Clause 3

HC Deb 17 July 1972 vol 841 cc32-43

CONFERRING OF BOROUGH STATUS ON DISTRICTS

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

I beg to move Amendment No. 1183, in page 3, line 17, at end insert— (1A) A petition for a charter under this section shall not be presented by the council of a district which comprises more than one existing borough unless more than half of those entitled to vote in local government elections are at the time of the passing of this Act residents within the boundaries of one of such boroughs.

Mr. Speaker

With this Amendment we are to take the following sub-Amendment (a), leave out from ' shall' to end and insert: 'be presented upon a resolution supported by a majority of the Council by vote'.

Amendment No. 477, in page 3, line 21, at end insert: and where a district comprises only one existing borough, such a petition shall not be presented except upon a resolution supported also by not less than two-thirds of the members representing such borough and voting thereon at such a meeting. Amendment No. 1183 with the sub-Amendment are on page 11312 in Part 2. Amendment No. 477 is on page 11149 in Part 1.

Mr. More

The object of the two Amendments to which my name appears is to make another appeal to my right hon. Friend on behalf of the boroughs which under the provisions of the Bill are to lose their existing status. This debate was started in Standing Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack) in connection with that part of Clause 1 which related to the rural boroughs. This is because it happens that in my constituency I have no fewer than four of the existing seven rural boroughs. But the logic of these Amendments applies to all boroughs which are destined to lose their existing status. The appeal we make to my right hon. Friend—not for the first time—is to try to meet the wishes of these boroughs to retain as far as possible their dignities and titles.

When we debated Clause 1 previously we were given copies of a letter which had been sent, under the authority of my right hon. Friend, by the Department to the various local authority associations regarding further proposals for borough status and civic dignities.

I appeal to my right hon. Friend to pay regard to the realities in regard to those places which have borough status and to try to do something within the ambit of the Bill to preserve at any rate their historic identities.

I thank my right hon. Friend for the enormous trouble which has been taken in preparing and circulating these suggestions. Will it be possible for the whole matter to be reconsidered—either here or in another place—from a slightly different angle, with particular emphasis on the titles and dignities at district level of both the new district authorities and the boroughs involved in them? Anybody who has studied the re-drawn map of England which was circulated to us when the proposals came out originally will have seen a large variety of situations in the new areas which it is proposed to create at both the first tier and the second tier.

Taking a few examples at random in my part of the world, in Shropshire, there are proposals for a single county, which we are preserving under a name which I hope is not yet finally decided, containing four district authorities all of them differently circumstanced as regards their rural boroughs and their boroughs.

If I may take one example, No. 2 district is Shrewsbury. There we have an area that is dominated by a single town in the middle of a district area, and the question might arise whether a special tide was to be provided for the new district. In the memorandum which was circulated by the Department in April, 1972, "Draft Proposals for new districts in the English non-metropolitan countries", there is tabulated on page 44 the population total showing the situation in Shropshire. One sees in the new District No. 2 that the Shrewsbury Metropolitan Borough, which still exists as a borough, has considerably more than half of the population of the new district authority proposed to be created.

Although Shrewsbury is not my actual responsibility, I believe that it would be sensible and logical, if the councillors in that area so desire, that the chairman of their authority should be known as the mayor of Shrewsbury notwithstanding that it includes the more rural area of Atcham. This is really what is provided for in the Amendment in which we say where a district comprises only one existing borough, such a petition"— that is a petition for mayoral rights and so on— shall not be presented except upon a resolution supported also by not less than two-thirds of the members representing such borough and voting thereon at such a meeting. This would imply that if this were put before the new council and two-thirds of the councillors representing the borough area of Shrewsbury were in favour of this, that would qualify them to put forward a petition under Clause 3.

Amendment No. 1183 is designed to meet the case where a new district authority comprises more than one existing borough. This must apply in a number of areas. It applies, for example, in a constituency next door to my own—that of my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Sir T. Brinton)—whose No. 1 district authority, which is Kidderminster, includes two municipal boroughs. One is Kidderminster itself and the other is Bewdley. If one looks at the draft proposals for new districts from which I have already quoted, on page 25 one sees the populations of the respective authorities set out, and we find that Kidderminster, in fact, provides just more than half of the total population of the new area. It is not for me to pontificate about the situation in a constituency which is not my own, but obviously there might arise a difficult question as to whether it is right or not that an application should be made for the whole of that area, including another borough, Bewdley, to acquire the title for its chairman as mayor of Kidderminster.

3.45 p.m.

I should like to say a word about my own area. Referring to Shropshire, on page 44, we have the situation under the present proposals that if we look at new District No. 4 we find that we have four areas there. Altogether they include, although they are not separately listed in the Bill, four rural boroughs, and these are all small boroughs, none of which population wise can be said to dominate the new area. It would be very wrong if it were thought proper for the chairman of that area to be known by the name of any one of those four boroughs. It would be an invidious distinction which would be highly unacceptable to the three other boroughs concerned.

My right hon. Friend may be aware, though this is slightly sidetracking the issue, that we are petitioning to have this area divided into two. That does not, unfortunately, solve this problem because even with the division into two we shall still be left with two of these rural boroughs in each area. So we still face that same problem.

Amendment No. 1183 seeks to establish that a petition for a charter under Clause 3 shall not be presented at all unless more than half of those entitled to vote in local government elections are at the time of the passing of this Act resident within the boundaries of one of such boroughs. So unless there is one borough which is, so to speak, dominating the area population-wise it would not be in order to present such a petition at all. The object is simply to preserve the positions of the existing boroughs or rural boroughs.

The corollary of this, which I should again like to put to my right hon. Friend, is that the Government should try to preserve the realities of the situation by not inventing unreal titles for the new district authorities. There obviously must be in the country—I have instanced the case of Shrewsbury—areas where it would be sensible, or at least plausible, to give a mayoral status to the whole of the new district although it includes a large area not part of any existing borough. I suggest that where that situation does not apply it would be sensible to retain the system which in our own part of the world has worked very well since the reorganisation which we in Shropshire, together with, I think, two other counties, underwent six years ago.

Since then our boroughs, although reduced to the status of rural boroughs, have retained the title of mayor for their chairmen, while simultaneously the rural districts in which those boroughs are now situated and to which they have surrendered most of their powers have retained for their chairmen the name of "chairman". I assure my right hon. Friend, because the whole object is that there should not be confusion in these matters, that in six years' experience in Shropshire we have not had any confusion. There is no doubt in anybody's mind who is the chairman of Ludlow Rural District Council and who is the mayor of the Borough of Ludlow. I do not see that anything is to be gained, for the cause of uniformity, in abolishing that situation in the interests of inventing the title of mayor for areas which traditionally are not boroughs.

We have had several debates on this matter, some of them initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock in Committee, and one in which I myself took part in the House on Clause 1. I think that my right hon. Friend suggested that these could be questions for decision, probably, in another place. On behalf of all in Shropshire who are concerned for our historic traditions, I assure him that we shall be grateful if more thought can be given to the whole matter and, perhaps, further consultations held between the time when the Bill leaves this House and its arrival in the other place, in the hope that we may embark upon our new local government reorganisation in a spirit of harmony and co-operation.

Mr. Ted Leadbitter (The Hartlepools)

In Committee it became abundantly clear that the enormous complexities arising from the Bill were such that it would be difficult in any case to lay down a strict yardstick to measure the qualification to apply for borough status. In large new non-county areas there are districts which have within them boroughs of varying size, and there are smaller non-county areas with districts which have large county boroughs within them. In addition, there are situations of overlap where predominance of population arising from the movement of people away from the central urban areas to the periphery has created other problems.

Already in Clause 3 we have an admission from the Government that a district may pray for the grant of a charter under this section and Her Majesty by the advice of Her Privy Council may think fit to grant a charter conferring on that district the status of a borough The intention, presumably, is that an application shall be from the district, and it shall be formulated by the council. It would be difficult to have an application based upon a proportion of the electorate in one or two or more county boroughs within a district.

One comes across an anomaly straight away. The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) argued his case very well, directing it to "more than half" of the population in the circumstances which he described. In the Bill, on the other hand, we have it that a district council in making an application shall come to its decision by a majority of not less than two-thirds. There is a conflict of proportions here: on the one hand, not less than half the electorate, and, on the other, not less than two-thirds of the elected members of the district council. My sub-Amendment—I suspect that it is in the wrong place, but we are relying at this stage on the Minister, so that the precise position of Amendments is not all that material—would lay down simply that an application for borough status should depend upon a clear majority in the council.

Why has the Minister decided that a majority of not less than two-thirds of a council shall be required? It cannot be argued that that is the practice anyway, for so much of the Bill takes us away from practice that we now have new considerations and a new situation. One might have picked on eight-tenths or four-fifths of a council. There is nothing sacrosanct in two-thirds, although I acknowledge that a majority of two-thirds is used for a number of purposes. For example, the conferment of freeman ship of a borough upon a worthy citizen is, in practice, determined by a two-thirds majority. In this situation, however, where we are dealing with something entirely new, where charters dating back over the centuries are to be dispensed with, the same argument cannot apply. The ancient Borough of Hartlepool, for example, had its charter under King John.

There is good reason for adopting a different formula in these circumstances for the application for borough status. There is nothing wrong with the majority decision. There can be difficulties, on the other hand, if a set proportion is chosen for the majority. I want the Minister to give his grounds for not being willing to accept the simple majority, bearing in mind that practically everything else which is done in our democratic institutions is done on the basis of a majority decision.

I hope that the point made by the hon. Member for Ludlow about population apportionment will be taken into account but at the end of the day, no matter how desirable it may be, it is difficult to evolve a qualification for borough status based purely upon the electorate. Those who are elected by the electors are expected to take the issues to them. When the elections for the new districts come along, county boroughs as they exist today will put the case through the candidates presenting themselves. In a legal sense, those county boroughs will cease to exist, but the people who matter are there on the ground, and the new candidates will seek to put to the electors the issue of borough status. The thought will be very much in the minds of people living in the existing county boroughs.

In my view, the emphasis should now be on what the elected members should do once they are returned to office, and how Parliament should expect them to apply for borough status. In this highly complex situation, let us do the simplest thing and not invite trouble by laying down a set majority proportion; let us make it a simple majority, as is normal in every other circumstance.

4.0 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn (Windsor)

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), especially in his closing request to the Government to think again and, perhaps, to review the whole matter when the Bill goes to the other place.

Like all hon. Members, I have read with care the entire Committee stage, with particular attention to the debates on Amendments put down by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack). As I understand all that has been said, the Bill now provides that nobody other than a new district may apply for a charter and borough status and a mayor; that is to say, no one component authority within a district will be permitted under the Clause to apply for a charter.

In my own case, we have the town of Maidenhead, whose most recent charter was dated 1569, and the Royal Borough of New Windsor, whose first charter was granted in 1277 and whose present charter dates from 1466.

As far as I can see from the Bill, there is no machinery by which a Royal Borough could apply for its charter. The Bill abolishes the charter and with the charter go all the rights, prerogatives and privileges and the mayor. In my constituency a particularly difficult situation is created. Because of the traffic conditions in London, Windsor is becoming more and more the focus for State occasions. I prophesied this in the debate on the Civil List and my words have proved to be correct. We would have liked to have a mayor of Windsor who was responsible for the duties attached to these great occasions in the town. As I understand it, unless the Government change their mind the only way that could be achieved would be for the district to have a joint Maidenhead and Windsor mayor and to give up once and for all the possibility of having a mayor for this very ancient and historic Royal Borough of New Windsor, which is the only Royal Borough in which the sovereign resides.

I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development to think carefully about some of these details. I have referred only to my own constituency because it is the only one about which I know, but there are special historical associations attached to Windsor and in view of this I ask him to think again.

Why is the Royal Prerogative introduced into Part III? I always understood that the Royal Prerogative ran without being included in a Statute. I am confident that the Royal Prerogative would never be used to override the rights of hon. Members from either side of the House in their own constituencies, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree.

Mr. Graham Page

I shall dispose first of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Dr. Glyn). Even if the Amendments were accepted they would not permit an application for borough status by an existing borough that was not coincident with the whole district. Application for borough status can only be made under the Bill by the full district. That does not mean that the boroughs which will now be absorbed into the new districts cannot retain their existing charters in the form that they can retain their mayoralty. This matter is not before the House but I can assure my hon. Friend that consultation papers have gone out to local authorities on the subject and we are hoping to move Amendments in another place to deal with the matter.

On the Amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), the Bill recognises the importance of the petition for a charter and that the resolution of it should be taken only after advance notice of the meeting at which the resolution is to be proposed. It must then be carried by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting on the resolution, but it must be a decision taken by the new district council as a whole. It should not, as my hon. Friend wishes, be subject to a veto by anything exceeding one-third of those members of the new district council who represent an area of a borough which is taken into the new district.

An example is sufficient to show the absurdity of the proposition that a small component part of a district should be able to veto the wishes of the district as a whole. I take the example of the district which is based on Ashford in Kent. The total population of the district will be about 79,000, of which Ashford urban district is about 35,000. If the district council as a whole wished to apply for borough status it could do so, if my hon. Friend's Amendment were accepted, only if the resolution were supported by two-thirds of those representatives of the existing borough of Tenterden, which has a population of only 6,000, who actually vote in the resolution. An even more ridiculous result would be that under the Amendment, if none of the Tenterden councillors voted, it would amount to a veto of the application by the district as a whole for its charter.

Under Amendment No. 1183 there would be further anomalies. If a new district contained two or more existing boroughs my hon. Friend would allow it to petition for borough charter only if more than half the electors of the new district lived in one or other of the existing boroughs at the time the Bill became an Act. The power to petition would therefore be frozen at the moment the Bill was enacted. No matter what the wishes of the new district council may be, then or later, no matter what the views of those who represented the existing boroughs may be, no matter what the views of the electors of the boroughs or the district may be, all that would be necessary under the Amendment would be for the majority of local government electors to live at the moment of enactment in areas which have been given borough status in the past. That would be an impossible position.

I give one more example of the absurdity of the situation. District No. 5 contains two existing boroughs, Faversham and Queenborough in Sheppey, as well as Sittingbourne and Milton urban districts and Swale rural district. The population of the two boroughs is only 46,000 out of a total of 100,000 in the district so that the district would be debarred from petitioning for borough status merely on those population figures. It is a principle of the Bill that all districts alike shall have the same choice whether or not to apply for borough status. The decision whether or not to apply for borough status shall rest with the council of the new district and shall not be subject to any veto by particular parts of that district, or limited by the chance distribution of population in 1972, a distribution which might change considerably in later years. Under the Bill a district council may decide at any time to apply for borough status without any repercussion as would happen if my hon. Friend's Amendment were accepted.

I come to the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for the Hartlepools (Mr. Leadbitter). As I understand it, it would provide for a decision by a simple majority of all councillors instead of a two-thirds' majority of those attending and voting at the council. I admit that he has precedent partly on his side. Section 129 of the Local Government Act, 1933, obliged a council to hold two special meetings and to pass the necessary resolution at each of them by a majority of the whole number of members of the council"— if it wished to apply for borough status. We wish to revise that because local councils do conduct, and should conduct, their business in council, and a vote in council should not be nullified by absentees. It should not be necessary to search out those councillors who do not attend to ensure that a majority of the councillors are in favour of such a resolution.

Let the council conduct its business in the proper way, in council with a vote of those present. The matter is important enough for the vote to have to be carried by two thirds instead of a simple majority. I ask the House therefore to reject the Amendment.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)

Will the Minister clarify the matter? The group of Amendments deals with the position of a new district which comprises a borough and other areas, some of which may have had a charter in the past and some of which may not. In the new circumstances will the new district council be able to claim under the charter all the rights that one of the constituents of the district had in the past, or will it be considered that a new situation has arisen? In particular, would a new district be able to claim the title "City" and the title "Lord Mayor" and "Right Honourable" for its chief citizen?

Mr. Page

I believe that the first thing the new district would do would be to include in its petition the privileges and dignities which any boroughs within it already held by their charter. I imagine that the ancient charter for York includes many privileges which would be included in the new charter for the district based on York. I am sure that the intention is that they should be included in the new charter.

The word "City" is normally granted by letters patent and not included in the charter, but I am sure that it would be the wish of Her Majesty to issue letters patent to confirm the word "City" if it were required by districts in which a city is to be embodied.

Dr. Glyn

I should like to thank my right hon. Friend very much for what he has said about reconsidering the matter in another place. We are all most grateful.

Mr. George Wallace (Norwich, North)

When the Government move their Amendment in another place, will they list all the privileges and rights?

Mr. Page

I do not think it would be right to list them. There are so many varieties of names of officials and privileges granted that we might miss some and by expressing some exclude the others.

Mr. More

I thank my hon. Friend for the attention he has given to the subject. While he was speaking I tried to follow his examples, such as those in Kent. Although I have always seen the logic of the Government's proposals, I still take the view that it would be wrong and an absurdity to give mayoral status in the case of Ashford, for example, to a new district which comprises the existing borough of Tenterden. I have the feeling that the whole of the Government's scheme is inspired by the idea that there is something derogatory in the position of a chairman of a council compared with a mayor. That has never been so in the past, and I see no reason why it should be so in the future. We have lived very happily with the present position in my part of the world, and I beg my right hon. Friend to reconsider the matter again, before the Bill goes to another place.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.