Kevin Hollinrake

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, and for giving me advance sight of it. Although we support the principle of devolving power to local areas, we are totally against the Secretary of State’s plans to abolish every county council and district council in England, and we are against the unprecedented mass postponement of local elections for at least one year. Today is a very worrying day for democracy in this country. The Secretary of State is making local government less accountable to the people and more accountable to her. Contrary to her statement, she is not doing away with a two-tier system; she is simply creating a new tier of Orwellian-sounding strategic authorities that are closer to her and closer to Whitehall, for her to use as a pawn to implement this Government’s deeply unpopular socialist agenda. The reality is that this is delegation, not devolution—not devolution but a clear centralisation. As Dr Andy Mycock of Leeds University set out in his recent paper on the Secretary of State���s plans, there are clear concerns about the potential “power drain of back-bench local councillors if local government is seen increasingly as a delivery agent.” Let us be clear that this announcement is a huge upheaval of local government right across the country. This was not a Government manifesto commitment, and the Secretary of State has no mandate for it. These are her choices, and she has put a gun to the head of local councils to force them into a decision with little regard for local people. This is not the invitation she claims in her statement; it is an instruction. No council should be bullied or blackmailed into local government restructuring. Local government should be local to residents and respect local identities. We have a proud record of supporting devolution and, rather than this top-down approach, we have worked with local people to deliver devolution from the ground up. The Government have tried to claim that they are taking a bottom-up approach—indeed, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution said exactly that on the Floor of the House on 20 January—yet the Secretary of State admits in her statement that “all two-tier areas should be making plans to move to simpler structures”. Imposing Whitehall diktat on local people, rather than the locally led approach we followed, is prone to problems, especially when rushed. How exactly will this restructuring put more money into people’s pockets, as the Secretary of State claims? What evidence does she have that it will mean lower bills for taxpayers? How is this consistent with the Prime Minister’s claim in March 2023 that council tax would not increase by a “single penny” under a Labour Government? Does the Secretary of State accept that she has no electoral mandate for this huge upheaval? Does she also accept that these changes, which will mean that every single council employee in two-tier areas has to reapply for their job, will have an impact on local services, including planning delays? How will this impact on her plans to deliver 1.5 million homes in this Parliament—a 50% increase on the 50-year record levels delivered by the previous Government? Councils in areas of the country included in this announcement are carrying very high levels of debt—Woking and Thurrock, to name but two. What support will the Secretary of State give to authorities facing eye-watering levels of debt, and will this debt be written off? What is she doing to ensure that, as a result of today’s announcement, authorities do not embark on reckless asset disposal programmes and spending sprees? Can she confirm that elections will be delayed for a maximum of a year, or is it the case, as we have heard, that elections could be delayed by up to three years?