Draft Somerset West and Taunton (Modification of Boundary Change Enactments) Regulations 2018 Draft Somerset West and Taunton (Local Government Changes) Order 2018

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

This is a contentious merger. It was voted through very narrowly by the two Conservative councils and, as I am sure the Minister is aware, a judicial review has started that challenges his assertion that it meets the three-tier test.

The first tier is whether the proposal will improve the local area’s governance. The two areas are very different in character. One is rural and geographically large—its largest town has only about 12,000 inhabitants—and the other has one large central town. I ask the Minister: how will a divided focus will be prevented? How many councillors will there be for each area? Will there be a large reduction in West Somerset? The hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset is on record saying that there will be a democratic deficit. How will that be prevented? Where will the headquarters be? Will it not be remote for half the population? How will it lead to better service delivery? The business plan said it would, but were the assertions made in the business plan sufficiently challenged that we can be sure that they have a robust basis, or were they just taken at face value?

The savings are about £500,000 in the first year alone. How many redundancies will that mean? Services are already joined up. There is certainly a feeling that West Somerset has been failing for some time; indeed, it is probably more than a feeling. Its Tory leader has stated that all councils are suffering with severe reductions in Government funding. Is this not just another way of stopping another council going bankrupt? The projections of the financial benefits to both councils have been described as “jam tomorrow” by the Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and the residents of Taunton Deane have asserted on a number of occasions that they are “bailing out” an ailing council at little benefit to themselves.

The second tier is that the proposal must command a good deal of local support, which is clearly not the case here; the Minister was very careful to say that it was certainly nowhere near unanimous. The Lords Committee said that there were inadequacies in the consultation process and the largest number of responses to the open consultation, which was carried out over the Christmas period in 2016, opposed the proposal for reasons that the Minister described as misconceptions. Surely, if the consultation was so flawed that it led to a number of misconceptions, it should have been rerun to provide the opportunity to correct the misconceptions and measure the support again.

The geography is the third tier. As I have said, the areas do not feel any local links, so will the Minister say why there is the rush to merge? Why not postpone the merger? There are alternative proposals from the county council for a county-wide unitary authority. Have those proposals been considered and, if so, why were they dismissed? Is there another reason for the merger besides the desire to bail out a failing council? Is there political expediency in creating a council that is more likely to remain Conservative? I hope that is not the case, because, as the Government’s own document states, mergers should happen to improve governance and deliver better services, and they should command the support of local people and have due regard to geography.

In this case, it is clear that the Minister has a way to go to reassure local politicians and residents that those tests have been met, and that this merger is not simply gerrymandering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I tell my hon. Friend that that is not just my view, but the view of his own council and the statutory section 151 officer, who believes that without this merger, the future of West Somerset Council is “not viable”. It is also the view of the independent auditor in the comments they have made and of the county council. I know that my hon. Friend has corresponded with the Department over several months. We remain of the view that the opinion of all the people locally involved with the council believe that this merger will safeguard the savings and that without the merger the financial situation will be extremely difficult.

On the future relationship and service transformation, I was asked about employees. That will obviously be a matter for the new council but it is worth pointing out that the two councils already operate a relatively deep shared partnership structure and use common employees in a single area. It is unlikely that there would be significant changes but that will be a matter for them.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Will the Minister comment on the view that at least 80 redundancies will be necessary to achieve the savings that are predicted for the first year?

[Rishi Sunak]

I have not seen that number; I am not sure where that has come from.