David Simmonds

My experience, unlike that of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham, does not go as far back as the Redcliffe-Maud report, but what has been described over the years, as we have just heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East, is people’s frustration about things being done to rather than with them. This is not about local community leadership growing up from those neighbourhoods; it is about administrative convenience in Whitehall. I will finish with a question at the heart of building a sense of community confidence. Residents in Leicestershire and Hampshire feel that this is about enabling cities to dump their housing targets—which they have failed to achieve within their own boundaries—in the neighbouring area. We have seen that issue around the fringes of London, historically in south-west Hertfordshire in places such as St Albans. That has been the subject of legal action and Government intervention in the past. We need absolute transparency from the outset. What do the Government want the new councils to do? When they go to the ballot box, and when they engage in consultation and talk to their Members of Parliament, residents need to know that the new councils will exercise the functions that they are there for, and they need to know what it will cost them and what it will mean for their neighbourhood. It is not too late for the Government to pause the process, listen to the concerns that have been expressed powerfully today, including by the Minister’s own Back Benchers, and look at how lessons can be learned, so that we have a local government system fit for the future.