Baroness Pinnock (LD)

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Across England, there will be thousands of councillors and council officers who have worked for months, sometimes years, to deliver an effective solution to the Government’s top-down reorganisation diktat. They will have devoted scarce resources in both funding and precious time. Today, they will be despairing. With the stroke of a ministerial pen, all their careful planning has been consigned to the waste bin. The principle of devolution is the right one. Unfortunately, the Government have conflated devolution with local government reorganisation, and that has resulted in this sorry mess. There are any number of questions that the Minister must answer, given that, in July, she gave an assurance in this Chamber that a decision on the final reorganisation plans for the remaining councils would be made in October. I am confident that there will be many specific questions about individual councils, so I will restrict my questions to general principles. First, given that the Government’s decision has been made following legal advice, can the Minister publish that advice and provide a summary for us in her response? Will she tell the House when those councils with agreed plans were informed? Some councils had already developed financial planning on the basis of agreed reorganisation. What support will the Government provide for those councils now facing severe financial pressures? Today’s announcement has left councils and their residents in limbo. The Statement makes it clear that elections for districts will take place next year. That indicates a longer timeframe for reorganisation than a speedy review. Asking people to become councillors for a non-specific period is difficult. Equally, encouraging voter enthusiasm will be more challenging. What are they voting for? How long will it last? Local democracy has been the real loser in all this, with elections cancelled and democratic terms of office extended on a whim. The process by which the Government determined the parameters of this reorganisation defied the importance and relevance of local communities. For example, new councils were told they had to have a population of at least 300,000, with a maximum of around 500,000—although, of course, one of the new Surrey councils has a population of 700,000. That was stated despite many existing unitary metropolitan councils being smaller than that. For instance, Calderdale, in my own west Yorkshire, has a population of just over 200,000. Many councils in the Manchester mayoral authority have a population of around 300,000 or fewer. That was one reason why communities lost out in this top-down reorganisation. This is a thorough and embarrassing dog’s breakfast for the Government. It has all stemmed from the flawed notion that the financial crisis facing county councils could be resolved by changing the seats around the table and going for reorganisation, while ignoring the historic community ties around which many councils were created. The Government have much to do to put the “local” back into local government. I look forward to a thorough explanation from the Minister.