MERSEYSIDE SPECIAL REVIEW AREA (Hansard, 13 May 1965)

§ Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)
I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Merseyside Special Review Area Order 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 905), dated 9th April, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 14th April, be annulled. There is a tradition in the House that the Parliamentary Secretary replies to a debate on a Prayer. I sympathise with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who is the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), because the borough of Widnes is included in the Order. In the circumstances, bearing in mind that the Order deals with a very large and important segment of Lancashire, I should have expected the Minister himself to think it his duty to come to the House to justify the making of the Order.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColl)
May I make matters clear at the outset? My right hon. Friend was most anxious to speak on this Order. He was informed in categorical terms that it would come on next Tuesday.

§ Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke (Darwen)
So was I.

§ Mr. MacColl
My right hon. Friend made all arrangements to keep himself free to be here on Tuesday. He is in the unfortunate position now that he had a prior engagement with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), which is taking place at this very moment, and it would really have been most churlish to have tried to back out of it at short notice. It is a little unfortunate, therefore, that the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) should have implied that my right hon. Friend was being discourteous to the House. He had every intention to be here, and the position is as I have explained it.

§ Sir D. Glover
I accept the explanation which the Parliamentary Secretary has given. I only hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolver- 844 hampton, South-West and the Minister are enjoying their dinner, or supper, at Prunier's and that no papers will be left lying about when they depart.
Nevertheless—I say this sincerely—it is unfortunate that, through the usual channels, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) and I were led to understand that the Prayer would come on next week. I do not put any blame for that on the Parliamentary Secretary or on his right hon. Friend. Nevertheless I understood through the usual channels that if it had come on next week we should have had very little time. The debate on a Prayer must finish at 11.30 and I am told that if it had come on next week two items of Government business would almost certainly have taken up the time until 11.20 so that we should have had only about 10 minutes for this important Order.
Therefore, as a back bencher, I think that I am still justified in complaining that, although I understand and am not criticising the Minister in his personal capacity, an Order of this importance is to be debated when the Minister who is responsible cannot be present.

§ Mr. MacColl
So far as I know, this is the hon. Gentleman's Motion. I do not know what happened between the usual channels. We were under the impression that this Prayer was to come on on Tuesday and my right hon. Friend, at considerable inconvenience, was intending to be here.

§ Mr. Fletcher-Cooke
I wished to take it next Tuesday, but I was under considerable pressure from the Government Whips to bring it forward to today. I did not want to do so, but, in view of the circumstances outlined by my hon. Friend, we agreed to take it today. Three or four of our Members from Lancashire and Cheshire would have wished to have been here, but owing to the change cannot attend. It is not our fault that this situation has arisen. I do not say that it is the Government's fault, but it is certainly not ours that this has happened.

§ Sir D. Glover
I think that we had better leave the usual channels in the sort of fog in which both sides think they spend most of their time. We are not very fond of the usual channels.
845 I think that we are in danger—and I know that when I say this I am speaking to a Prayer concerning a problem which has been produced as a result of the 1958 Act—of forgetting that people are individuals and that we are inclined to treat them as digits. My main reason for praying against this Order is that in my view people are people and the great Departments of State, which try to decide that 60,000 people should be in one area and 250,000 should be in another, are likely to try to treat people not as people but as digits.
The Order is a great advance on the original proposals put forward by the Local Government Commission. I hope I am in order in saying that the original proposal of the Local Government Commission considering the Special Review Area of Merseyside and south-east Lancashire was that the area of these two conurbations should be increased, in the orbit that it was allowed to consider, by 800,000 people, an area bigger than most of the conurbations with which it is dealing elsewhere in the country. The hon. Gentleman can perhaps refresh my memory, but I think that it is Clause 25 which allows the Commission to do this without coming back to the House. If this had been done under Clause 17, I think it is, the Commission would have had to come back to the House and we would have had a debate on the matter.
The method adopted seems to be the wrong way of dealing with a problem of this magnitude. I am supported in this by the fact that the Minister has turned down the greater part of the Commission's proposals and has left in only these two areas which form a comparatively small part of what the Commission originally asked for. It would be right to place on record the fact that it did this in a most unfortunate manner.
Therefore, being a very conciliatory and broadminded person, I thank the Minister for dealing pretty roughly with the proposals of the Commission and removing the greater part of the proposed extensions from its consideration. It is most unfortunate from my point of view, in dealing with this Order, that the bulk of the areas which are not to be removed are in the Parliamentary Secretary's constituency. Whatever he says at the Box tonight, I shall always think 846 that he was in a very unfortunate position. I do not know whether he will declare an interest before he speaks. My constituency and his are the two which are principally governed by the Order. It includes the borough of Widnes, the urban district of Formby, for which I am the Member, and certain parts of the urban districts of Prescot and Runcorn. The next largest area consists of parishes of the west Lancashire rural district, for which I am the Member.
The original proposals of the Commission would have increased the population by 800,000. I congratulate the Minister on his wisdom in dealing with these proposals. I am sure that this would have been quite contrary to the spirit of the 1958 Act. I want to speak on behalf of my constituency. I want to devote my time to the problems of the urban district council of Formby and the parishes in the rural district of west Lancashire—the parishes of Altcar, Downholland, Ince Blundell, Lydiate, Maghull, Melling, Netherton, Sefton and Thornton.
I want to deal first with the problems of the West Lancashire District Council. Under these proposals the Minister is allowing the special review body to include eleven out of 20 parishes which make up that district. I want to take this opportunity—because it is not very often that one has such an opportunity—of paying my tribute to the West Lancashire Rural District Council, which is either the largest or second largest rural district council in Britain. I have had wide experience of local government, and in my view this is one of the most efficient councils of its size in Britain.
It is at present a very large body. It has a population of 62,000 and a rateable value of £2 million. This is not a rural district council in the generally accepted term, with a population of perhaps 4,000 or 5,000 and a rateable value of a few thousand £s. This council has a highly efficient body of officials and a very able elected assembly, dealing with 62,000 people and a rateable value of £2 million per year, as I have said.
But the important thing is that it is a homogeneous authority. The people there all want to live in one community. Whichever way they vote in elections they regard themselves as belonging to one community, and they have very much the 847 same attitude of mind. It would be a disaster to local government to break up this efficient organisation. During my twelve years as a Member of Parliament I have never had a single complaint that could be put down to the inefficiency of this body.
It is a first-class authority. Its staff is good; it is forward-looking and faces the problems of the future. It has never been dogmatic about the question of the overspill from Liverpool and other areas. The population of the area has increased in the last 10 years by 10,000 or 15,000. When the pressure is put on, they do not object to the provision of space to accommodate overspill from Liverpool. They did not object to part of their area being taken for the new town of Skelmersdale. They have shown a responsible attitude to the problems of the modern age.
I know that the inclusion of these parishes in the Special Review Area does not mean that they will automatically be merged with some other new authority created as a result of the Commission's deliberations, but the population of west Lancashire and Formby are very suspicious of what their future will be. Somebody said to me the other day, "There is usually no smoke without fire." If they are included in this Special Review Area there is a very strong feeling that the Minister will support the Review Commission in the proposal to include them in some vast conurbation to deal with the Merseyside problem.
If the Review Area disrupts the West Lancashire Rural District Council by taking in the 11 parishes, it will almost certainly disrupt the efficient working of this very efficient local authority. As a person who visits his constituency nearly every week, who is in close touch with the local authority in every parish council, I think I can speak with some knowledge in saying that the wish of the inhabitants, as expressed by the rural district and parish councils, is that their present arrangements should not be altered again because there is little or no community interest with Liverpool.
I am not trying to be dogmatic. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary might have noticed that so far I have not mentioned the parish of Aintree, which is in my 848 constituency and was in the original Review Area. I believe that in the parish of Aintree there is a community of interest with Liverpool, but in the remainder of my constituency I do not believe there is any real community of interest between the rural parishes and the Liverpool and Merseyside conurbation generally.
If the Commission decided that these 11 parishes were to be incorporated in this much larger Liverpool conurbation or the Merseyside conurbation, the population of the west Lancashire rural district would be reduced from 62,000 to just over 22,000. But, far more important, the rateable value would be reduced from just under £2 million to £617,000. The most important part of the district, from a rateable value and population point of view, would be taken, leaving the rural district council to deal with all the problems of the rural community without the rateable value of a semi-urban community such as exists in the southern parishes.
I should like to get on the record that, having dealt with the Lancashire County Council in connection with the whole problem of the two Special Review Areas, and having fought their battle to prevent the extension of these Review Areas, I am appalled to find that the Lancashire County Council, having saved as it were three-quarters of the ship from the wreck, is prepared to sacrifice the West Lancashire Rural District Council, Formby Rural District Council and Widnes, because under the Minister's policy it still means that the Lancashire County Council area is still a viable authority. For some moments they thought Lancashire County Council was no longer going to be a viable authority. On a smaller scale, the West Lancashire Rural District Council certainly will no longer be a viable authority in anything like the degree it is at present if the Special Review Commission incorporates it in this special Merseyside conurbation.
I would like to come to the district of Formby. The problem of Formby is different from that of the West Lancashire Rural District Council. Under this Order the West Lancashire Rural District Council would lose what are, from the rateable point of view, its most attractive parishes, and be left with the problems of sewerage, drainage and so on in the 849 sparsely populated, green belt areas, with very much reduced rateable value. Formby Urban District Council has an entirely different problem. It is another very good authority, efficiently run, with an almost entirely residential area, with hardly any industry, but with a rapidly growing population almost entirely with owner-occupied houses. The present population is 14,000. By the early nineteen-seventies it will have risen to 27,500.
It is true—I want to be fair about this—as is the case with quite a number of the people in the west Lancashire authority's area, that quite a lot of the population, in both Formby and West Lancashire, work in Liverpool, but there is no identity of interest, apart from the fact that they work there, between the problems of west Lancashire rural district and Formby district and the problems of the conurbation of Liverpool.
If Formby looks anywhere, it looks north to Southport, whilst it might be equally strongly opposed to any amalgamation, because it is a virile, active, growing community and does not want to be amalgamated with anybody and is an area where local government is in fact local government. If the Joint Parliamentary Secretary should feel that I am supporting a Tory-dominated council he will be glad to know that we have a strong ratepayers' association which won a seat at the local elections, and although I as a Tory deplore this, I am very glad indeed that there is live local government activity in the community. It is not a moribund community but a live community interested in local government, and that sort of community ought to be allowed to continue in the future. I speak with great sincerity when I say that we are here dealing with people, and I can tell the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that the eyes of those people, if they have their eyes on any other areas, do not turn south to the Liverpool conurbation: they turn north to Southport. They would not like to lose their independence. They are proud of their independence, and proud of their efficiency, but if in these days of economy-scale philosophy we are all developing there did arise a tendency towards amalgamation with somebody, their eyes would turn north to South- 850 port and not turn south towards the Liverpool conurbation.
Knowing that this matter was coming up, I have gone round trying to discover views, but not those of councillors. Let me be quite honest. One of the great problems in any reform of local government is that any councillor has a vested interest in remaining a councillor, whether he is an urban or a parish councillor. I would not take the views of councillors in a community, because they have this vested interest that the status quo should continue. They say, "After all, in five years' time, if God is favourable, I could be the chairman of the council, wear a chain around my neck and be a good citizen, and my children will revere me for years to come." This is a human ambition and one which we should applaud. Let it not be thought that I am sneering at it: it is one of the things which make local life work. Anybody with that ambition should be encouraged to achieve it, but it is one of the reasons that the councillor is inclined to be against change.
I have gone deeply into this, and I have found nobody to say, "Douglas, do not oppose this Order; we think that our future lies in going into the conurbation." The reaction in my constituency, in the West Lancashire Rural District Council and in the Formby Urban District Council is that they are convinced that they are running a good show. I am not speaking as a party politician when I say that I believe honestly and truthfully that they are running a good show. I do not think that their efficiency would be increased by including them in some vast conurbation. Not only do most of the people in Formby and west Lancashire look north, but when they go out in the evening they are much more likely to go to Southport than ever to go to Liverpool.
I know it can be argued that half of these people make their living in Liverpool, and I except that the Parliamentary Secretary will use this argument tonight. But we are dealing now with a growing collectivist organisation in society. I think that the rights of the people in these communities ought to have a far greater weight in the view 851 and thinking of any Government, whether it is Conservative or Socialist, than they receive at present. These authorities are efficient. It would be very difficult to say that there would be any increase in efficiency for the people of those areas if they were included in some vast conurbation dealing with docks, ports and transport in the Merseyside conurbation. Whatever authority is produced as a result of this Commission, that authority will be devoting its thought to producing an authority to deal with the modernisation of the Liverpool docks, the transportation to the Liverpool docks and the problems of a great manufacturing industrial area.
It will not be devoting much of its time to thinking whether this would be beneficial to my rural farmers, my rural residential areas, my urban district of Formby, and, if I might say so, to a great deal of the Parliamentary Secretary's constituency at Widnes. There will be all the great industrial problems of forming this authority, and what will happen when it is created? I know that it will probably finish up as a two-tier authority. There will be a top tier whose job on paper will be to look after water, sewerage, transport and so on. We are supposed then to have a second tier which will, it is said, look after the interests of the populations concerned.
But all my instincts, experience and knowledge of what happens when these changes take place suggests that we will finish up with this position; that whereas now in the West Lancashire Rural District Council we have 20 or 30 people looking after the interests of the local inhabitants—and the same goes for Formby—if those inhabitants are taken into the conurbation there will be one representative to look after them all. Is it really suggested that the people of those two areas will he as well looked after as they are now?
I ask the Minister, since I do not believe that he is dogmatic in this case—I would ask his right hon. Friend if he were here—to have another look at this whole matter, because I am sure that such a change would not be in the best interests of the populations concerned.

§ Mr. Eric Ogden (Liverpool, West Derby)
There are times when it is very difficult to disagree with the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover). He always puts his case with such charm and, as he said, with broadmindedness. Therein lies his very great danger. His case was powerful, and although I, too, would seek to annul the Order, I would do so for very different reasons.

§ Sir D. Glover
I am always willing to make an allowance for anybody who puts right injustices.

§ Mr. Ogden
There are many definitions of the phrase "righting an injustice".
As I s saying, my reasons would be different. I would seek to extend the area of the Special Review Order much broader than it is now, much broader than was suggested by the Local Government Commission and much broader than has been agreed by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the suspicions of his people. He was right to say that there is no smoke without fire, but I suggest, with respect—and the hon. Gentleman has been here a lot longer than I have—that what he has done tonight is deliberately to fan the smoke and produce the flames, anticipating the recommendations of the Local Government Commission. The Commission started work in the North-West in October 1962. In December 1963, it asked for an extension of the areas and permission was rightly deferred.

§ Sir D. Glover
I do not want to interrupt the hon. Gentleman unduly, but when he has been in the House a bit longer he will realise that this is probbably the last opportunity1 shall get to make these remarks.

§ Mr. Ogden
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, with his great experience of this place, will find a way, here or elsewhere, of making his case.
As I said, permission was deferred. Obviously someone had to make the decision when permission was sought, and we sometimes agree that deferment is 853 necessary on certain plans. There was the Minister of Housing and Local Government being shot at, so to speak, from one sick, and the Lancashire County Council being shot at from all sides. Meanwhile, Professor Devons resigned from the Local Government Commission because he said that the Minister had acceded to pressure from the Lancashire County Council. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman's own constituents have been saying that the Lancashire County Council has betrayed them; that they have been sold out. Because the council wants to maintain a fairly large area it has been willing to sell out its own people. That is the suggestion.
My own city council wanted the extension of the area to include Southport—where the sun seems to shine, or very largely shines, on some of the hon. Gentleman's constituents, Ormskirk rural district, Skelmersdale—and the hon. Gentleman must admit that there is a very close link between Skelmersdale new town and the Merseyside conurbation, parts of St. Helens, Warrington, Runcorn and Widnes, where, again, there is talk of a new town, in order to round off the whole area, and make an area roughly 15 or 20 miles from the pierhead.
The hon. Gentleman said that there is no identity of interest and went out of his way to suggest that we are very different. I travel fairly frequently from one end of the east Lancashire road to the other through parts of the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and I see no difference in the people there. He suggested that while people in his own area are willing to work and earn their living in Liverpool, or Bootle, or Birkenhead or Ellesmere Port, they seek to spend their money in Southport. It comes back to the fact that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to anticipate the decision of the Local Government Commission.
I suggest that when the Lancashire County Council is attacked from both sides and the Minister is being attacked from both sides, it might be reasonable to expect them to tread the middle path and not anticipate any decision which can only be made by the Local Government Commission; and that it would not be doing any great harm to see what the Commission's recommendations are before protesting.

§ Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke (Darwen)
I beg to support my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) in his Prayer against the Merseyside Order, and I beg to move to annul the second Prayer——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The only Question before the House is the Prayer to annul the Merseyside Order. No doubt the hon. and learned Member will have an opportunity later on, if time permits.

§ Mr. Fletcher-Cooke
Further to that point, Mr. Speaker, if the Minister is to reply separately to these two Orders I doubt whether time will permit. In fact, these two Orders are closely linked.

§ Mr. Speaker
Had I been asked to invite the House to discuss the two together, I might have taken a view. I do not know that the view of the Government would be about reverting to that course now?

§ Mr. J. MacColl
As is normal in the case of a Prayer, Mr. Speaker, the one thing we want to do is to facilitate a free and full discussion of the whole issue. If anything I have to say could have any influence on your decision, I would be happy to see the two Prayers discussed together; and they are both included in the Minister's conclusions.

§ Mr. Speaker
A Minister's views must affect me, because I can only do this by agreement. Therefore, let the discussion extend to both, but the Prayers must be put separately.

§ Mr. Fletcher-Cooke
I am obliged to you, Mr. Speaker.
Originally, Special Commissioners were given two fairly closely defined areas, one for Merseyside and one around Manchester. Then the Commissioners, like so many people once they have got their teeth into a subject, became somewhat imperialistic and wished to join the two areas together in one vast review area containing millions of souls. This the Minister quite properly rejected, and it is my complaint that in order to gild the pill of rejection the Minister is giving the Commissioners a sort of weedy corn promise.
He has gilded the pill by including the sort of areas which my hon. Friend has described, and, even more, in the 855 south-east Lancashire area he has added on to the original area of their review great chunks not merely of Lancashire and Cheshire but of Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Is there any justification in law for clapping on to the South-East Lancashire Review Area, areas not merely from the two counties I have mentioned but from two other counties as well?
Of course, my chief concern in this matter is a very large and important part of my constituency, the Turton urban district. I must briefly describe this area because, although it is called an urban district, it is, in fact, to the eye of the beholder a rural area of an extreme kind in the sense that I suppose that 90 per cent. of it is given over to the countryside, to moor land and agriculture. It is, I think, the second largest urban district in the country in so far as superficial area is concerned, and it is an agricultural and rural district. I have never understood historically why it was classed as an urban district.
I have the suspicion that one of the reasons why this area was granted to the Special Commissioners was that it may have been considered, having a nomenclature of urban district, that it might be in some way urban; but it is not. It is true that many of its people work in Bolton and Manchester, but I should have thought that in these days that could be considered a sufficient reason even to contemplate merging the area with Bolton or Manchester. A lot of people who live in Hayward's Heath or Woking work in London and it would be a new doctrine that, because one goes to another centre to work, one should be included for local government purposes in such a grouping. Of course, it is a consideration, but not a vital one.
The Turton Urban District Council has passed a resolution protesting against its inclusion at this rather late stage in the South-East Lancashire Special Review Area. It resents it, and I do not blame it. I have no doubt that the area, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk in the west Lancashire rural district is well administered. Its rates are relatively low. The people there have a great patriotism. They are proud of what they have done and do not want to be absorbed in this vast conurbation, 856 made potentially vaster by the decision in this Order. I therefore ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to think whether this compromise can really be justified except as a compromise and I suggest that that is not a sufficient reason.
The other areas concerned in the South-East Lancs Special Review Area Board are even larger than those referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk. I cannot speak for them. There is in the constituency of the Colonial Secretary; there are areas of Yorkshire, in whose constituency I do not know. But I know that two of the areas—those, I think, of Chapel en le Frith and the urban district of Whaley Bridge—are in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Walder), who wishes to protest as vigorously as I do and who would have wished to be here but for the suggestion of the Government that the Prayers be taken tonight rather than on Tuesday, which we had originally expected. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir A. V. Harvey), who is also concerned in this, also wishes it to be known that the inclusion of a small area of his constituency in the Review Area is not in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants and has been included for reasons which he cannot comprehend.
One need not labour the point further. These are areas which have a life of their own and which have a good record of local government already and which, if added even potentially to the southeast Lancashire conurbation, will enormously increase what is already an enormous area for which there has so far been no conceivable justification. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to look at it again.
It is true that in some of these areas cross hatched on the map which the hon Gentleman has sent us, for which we are grateful and we are grateful also for the early warning and extremely grateful for the general courtesy which he personally has extended to us—there are places where neither the local authority nor the inhabitants have shown particular opposition and may even show a certain willingness to be absorbed and wish to become part of a larger unit. That, of course, is their affair and, if they wish it, so be it. But the people of 857 Turton, by their elected representatives, by an enormous majority do not. Taking into account their physical position, their way of life, their geography and the fact that they live in a rural area and are on the fringe of this enormous conurbation, as defined in the original plan, they surely have the right not to be put in peril.
Of course we recognise that this is not a concluded pattern and only a review, but they and I fear that once included in the review area, their area will be a prima facie case and that somehow the view of authority, as expressed by the Minister of Housing and Local Government and by the Commissioners themselves, who have shown a great desire to extend their empire, will prevail and that somehow there will be a shifting of the onus of proof, to put it no higher, and that hereafter they will be regarded as included in this conurbation unless they can show special reasons why they should not be included.
That is a very serious danger in their position because hitherto the onus of proof has been on the other side and now, if not in law then in fact and in spirit, they will be regarded as having been sucked into this vast monster and, unless they can show reason why they should not be included, they will find themselves swallowed up for good and all. They do not want it and do not believe that the people of Ramsbottom want it, although I cannot speak for them. Nor do I believe that the people who live in the area shown on the eastern part of the map want it, the people who live in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.

§ Sir D. Glover
Can my hon. and learned Friend conceive of any Yorkshireman wishing to became a Lancastrian, or vice versa?

§ Mr. Fletcher-Cooke
I regard the whole matter with the utmost suspicion and I am very surprised that there has not been the most tremendous explosion and reaction from whoever is the Member for that area. I can only assume that he must be gagged, if I may use that word, by the fact that he is among the 80, 90 or 100 Members of the Government Front Bench. I am guessing now, but I can speculate of no further reason why Yorkshire men who are find- 858 ing themselves threatened with being sucked into the South-East Lancashire Special Review Area are not making protests, not merely in the House but in the dales and fields.
For all these, among other reasons, I ask that these fringe areas should be considered. I believe they have been thrown in only to salve the conscience and save the position of the Special Commissioners who have made such greater claims previously. It would give ground for great rejoicing, especially in Turton district council's area, if this was looked at again in the vast majority of the fringe areas in the south-east Lancashire district and in the area which my hon. Friend represents.
I hope that it is not too late, because there is no justification for them, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary, whose situation in this matter is somewhat delicate but who is accustomed to overcoming situations of delicacy by the fairness of his mind in the official approach which he brings to all such developments, will find a way to give my constituents in Turton an order of release from this cloud which overhangs them.

§ Mr. Ogden
On a point of order. We were originally concerning ourselves with one Special Review Area. I would appreciate guidance as to whether we are entitled, briefly, to come in on the second.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey)
The hon. Gentleman has exhausted his right to speak and can only do so again by the leave of the House, but as it has been decided to discuss the two Orders together, I hope that the House will grant him that leave.

§ Mr. Ogden
Thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Up to nine o'clock tonight I was a member of a local council——

§ Sir D. Glover
Was the hon. Gentleman defeated?

§ Mr. Ogden
No, I was not defeated, but I want to say, in a very few moments, that I think there is nothing here to do with efficiency and independence. The real fact is that the smaller authority will stand up to a larger authority at any time. I have here a letter from the Lancashire 859 County Council dated 26th April, which states: The Parliamentary Committee of the County Council have considered the new position, and whilst, of course, they would have preferred to see the two Special Review Areas left as defined in the Act, seeing that Section 25(2) permits of a reasonable amount of flexibility, they were not unhappy about the Minister's decision. With that, I agree.

§ Sir D. Glover
Lancashire County Council is so relieved at the Minister's decision that they are prepared to "shop" the remainder because at one moment they thought the Lancashire County Council had ceased to exist.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColl)
I speak with some feeling about this, because I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister regards this as a matter for which he has very special responsibility, the more so that I am an interested party. At the same time, the decision is one for the Minister and not only in a notional and constitutional sense. It is a decision for which he takes personal responsibility.

§ Sir D. Glover
The hon. Gentleman need not waste his time in that way. We on this side certainly accept fully what he has just said.

§ Mr. MacColl
The hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) says that these proposals represent a great advance on the original proposals and that the Lancashire County Council has not behaved very well as regards its responsibilities towards some of the district councils in its area. That is a matter for him, and it would not be right for me to make any comment about that; but I would like to put before the House the situation with which my right hon. Friend the Minister was faced.
The Local Government Act was passed by the previous Government. The Local Government Commission was set up by the previous Government and produced its original proposals for extension, the complete scheme, during the time that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) was Minister. My right 860 hon. Friend had to take the position as he found it against that background.
The Commission felt that to do a proper job, it should have the whole area reviewed. The hon. and gallant Member for Ormskirk said——

§ Sir D. Glover
I am not "gallant".

§ Mr. MacColl
The hon. Member's defence on behalf of his constituency in this matter almost entitles him to that style of title. He said, speaking with knowledge of his constituency, that there was a great deal of suspicion about the ultimate decision in this matter, that there was no smoke without fire and that the Minister would support the Commission. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) implied—"the view of the authority" was the phrase which he thought that his constituents were using—that that was what would happen.
This is part of the difficulty which faces my right hon. Friend, because, without going into a great deal of detailed examination of statistics, and so on, it is extremely difficult for him to make up his mind on a matter which has to go through the machinery of the Act and come back to him eventually for ultimate decision.
The procedure, as hon. Members know, is that the Local Government Commission will now proceed to make preliminary proposals. There will be face-to-face discussions in which all the interested bodies can have their say with the Commission, which will then come to its final decision of those proposals. It will then submit those proposals to my right hon. Friend the Minister, who will have another inquiry if he thinks fit and come to a final decision. There is, therefore, a long and complicated procedure for looking at the whole position before a final decision is taken. It would be quite wrong for my right hon. Friend to get himself involved now in making decisions which may in any way commit him in regard to the future.
I hope that one of the things which hon. Members opposite will try to do is to remove the suspicion either that my right hon. Friend has in any way been the subject of pressure behind the scenes on either side or that his decision has been taken other than as an attempt 861 to arrive at the most expeditious solution of these problems.

§ Sir D. Glover
Now that the Minister has arrived, I should like to say that I cannot think of anybody in the House who is less likely to give way to pressure. He may lose papers at Prunier's., but he is certainly not likely to give way to pressure.

§ Mr. MacColl
That was rather my view.
This is an important point, because some of the things that have been said during the discussions—not by hon. Members opposite—have been most unfortunate. Some of the things which have been said outside this House may create a lack of confidence in the working of the procedure which we have inherited and which we are trying to make work.
That is one side of the picture—that my right hon. Friend was faced with these proposals which he knew were arousing a great deal of opposition. The obverse of that picture was that when my right hon. Friend looked at his responsibilities he was faced with a number of undertakings which had been given by the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) at the time the Bill was in Standing Committee. I was a member of that Standing Committee and I recall the long and anxious hours during which we discussed these points.
But I do not want to take the time of the House in reading the details of the Standing Committee Report only to say that my right hon. Friend is of the opinion that the undertakings given by the right hon. Member for Hampstead—that the extension powers in Section 25 would not be used to rewrite and reconstruct the special review areas and to invent new conurbations, but were to be used only for marginal extensions to give the Local Government Commission greater flexibility—prohibited him from taking such a decision.
This point has led to suggestions outside the House that pressure was put on my right hon. Friend by interested parties which led him to take this decision. That is a most unfortunate thing to say, because it reflects on my right hon. Friend's integrity in judging on these matters. We 862 all know how often we have a Minister making a personal undertaking in Standing Committee. Hon. Members immediately rise and say, "Suppose there is a change of Government? We know that you are all right, but what if one of the other crowd get in? What would happen?" That is precisely what has happened. I do not like to think of my right hon. Friend as a member of a crowd, but he is of a different political party from the right hon. Member for Hampstead and, therefore, is all the more under an obligation to be absolutely punctilious in accepting those undertakings. He therefore felt that it was not within his powers to go in for the wider schemes.
The difficulties arise when one looks at a particular part of the proposed extension, for it is always easy to say on the boundary, "Why did you not go a little further?" or, "Why did you not stop a little short?" The difficulty is that once my right hon. Friend begins such a process he gets himself involved in expressing views and in getting what are to be the opinions of the Commission.
In view of what has been said, I should like to make it clear that I have no reason to suppose that the Local Government Commission has made up its minds what it intends to do. I have no information which gives me any ground for believing that. I say categorically that neither my right hon. Friend nor his Department have had any kind of understanding or agreement in any way to interfere with his freedom to review these proposals. I emphasise that these are in no way a reflection on the efficiency of the local authorities who have been included in the area. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) said, a good local authority, even if it is small, need have no fear; it can look after itself, and it has plenty of opportunities to make its views felt before a final decision is reached.
The hon. and learned Member for Darwen accused my right hon. Friend of a pharmaceutical atrocity in that he accused him of gilding the pill with a weedy compromise. My right hon. Friend has not approached this problem with the idea of just trying to get something which would pass muster. His primary object in this whole matter is to get things moving, to get the Commission moving, 863 to get on with the review, to remove some of the uncertainties which are bound to exist in Lancashire until a decision is reached on these questions.
The test of my right hon. Friend's success in the matter lies in the fact that, whereas we should have had, or might have had, a proposal which was keenly and bitterly resented by both the county councils and by a large number of district councils, we now have something which has received grudging consent—perhaps that is too positive a word—something which it has been decided by the county councils not to oppose. It has had from the hon. Gentleman the tribute that it is a great advance on the original proposals, and I think that it gives to my hon. Friend the Member for West Derby the assurance that the problems of the Merseyside conurbation and the Manchester conurbation can be looked at constructively.
Whatever the final decision is, if there is in the area, for example, an urban district on the boundary which is not coming into the new proposals, it can be excluded from the special review area, it can go back into the general review, which will be taking place more or less at the same time, and can be treated as part of the general review of the county.
I very much welcome this debate. I repeat that my right hon. Friend has shown his concern and desire to associate himself with his decision by coming back to the House as soon as he could manage it. The point here is that we want to get on with the proposals, see what the Local Government Commission produce, and enable the inquiries to take place. My right hon. Friend will then take his decision. What we want is the best possible atmosphere and climate in which to reach a solution of these extremely difficult and complicated problems.

§ Mr. Fletcher-Cooke
Will the hon. Gentleman deal with the question of Yorkshire and Derbyshire? Is there any difficulty about it? It seems very odd to include in the south-east Lancashire review, slices of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although we all want to get on with it, the quickest way of getting on is simply to follow the original proposals as laid down in the Act?

§ Mr. MacColl
The answer to the second question is easy. If the Local Government Commission, the body charged by the previous Government with responsibility here, says, "We want to extend the area in order to make a success of our job", it is a little difficult to say that we shall give it no flexibility at all. My right hon. Friend has tried to give the Commission some flexibility within the terms of the undertaking given by the right hon. Member for Hampstead.
On the first point, there is no reason why a special review area should not go over into other counties. Already, it is going into Cheshire, and there is no reason why it should not go into others. But I hope that it will not be thought that every Yorkshireman will now become a Lancashireman. It does not mean that at all. It is done merely to make it possible for these problems to be looked at as a whole by the Commission.

§ Sir D. Glover
I do not want to be awkward about this. I was a little rough about the right hon. Gentleman before he came in, and I should like to welcome him now and thank him for coming to listen to the debate, if only just to the end of it. I understand why he was not here earlier. I just wanted to say that because, otherwise, he might think that I was discourteous.
May we have an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that the fact that he has included these conurbations within the purview of the Commission does not prejudice their future in any way whatever?

§ The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Richard Crossman)
I can give that assurance absolutely unreservedly. It merely means exactly what it says, that in considering the future of the conurbations the Commission is entitled to take these areas into consideration. It in no way predetermines either what the Commission will say, even less what I will say when I receive its report.

§ Sir D. Glover
In view of that assurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.