we might have been, yet there is a clear need for greater infrastructure. I am thinking particularly of roads—north, south, east and west. Councils will, I believe, benefit significantly from speaking with fewer but stronger voices.

I have received very few emails or letters from residents about local government reorganisation. I have received significantly more about the need to protect services for residents, and I believe that these proposals provide the opportunity to do just that. In my view, the biggest risk is any further delay in this process. Councils up and down the country are coming together with the aim of working to secure services, reduce costs and better serve their communities. Dorset has been proactive and should be congratulated and encouraged. Now is the time to get on with it.

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[Simon Hoare]

I am not entirely sure that four tweets from a Back-Bench Conservative Member of Parliament could be described as an intervention. This is hardly a Russian-sponsored cyber-attack of some form. I do not have that many followers. My hon. Friend gilds me with powers that I would not even presume to aggrandise with myself.

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that 17,000 people took part in the parish poll. It was a postal poll, so people did not actually have to turn up to polling stations. I think people could bring in their form to the borough council headquarters if they wished. As a percentage of those who are eligible to vote within the parliamentary constituency, 17,000 is a number, but it is no more than that. That point strikes at the heart of this argument. Nobody can doubt the passion that has been deployed on either side. The split between Dorchester and Sherborne—that historical divide of the civil war—is a vicar’s tea party in comparison with some of the blood pressure increases that we have seen as the process has gone forward.

I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West made. Irrespective of where the public were on this issue two years ago or a year ago, or even where they are now, they should have no doubt—I would hope that they had some considerable pride—that we have all engaged passionately in this debate not out of narrow party interest or narrow self-interest, but because of what we believe, in our hearts and our souls, to be good for those who send us here.

The key point is that unanimity is not required in the legislation, because it would make a nonsense of the law, but it is desirable. Let us be frank: if not, we would not have taken up so much of your time, Sir Henry, or that of those colleagues who have had the enormous good fortune to be drawn in the Whips’ Office raffle to sit on this Delegated Legislation Committee.

[Michael Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend mentions that unanimity is not required. He is absolutely right. Can he think of any other examples? I can think of Cornwall, where there was not unanimity, and yet it was still reorganised.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that unanimity would be deeply worrying. It would almost suggest a “couldn’t care less” attitude, where something is done down the line of least resistance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham knows, not all constituent parts of Wiltshire wanted the change to happen. The intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole inexorably provides me with the key test. The logical step is to go and ask anyone, “Would you want to go back to having two-tier local government in Wiltshire? Would you want to go back to having two-tier local government in Shropshire? Would you want to go back to having two-tier local government in Cornwall?” I think the answer uniformly, and probably definitely, would be no.

The direction of travel is clear. What we are trying to do in Dorset is not eccentric or perverse; it is not in any way weird. It is a democratic response, underpinned by intellectual and academic argument to deliver on that principal propulsion of public service. That is what this is about. We can see the situation evolving in Northamptonshire, in Oxfordshire—[Interruption.] Look—people are fighting to come in. The bouncers are asking for ID. People are being asked to turn up with their grandparents and sometimes great-grandparents in order to get a seat in this marvellous Delegated Legislation Committee. As I was saying, it is happening in Northamptonshire. I understand that neighbours in Somerset are looking at it, and that Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire have proposals that are either with the Secretary of State or shortly to come before him.

Two-tier local government will be a bizarre construct to the Opposition spokesman, having come from the metropolitan borough of Oldham, but he will know of the speedy and more efficient decisions that can be taken by single-tier government.

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[Michael Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. Will he please comment on my brief intervention, in which I mentioned our joint campaign on infrastructure on north-south routes? Does he believe that this order will help bids to be put in to secure more infrastructure investment in Dorset?

[Simon Hoare]

Without a shadow of a doubt, my hon. Friend is right. He and I have sat with the former Minister, our hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, our hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), and of course we will be sitting down and discussing these issues with the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole is absolutely right that a unified voice from one local authority will be able to make a case for that strategic investment. We have seen it happen. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham is more than welcome to chip in—if you will forgive the pun, Sir Henry—at this point. Certainly, there has been a far greater level of investment in the A350 corridor since Wiltshire became unitary than when there was a county council and districts. The proof of the pudding is very often in the eating, and that trail of investment—that opportunity to make a cohesive and cogent submission to Whitehall—is far more likely to be efficacious under a unitary approach than in the “let’s play one off against the other” two-tier system.

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole would concur with this statement: that when the proposition—the tantalising prize—of reorganisation within the county has been put before other decision makers, interest that has existed has become more alert and acute when they have realised that there is likely to be a slimming-down in the relationship of dialogue that is needed to take decisions.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Perhaps my hon. Friend could throw one last thing into this matrix as well. When Members of Parliament across the country also speak with one voice—as he and I do on this project, as well as our hon. Friend the Member for Poole; the A350 starts near the port of Poole—that also lends greater weight.

[Simon Hoare]

Absolutely right, and the work that our hon. Friend the Member for Poole does on behalf of his constituents should not be neglected in these matters.

I will go back briefly to one issue, because I am conscious that I did not deal with it with the weight and attention that I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West as an individual both requires and deserves. The local identity is hugely important. No Conservative likes the big and the monolithic. We quite like the quirky, the different and the local—it is what makes up, I think, part of our Conservative DNA. I have always gone into this process with the firm and clear caveat that local Mayors—whether it is the Mayor of Shaftesbury, the Mayor of Blandford Forum or the Mayor of Verwood Town Council—can continue in office and have a role. I actually think that role would be augmented and enhanced when they are no longer the junior tier of local government, with the district or the borough sandwiched somewhere in between, but instead have a more direct link up to the unitary council and down.

There is also Weymouth to consider. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset shares my view and I am sure that he, like I, welcomed this change; it falls within his bailiwick. My support for it, and indeed anything else, is absolutely ancillary to the case that Weymouth makes, but what a marvellous initiative of Weymouth to work towards the creation of a town council, because that will ensure that granular, democratic accountability.

I take entirely the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made, because—frankly—anybody who has listened to him for more than two minutes could not fail to have noticed the most enormous pride that residents and public servants of Christchurch have—rightly—in the history of their part of the county, which was once in Hampshire and is now in Dorset. But that is the point, I say to the Minister: it makes no difference where they are; it is what they are that is important. It is how they feel that motivates them and makes them tick.

Blandford Forum would be Blandford Forum if it were in North or West Yorkshire, or in Wiltshire, because it would still be Blandford Forum. And Christchurch has been Christchurch whether it has resided within the county boundary of Hampshire or the county boundary of Dorset. Why? Because it is Christchurch. And should the good burghers of that borough seek the creation of a town council, I think it would be the most phenomenal success.

[Michael Tomlinson]

My hon. Friend talks about Christchurch, but before he did so he mentioned Weymouth and its town council. Perhaps he could say something more about the opportunities for town and parish councils to have a beefed-up role if this particular order is passed, and about where he sees the opportunities for our parish and town councils as well.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is right to point to that opportunity.

I pay tribute at this point to Councillor Simon Tong, a former headteacher who will certainly be known to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. At the first opportunity that Councillor Tong had to vote on this proposal as a member of East Dorset District Council, he voted against it. One of his reasons—in fact, his principal reason—for voting against it was the very germane and specific concern that my hon. Friend raised: the potential for a disconnect and for a subversion of town and parish councils.

It was one of those odd situations where one would be damned if one did and damned if one did not. If one had gone into all the minutiae of precisely who would be procuring the pencils, the highlighters, the ring binders, the desks, the table lamps or any other office stationery, or who was going to commission the painter of the livery on the side of the van, one might quite legitimately have been said to be putting the cart before the horse. However, it was then realised pretty quickly—I believe this was one of the concerns expressed by Purbeck and by Weymouth and Portland—that there was a question about the role, scope and vision for town and parish councils. I think that is now starting to emerge. This cannot be done top-down; it has to be done in collaboration.

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[Simon Hoare]

I concur with my hon. Friend. If my hon. Friend the Minister cannot do that, I will be performing the greatest volte-face in Dorset’s political history and joining my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Thank goodness you don’t have a vote.

[Simon Hoare]

So says my hon. Friend. If I may pinch a phrase from more auspicious colleagues, one of my red lines has been the role of the town and parish councils—making sure that there are local voices and that that relationship is forged with ward members. Gillingham will end up with three councillors, and Blandford will end up with two; part of the skill set that we will be looking for, certainly in our candidate, is a very firm commitment to close liaison with those town and parish councils.

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[Simon Hoare]

That was a typically elegant invitation from my hon. Friend, urging me, in his polite and dulcet tones, to draw what I would have characterised as my opening remarks to a peroration.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Shut up and sit down!

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, in some uncharacteristically cheap sedentary chunter, says, “Shut up and sit down!” I note the ironic “Hear, hears!” from members of the Committee. I view that as an invitation to move on to volume 3, but I shall not. Let me draw my remarks to a close—