Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, for his comments. I know that he has great experience of dealing with matters such as this. I will pick up each of his points in turn. The first is the issue of restructuring for its own sake. That is just not where we are with this. We have had extensive negotiation with local government. The proposals that were put forward came to us from local government, and we are acting on those proposals. Anyone who has been involved in local government for as long as I and the noble Lord have been will know that carrying on as we were was not an option: it is not effective or efficient, and it does not deliver best for either the people we serve or the country, so we did need to change things. The noble Lord mentioned consultation. It is an important point, and I will answer his question in two ways. First, the purpose of the consultation was to gather evidence and information on the effect of establishing a mayoral strategic authority over the proposed geography. It was never intended to be a referendum. A range of views were provided by respondents, including evidence setting out the potential benefits as well as some concerns raised, and the Government carefully considered the responses received. The results of the consultation formed part of the assessment made by the Secretary of State, but the relevant statutory tests set out in Section 46 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act were met for Hampshire and the Solent.