Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for their considered contributions today. I recognise that they have a great deal of experience in this area, so they were very thoughtful contributions indeed. I will try to pick up all the points that have been made. If I miss any, I am sure noble Lords will let me know, but I will try to pick them up from Hansard. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked more broadly about the benefits of reorganisation and pointed to the savings that might accrue. Although financial savings are important, this restructuring is also about delivering the kinds of profiles for councils that are able to drive forward the growth and improvement in public services that we all want to see, and having a system that is not as confusing for residents as the two-tier system has been in the past. In their proposal, Surrey County Council, Elmbridge Borough Council and Mole Valley District Council estimated ongoing net annual benefits after five years of up to £46 million, with a midpoint of around £23 million and total implementation costs of £85 million. So there are financial savings to accrue from this, after the initial cost of doing the reorganisation. We hope that there will be savings, but it is important that we focus on sustainability. With the way it was going, we were not looking at a sustainable future for local government. We have partly addressed that through the fair funding formula—I will talk more about that in a moment—and in this reorganisation and devolution process. Reorganisation creates the conditions for stronger local democracy, fewer politicians, and a clear picture with no conflicting mandates and agendas. I appreciate what the noble Baroness said about the local voice, and I will come on to the wards and things in a moment, but clear local leadership allows councils to take the decisions needed to drive growth, deliver better public services and allow communities to be represented, while clear accountability makes sure that communities can properly hold leaders to account. Strong leadership and clear accountability are harder to achieve, where, for the same place, there are two council leaders, each with a legitimate democratic mandate and sometimes having different and conflicting agendas. Bringing services such as housing, public health and social care under one roof means that one council can see the full picture and spot problems early. That is important. Making sure we have preventive, holistic services, which are far more effective in picking up problems early, instead of them being split between two local authorities, is important. Residents can access the services that they need with one council in charge. To give noble Lords an example, in 2018, Leicestershire County Council reported that more than 140,000 people called the wrong local council when they were trying to get help. I understand that it is not always the same as that everywhere, but it is an important principle to keep to.