Lord Lucas (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s exposition of these SIs. I completely understand why we are moving in this direction: greater efficiency and effectiveness. I very much hope that the Government can, as this process moves on, increase the level of effective devolution and perhaps even give some real independence over revenue to these authorities so that they can develop their full potential. In addition, when we reach Committee on the hereditary Peers Bill, I will propose that, rather than hereditary Peers being the eligible candidates in by-elections, it should be people nominated by these new authorities and their mayors. We can use the existing mechanisms that we have to start to introduce a measure of regional representation into the House. I hope that the Government will have their imaginative hat on when we come to that. The mechanism is in place; let us use it to move in a direction that many of us would like to go in and to take at least a small step. I am a resident of East Sussex, which is one of the candidates for the next round of this measure. I note that the local proposals involve a mayor for the whole of Sussex, thereby recreating not the original county council but the original kingdom of Sussex—perhaps we might have a prince rather than a mayor. What concerns me most is how the towns and communities in these new unitaries will come to cherish, assert and grow their own identities. I very much hope that I can persuade the Minister to circulate widely to all the councils that are candidates for this, as well as their constituent parts, examples of how communities flourish in unitaries, including what structures and relationships make that happen well. The process of transition from “a county plus districts” to a unitary system will be hugely time-absorbing for the councils involved. They will have no space in their heads to do anything other than make that work well. The constituent communities underneath that need to understand how to play their part and how best to organise themselves so that they have a real role to play in what comes afterwards. Looking in particular at East Sussex, along the seaside, we have Rye, Hastings, St Leonards, Bexhill, Pevensey, Eastbourne, Seaford and Newhaven. They are all immensely different places. Each has its own identity and its own way of doing things. In the interior, you have towns such as Lewes, which are really different, as well as ordinary country towns such as Uckfield and Heathfield. There is a huge variety of different communities within what will be one unitary: different histories, different spirits.