Contribution
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) for securing this debate.
Obviously, the Minister is not responsible for local government reorganisation in Northern Ireland, but I want to caution against the approach that has been put forward today, because the shortfalls of what we have done in Northern Ireland will undoubtedly be replicated here on the mainland.
It is nice to see the Minister in her place. She will know some of the things I have said in the past, including in my questions to her in the Chamber. We have done a local government review and reorganisation in Northern Ireland and it did not quite work out, so perhaps a cautionary approach should be taken, learning from the promises that were made and ultimately not delivered for us in Northern Ireland.
I note the optimistic projections before us. The House was told that this grand restructuring will streamline services and save an estimated £2.9 billion over five years. That is to be welcomed, if those words turn into reality. I wish I could say it is the reality of what happened in Northern Ireland, but it is not because the promises were not realised at all. From our distinct experience in Northern Ireland, I must therefore issue a strong note of caution to the Government.
We had reform of all councils in Northern Ireland, reducing their number from 26 to 11. Massive savings were promised due to less duplication, with no need to have so many middle staff because one departmental head could look after two sections, and no need to have buildings in all the council areas. Lots of savings were promised, and unfortunately they were not realised.
I served on a council for some 26 years from 1985 right through to 2010, so there is a very special place in my heart for local government. I know at first hand the real and tangible benefit of local councils making local decisions for the people who live there. Indeed, some of the best days I had were on the council. I love bread-and-butter issues, and councillors get their hands dirty with that sort of stuff.
I know that any Member who has served at local council level will agree that the general public having access to their council must be protected at every single level. Unfortunately, I suspect that will not happen with these reforms. We know the importance of that level of representation and advocacy. I look back with fondness on my 26 years of apprenticeship. For a short period of three months, I served as a councillor, a Member of the Legislative Assembly and an MP at the same time. I gave an undertaking to resign from the other two places to take up my position here, and I did.
The systematic removal of face-to-face access for people in our towns and villages caused by aggressive centralisation can never be acceptable. We have seen this movie before. It is like a less funny “Groundhog Day”. It happened to us in Northern Ireland, and it is going to happen here again—except when we wake up this time, it will not be so much fun.
Northern Ireland is now a decade on from our own major reform of local authorities, which reduced the number of councils from 26 to 11. The promises made then mirror the promises made today. A 2024 Department for Communities report concluded that it is still too early to determine if those reforms have been cost-effective. Crucially, the report also revealed that the new, larger councils are actually spending more than their 26 predecessors combined—wow. The promises were never realised. Indeed, they went the other way. As has already been said, bigger does not automatically mean cheaper. Centralisation does not inherently guarantee efficiency.
The Minister is an honourable lady who does her best for us all in this Chamber. Looking to Northern Ireland, has she and her Department fully taken into account the findings of that DFC report and the deep financial uncertainties that it highlighted? What iron-clad guarantees can she offer to ensure that we are not promising billions in theoretical savings, when the reality might mean taking more hard-earned cash from the pockets of local taxpayers and ratepayers? That is what this means, as that is who pays for it all at the end of the day.
We must not allow structural change to become an expensive, box-ticking exercise that leaves hard-working families picking up the tab at a particularly difficult time.