HC Deb 21 February 1967 vol 741 cc1603-19

11.40 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Kershaw (Stroud)

I beg to move, That the Gloucester Order 1966 (S.I., 1966, No. 1535), dated 6th December, 1966, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th December, be withdrawn. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for having found time, according to tradition, for a Prayer which has been crowded out by the press of business. The time ran out on what should have been a Prayer last week, as it was not reached during a morning sitting, and the Leader of the House has found time for a debate on this Motion tonight, which, as it is exempted business, could go on till a very late hour. But I hope not to delay the House very long in putting before them the case for the withdrawal of the Gloucester Order.

In this matter, I appear as an advocate. There are very many residents in the areas affected who wish to have their case put to this House. It is, of course, true that the usual public inquiries have taken place about this Order, and decisions have been made, but this is the last opportunity on which it will be possible for the argument to be deployed against the Order, and the residents do not wish this opportunity to be denied to them.

It so happens that I am the only Member of Parliament who, from a geographical point of view, is able to do so, because the other local Members of Parliament in the area affected happen to be Ministers of the Crown. I see in his place the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond), who is a good constituency Member, and well known to be, and who is here to hear this debate, and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin), who is also a Minister and, therefore, is not able by tradition to deploy the case on this Order.

It is therefore a fact that I find myself in the position of being the only advocate who can speak for the residents in the areas affected.

This Order incorporates parts of the Gloucester rural district into the city of Gloucester, and, in particular, affects the parish of Upton St. Leonards in my constituency, Hucciecote in the Gloucester constituency, and the parish of Longlevens in the Forest of Dean.

From my constituents in Upton, from the Hucclecote Residents and Ratepayers Association and from the Parish Council of Longlevens, I have had the most earnest request to deploy their case. They have given me representations asking that I should present to this House their wishes not to be absorbed into the city of Gloucester and giving their reasons why they believe this would be a bad thing.

Firstly, I would ask the Minister—for whose attendance I am grateful, and I bear in mind also that his Department has had a Minister sitting on that Bench for two mornings already during our morning sessions, as I have been—to make clear what is the real purpose of the proposal.

If it is to obtain the integration of the areas which have a community of interest, then there is, of course, a case for considering all the surrounding area of Gloucester and not merely the areas which Gloucester City has actually claimed, which is what is being done. If, however, the point of all these changes is to preserve Gloucester City against the danger of losing its status as a borough, I would say, first, that this is a wrong basis on which to base a change. Secondly, I would say that no one—at least no one concerned in these changes in Gloucester—questions the preservation of the borough status of Gloucester. No one suggests that Gloucester, as it is, is too small, or in some way too inefficient, to continue. The Minister himself, in paragraph 12 of his conclusions, finds that Gloucester is in fact an efficient organisation. I would be very sad, as, I am certain, would be a very large number of others, if so ancient a borough as Gloucester were to lose its status. Contrariwise, there has been no suggestion that any other of the councils concerned is inefficient and should for that reason be altered.

We have, therefore, the situation that there is no special evil or inconvenience to be cured and that there is, as far as I know, no active desire on the part of any large numbers of people for changes to be made but that there is a substantial body of opinion—as the Minister admitted in his letter to me of 8th June last year, overwhelming opinion—in the areas directly concerned that the changes should not take place. All this, moreover, is against the temporary background of unsuitability for piecemeal changes in view of the impending Royal Commission on Local Government, which will again throw all these issues into the melting pot.

I refer first in detail to the case of the rural district council of Gloucester, the effect on which was described by the Report of the Local Government Commission for England, presented to the Minister in January, 1963, as serious. On the basis of 1964 figures, the rural district council would lose about 16,000 of its population and about £470,000 of its rateable value, representing a loss of about 25 per cent. in both cases. It is not contended, and I do not contend, that the rural district as it would remain after these changes are made would be nonviable. Even as reduced, it would have a 36,000 population and a substantial rateable value and it would still be larger than the majority of rural districts.

The objection of the rural district council is that the reduction of its area was assumed by the Local Government Commission to be one of the matters which the Gloucester County review, which was then in progress, would take into consideration. It referred, indeed, to the possibility of "substantial recasting of boundaries". In the event the county review was cancelled, and it cannot, therefore, now be assumed that the Commission, exercising a choice in what is obviously a matter of fine balance, would have come to the same conclusion.

The Minister has had correspondence with the rural district council and myself about the matter in which that point was put. The Minister justified the adherence to his original decision by noting that the Commission had only referred to the possibility of a substantial recasting of boundaries, by which, I understand, he implied that before weight could be given to such a point, the Commission would have had to entertain a greater degree of certainty.

I wonder whether the Minister is wholly satisfied with that argument. He knows that the Commission was referring to a review body over which it had no influence and which had not yet begun its work. It would surely have been wholly improper for the Commission to have made public any assumptions about how the county review would be conducted or the conclusions to which it might come. Indeed, in referring to it even as it did, the Commission was saying that it was virtually certain that changes would be made, and this must clearly have influenced the Commission substantially.

I suggest that the rural district council is entitled to think it unreasonable of the Minister to discount this alteration of circumstance. I suggest that if the Minister's decision had to be based upon legal rather than administrative procedures, he would in such a case hold his hand.

As regards rates, I understand from paragraph 39 of the Order—which, the Minister will agree, is rather complicated—that the rates charged to the ratepayers of the rural district council and in other areas affected who transferred to the city will rise by 6d. in the £plus any rise this year in the city rates. Nobody likes rates at any time, still less a rise in them, and still less a rise at the present time of freeze.

I now turn to the case for Upton St. Leonards, which is in my constituency. Only a small part of the parish is affected, but those who are affected have made their views very well known to me. I believe that the decision about Upton St. Leonards should not go unchallenged for the very good reason that it is based on the new motorway being the new boundary. The Minister said in his conclusions: Extended in this way, the city would be contained firmly by two major physical features—the river Severn on the west and the motorway on the east. A motorway looks a splendid boundary on a map if one is looking at it in Whitehall, but it is in fact a very unsatisfactory boundary because it tries to go through a countryside without disturbing it. Every footpath, bridle path, road or cart track is taken over or under it, and everything is done to insulate it from the area through which it passes. That is part of the charm of driving on a motorway, and part of the charm in living near one is that one is not cut off from the other side. The motorway and the local countryside live in different worlds.

The old type of highway such as the A38 is very different. The A38 is a notorious highway which passes through my constituency between Gloucester and Bristol. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) knows very well that it is notorious and dangerous as it also goes through his constituency. One risks life and limb to try to cross it, and there is every inducement to stay on one side and not cross if one does not have to do so. But there is no difficulty in crossing a motorway, and that should be borne in mind not only in the present case but in others.

Another consideration here is that the Order may well come into force before the motorway exists, and it will be rather a puzzle to find the boundary, because it will be a notional line on the map. At one time the division between my constituency and that of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the Matson area was a stream. That was fine when one could see the stream, but it was put underground in a sewer, and no one knew where it was. I found myself canvassing the right hon. Gentleman's constituents and wasting my shoe leather. I am glad to say that that matter has now been put right; he has the whole of Matson, and he is welcome to it.

I believe that a motorway should not be considered a satisfactory boundary for parish and other purposes, and that brings me to the case of Hucclecote. The proposed motorway will also be the boundary which will cause a large part of the parish to become part of the city of Gloucester. Hucclecote is at present a community of about 6,000 people. It is substantially developed, with its own factories and shops, and is separated from Gloucester by a green belt and also now by a new by-pass which is a substantial physical barrier. It will not provide any solution to the problem of finding residential land for Gloucester as it is already closely built up. In any case, the city council requires space, I understand, for only about 9,000 more people by 1981 and has within the city's boundaries room for 4,000 of these. Only some 300 acres are required to house the remainder, although the areas to be transferred to the city amount to some 2.900 acres.

Those who live in Hucclecote believe that the temporary conditions due to the closing down of the Gloucester Aircraft Company during the time when the Local Government Commission was making its inquiries may have influenced the Commission to think that the majority of those living in Hucclecote worked in Gloucester and that Hucclecote was merely a dormitory area. That is not so today and these buildings, which are once again in use, employ a very large number of the residents of Hucclecote.

The Minister will also, I know, bear in mind that the motorway boundary will cut the parish in two, leaving some 400 Hucclecote residents outside the boundary. I have already said why I regard a motorway as an unsatisfactory boundary, and certainly the Minister will not disagree that, if it is at all possible, a parish should not be split except for the most pressing reasons. Of course, both Upton St. Leonards and Hucclecote are to be split in this way.

One factor which may not have been considered by the Commission is that Hucclecote, I am informed, lies over a slight watershed from Gloucester and if it is to be brought on to the sewage system of the city very expensive works will be necessary to overcome the height problem for a sewage system which, at that side of the city, is already seriously overloaded.

Of one important factor the Minister stands in no doubt. Hucclecote has a strong local patriotism. It feels itself to be an entity. A vigorous committee called the Residents' and Ratepayers' Association wishes to fight these proposals. It polled the local people, and a very large majority expressed opposition to the proposals. Altogether, 92 per cent. of the residents responded to a circular letter and 84 per cent. voted against the proposals. They are quite satisfied with their local administration.

Drawing upon my local press the other day, I saw that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in a quiz in which he took part, said that he was in favour of local option. So we have no doubt that, if the right hon. Gentleman were free to speak his mind, he would be saying that local option in this regard should take place. That is to say, this would be the case if the press report was right. I applaud him for his opinion.

It would also be wrong not to admit that some of the parishes affected do not feel a certain misgiving about the change in administration. They recall certain episodes in the administration of the city to do with the housing fund not long ago—now happily quite satisfactorily disposed of. But they remember them. I am bound to say also that the recent granting of planning permission by the city council to build a speedway track and a lorry park next door to a projected new hospital has aroused considerable local anxiety and astonishment.

Be that as it may, no one has suggested that any improvement in administration would result from these proposals. Certainly the city will acquire more rateable value that the county council will lose, but what problems for Gloucester that will solve no one has said. It is not even apparent that there are any problems for Gloucester. Certain it is, however, that my constituents will pay more rates and they find that they are quite happy as they are. The parishes of Upton St. Leonards, Hucclecote and Longlevens will all see their unity to some extent broken and their administration therefore made more difficult. In a few years' time all will be done again according to new proposals, and I cannot help thinking that the Local Government Commission made these proposals merely because they were proposals. They justify their existence in proposing something. In Gloucestershire many will think these proposals are unnecessary, vexatious and expensive, and I ask the Minister even now to think again.

I appreciate his difficulty. In a way, it is a very difficult decision for him to take. He inherited this problem from a colleague, and he will be naturally reluctant to alter a Ministerial decision without very good reason, especially as the original decision was not his.

It is a finely-balanced judgment, I agree, and it therefore gives him little opportunity to single out powerful reasons. The very paucity of reasons makes it the more difficult to reject the decision which has already been made. Time, trouble and expense have already been incurred, debates have already been arranged and failed to come off, and now we have finally arrived at this late hour. The Juggernaut has been put in motion. But that is what Ministers are for, to stop unnecessary and unwanted legislation. I beleve that a large number of people will be disappointed if this Order goes through. I do not believe that many people will rejoice if it does. I therefore ask the Minister if he will look at this again.

12.2 a.m.

Mr. F. V. Corfield (Gloucestershire, South)

I had been reminding myself, before I came into the House, of the evidence which the Ministry of Housing and Local Government has been putting to the Royal Commission on Local Government. I do not know whether the presence of the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, now absorbed by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, indicates at long last the closing of the gap between the policies which tend to be followed by different Departments in this Government. I find it very difficult to reconcile the terms of this Order with the views on local government reorganisation which have been expressed to the Royal Commission by the Ministry which is responsible for this Order.

I do not want it to be thought for one moment that I hold any brief for the views expressed in the evidence. They seem to me to be the product of a wholly urban mind, wholly unaware of either the character or the needs of rural areas. However that may be, the suggestion that there should be some 40 major local authority areas based on the city regions would appear from a mere glance of the map to make it almost inconceivable that the City of Gloucester is likely to be the centre of such a city region. I have studied the Ministry's views on second-tier authorities, woolly as those views are. To some extent I welcome a degree of indefiniteness because I think it implies at long last the recognition that local government should not be regarded as something of a uniform structure to he placed right across the country irrespective of the very marked differences in characteristics and population trends, and so on, of different parts of the country.

However that may be, there is absolutely no indication in the second part of this evidence that Gloucester City is at all likely to be a suitable second-tier authority in the view of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, any more than it is likely to be the centre of a top-tier authority. In those circumstances, it seems quite extraordinary that we should be faced with an Order which quite clearly does not follow the views of the Ministry which is promoting it, and at the same time follows the recommendations made under the 1958 Act which the Government have done everything to scrap.

I would have thought that in these circumstances this was a wholly premature operation until we know the shape which local government of the future is likely to take. Although it does not follow that the Royal Commission on Local Government is in any way bound to produce an outline in any way in conformity with the evidence produced by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, I am bound to say that it is not my experience that Government Departments responsible for these matters are likely to accept recommendations of a Royal Commission which go a long way in the opposite direction.

Therefore, we have the right to assume that the Government's policy in this matter is as set out in the evidence submitted to the Royal Commission. If we take that evidence at all seriously, it seems that the Order and all the ramifications and disruptions which arise from these transfers are not only premature, but in many ways wholly unnecessary and possibly positively harmful.

My hon. Friend referred to the planning side. In its evidence, the Ministry of Housing based a good deal of its argument for the 40 city regions, a prospect which horrifies me, on the need to have wide areas for town and country planning. I do not want to be particularly unkind to the City of Gloucester, but I know of no ancient city which has lost so much of its charm, very largely as a result of the planning since the war, as has Gloucester, and I know most of the ancient country towns and cities of this country. There are only two things worth looking at in Gloucester—the Cathedral itself and the New Inn, which is a very old building. I have the greatest possible sympathy with my hon. Friend's constituents if this is the pattern of planning into which they are being forced.

I strongly support my hon. Friend's plea that the Order is premature and almost certainly directly contrary to the views of the Ministry which has promoted it. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the debate still sticks to the title of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, but, if he does, I ask him to branch out and show his independence and accept the Motion and allow us to go back to the status quo until we know exactly what is to happen about local government.

Knowing the amount of time which Royal Commissions take inevitably, the Labour Party may well not be the party to implement these recommendations, but let us see what they are before we go on tinkering and causing unnecessary disruption to the efficiency of local government and the peace of mind of the people concerned.

12.8 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Arthur Skeffington)

I am sure that the House is very glad that we have peen able to find a little time to discuss this important Order, even though the 40 days for discussing a Prayer have elapsed. Changes of the kind which the Order makes are of considerable concern to local inhabitants and local administrators. Like the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield), I have taken part in many of these inquiries and sometimes one has had to speak for the acquiring authority and sometimes for the losing authority, but one has appreciated that these changes arouse strong and genuine feelings. I am sure that the constituents of the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) and those of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South, can be very glad that those two hon. Members have taken this last belated opportunity to talk about the Order. They put their case so persuasively that I only wish that I could say at once that I recommend the House to accept the Motion, but I cannot do so out of sympathy with them, or on account of their arguments.

The hon. Member for Stroud asked what were the real reasons for the Order. I have to base my case in this respect upon the decision letter of 7th October, 1965, which my right hon. Friend the previous Minister sent. That, with minor modifications, is based on the very detailed report and proposals for the South Western General Review Area, in which it will be seen that, from paragraph 59 onwards the Commission summarised, under the heading the "Balance of Advantage", the reasons for suggesting these additions to the ancient city of Gloucester.

My right hon. Friend the present Minister and my right hon. Friend the previous Minister both considered this report and the subsequent inquiry by the inspector, and the consultations which have taken place since, including a deputation brought by the mover of the Motion on one occasion. All of these have been considered at great length.

It is frightening to consider the length of time which any proposed change takes. When one realises that the Corn-mission began this review in 1959, and that we are now on the last stage in February 1967, it can be seen that it poses very serious problems as to whether we can afford to continue at such a leisurely pace, when changes are desirable. I am not arguing whether changes are desirable, but this is a very long process and at this late stage I am sure that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stroud is not as optimistic as he sounded at one point of his speech.

Broadly speaking, we take the view summarised in the Commission's report in paragraph 64: …. in considering our draft proposals and in reconsidering the whole question after the conference, we began as we always do in cases of this kind, by seeing what extension could properly be granted to the county borough in the light of the regulations. It was only after this that we turned to consider whether the city as extended should remain a county borough. The report goes on to speak about the city being a more effective unit of local government, and that is broadly the view which the Government are bound to take. The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the consequences to rural district councils. He said, as the Commission's report said, that the effect would be serious.

The report said: There is substance in these arguments— about the loss of population and loss of rateable value— but even as reduced, the rural district would have a population of 33,600 and a rateable value of £477,000. Both population and rateable value are likely to continue to grow. If anything like the present pattern of rural districts is to be retained, it is difficult to say that such a rural district is weak; of the 415 rural districts in England, 354 at present have smaller populations than this.… They also have smaller rateable values than this. This may not be a model for the future, but one could not say that the Commission came to the conclusion that the rural district council would be unable to maintain an effective system of government of the proportion of area remaining to it.

Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

The hon. Gentleman did not go on to read the next sentence, which was the point that my hon. Friend was making, that in any case there is the possibility of a substantial recasting of county districts at the county review. Perhaps he will deal with the point?

Mr. Skeffington

Certainly. In this connection I would say that the Commission was not making its proposals conditional upon any review, but upon the merits of the case before it. I rest my case in answer to the general proposition on the fact that there are 354 other councils which can subsist under the present scheme with small populations and smaller rateable values.

The hon. Member raised the question of rates, and he properly said that those who were going into the inner area would not want to pay higher rates. The position, as he rightly summarised it from paragraph 39, is this. As I understand it, the city rate at the present time is 14s. in the £d. Whereas the rural district rate, which varies slightly from area to area according to the local parish precept, is just over 11s. If the recommendations of the city of Gloucester Finance Committee are accepted, the general rate will be frozen at an increase of 6d. This is the effect of Article 39. In fact it will not be 6d. because of the contribution under the Local Government Act of last year, which is in this case, I understand, 5d., and the poundage is therefore likely to be I ls. ld. for the next 12 months. I hope that that will be a reassurance to the hon. Member's constituents.

The hon. Member raised the special point of Upton St. Leonards and the boundary formed by the motorway. The hon. Member thought that this was an undesirable boundary. One always has the argument of what is an effective and useful boundary, and it is possible for local authorities to mark boundaries in various ways. They have done so for hundreds of years, long before the roads came. I have had a lot of experience of boundaries, and one of the most effective is a motorway.

An ex-Member of this House, A. P. Herbert, wrote an interesting article about the extension of the Cromwell Road, in which he said: We are preparing to commit incest on our side because we cannot get to our neighbours on the other side. I understand that the hon. Member's constituents do not like this division, and had it possible to include the whole of the parish this would have been desirable. In view of future developments, this seemed to be the best boundary.

I know that there are deep feelings amongst the inhabitants of the village of Hucclecote. Of course, there is a great deal of local patriotism, and I would not want to denigrate it or claim that it was artificial. But the Commission, having had these views strongly put to them both by letters from individuals and at the public inquiry, came to the view expressed in paragraph 58: Further consideration has confirmed this view and has also confirmed us in thinking that Hucclecote is not a typical village but is much more a city suburb with some industry within it. The inspector went on to say that going out of the city it would be difficult for the ordinary person to know when he was leaving the city and coming into the village. If one gets what is almost a continually built up urban area, it is difficult for administrative purposes to treat it separately. My right hon. Friend looked at this very carefully, but he did not feel justified in departing at this stage from the Commission's recommendations or the decision letter.

I understand the hon. Member's concern about past administration. There were certain failures revealed in the administration of the City of Gloucester in 1964. I am sure that he knows that vigorous steps have been taken. The town clerk retired on the grounds of ill-health and new officers have been appointed and a special investigation by outside experts has been made into the financial arrangements. The Minister has looked into the matter carefully and feels that the city will be competent under the present administration to organise the larger area which is going to pass to it.

With regard to the remarks of the bon. Member for Gloucestershire, South, I must make it clear that the printed evidence of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government is the Department's evidence. It is certainly not the Minister's evidence; still less is it the Government's evidence. The Government reserve the full right, on receipt of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, to make up their mind completely on the Royal Commission's Report, and are in no way bound by the evidence submitted by the Department. The evidence is divided into two parts, and the purpose is, first, to give a history and to point out some of the defects as they are seen by the Department, and then to make proposals. These proposals are worthy of study and are of great interest, hut they certainly do not bind the Government. I give that personal assurance to the hon. Gentleman.

I listened attentively to the pleas that have been made so reasonably and persuasively—

Mr. Graham Page

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point, may I say that it seems to me to be rather extraordinary doctrine that information, even though it may be only information and not the expression of opinion, put forward by the Ministry is not treated as a statement by the Minister. Surely the Minister is responsible for what his servants do and should take responsibility. If in the face of later evidence he changes his mind, that is another matter, but when the information is put forward by his officials, surely that is the Minister's opinion?

Mr. Skeffington

The position is this. All the relevant Departments have been asked by the Royal Commission to give evidence of the working of the present system and possible alternative proposals for the future. That is what the Minister has done. He takes responsibility for the statements put out by his Department. But this does not bind him. As to policy in the future, this will be determined in the light of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, and it would be wrong for the impression to get abroad that because the Department suggested some alternatives that would be the future policy of the Government. The Government must be absolutely free to decide future policy in the light of the Royal Commission and in the light of other factors which are brought to their notice.

Let me sum up by saying that the Government take the view which was expressed in the Local Government Commission's Report, that an enlarged Gloucester City will make a strong, effective local organisation able to give a high standard of service both for the urban areas and the growing areas on the fringe of the city. It is true that already many of those in the areas which it is proposed shall be incorporated in the city look to the city for many of the services. The museums, the art college, grammar schools and colleges of higher education draw many of their pupils from the surrounding area.

The Inspector's Report found that populations varying from 30 per cent. to over 50 per cent. had lived or already worked in the city. The Commission takes the view, which the Minister now shares, that, extended in the way proposed in this Order, Gloucester, together with the growing outer suburbs, will become a free-standing city under the control of a single administration. It will be contained on the east by the new road pattern and the new motorway, and on the west by the River Severn. I hope that at this stage, whatever our feelings may be about the past, we shall welcome the new proposals and hope that the new administration in Gloucester will have every success on behalf of its inhabitants.

Question put and negatived.

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