Lord Shipley (LD)

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken, in particular my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who made a number of important points about all three of the suggestions before us. I thought the point from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was extremely well made: this is about place-making and what happens on the ground. A top-down approach is building the other way around. I will be very brief. This is a devolution Bill, yet it prescribes what can happen on the ground. I have said that at least half a dozen times in Committee, but I will repeat it again because it deserves to be repeated. I want to give the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, some extra support, because there is an issue with size, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, pointed out. I understand that we have an appropriate figure for the size of a unitary authority of some 500,000, but I counsel the Government against using population size as the basis for a calculation. I can remember, a few years ago, when the Minister was the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, having a conversation about the ideal size for Buckinghamshire and Bournemouth in Dorset. I remember being told that, in Buckinghamshire, the ideal size needed to be 350,000, but I was urging a figure of around 300,000. I am quite happy to be wrong about that but, if the Government are moving towards a figure of 500,000, they will have to justify it. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, rightly made the point that you need to consider natural geography, the identity of the authorities and so on. He put it extremely well. I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government will consider the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. I am sure the noble Lord would not mind them adding to it and improving it with new things, but it should form the basis for a consideration of what the ideal unitary size is, which may of course be different in different places. It is for local people to say whether they prefer a model of 500,000, fewer than that or whatever; otherwise, this process will be too top-down.