ROADS (Hansard, 19 June 1973)

§ Dr. Miller
I beg to move Amendment No. 358, in page 76, leave out lines 2 to 5 and insert: '131 (1) The local highway authority for the purposes of the enactments set out in Schedule 14 of this Act shall be a regional or islands council in respect of special roads, trunk roads and principal roads and a district council or islands council in the case of all other roads; and those enactments shall have effect subject to the amendments specified in that Schedule'. I apologise for intruding in the debate, not having been a member of the Committee that deliberated on the Bill. However, it is perhaps something of a change to have someone who did not take part in the Committee's deliberations speaking at this stage.
The amendment seeks to ensure that district councils shall have authority for functions that are envisaged in the Bill as being the responsibility of more powerful and larger areas—the regions. For example, it might be felt that as the district is the area that is most closely involved with rates or housing, it should be the authority in which rights are vested regarding, for example, the collection of rates and the building of houses. It is, perhaps, in keeping with democratic ideology and, indeed, the feeling, which I believe is shared by all hon. Members, that areas in this country should have a 501 considerable degree of devolution, that this should apply no less to Scotland, which is not merely a region or area of the United Kingdom, but a nation in itself.
There is a considerable unwieldiness in the regional set-up in many respects. The general feeling is that there should be devolved to a smaller area, which has closer contact with the realities of any particular situation, the duties, obligations and rights which at the moment are vested in the regions, not the districts.
The amendment is designed to give district councils power to obtain delegated functions not for major road developments—I concede that major road developments must be undertaken on a regional basis—but for the development and unkeep of minor urban roads. This function has been delegated to corresponding district councils in England.
9.45 p.m.
The White Paper on the reform of local government argued somewhat along the lines that the Government intended that the rôle of the district authority should be very different from that of the regional authority, which would formulate and carry cut the broad strategy and administer the large-scale services, while the district authority would concentrate on caring for and improving the local environment.
The Under-Secretary should bear in mind that if that principle is to be attained it is essential that the district councils should have sufficient technical content to enable them to employ competent professional manpower. There is a tendency to imagine that what is bigger must necessarily be better. I do not suppose that the Under-Secretary is entirely thirled to that point of view. However, there does not seem to be any good, logical, or rational reason why Scottish districts should not have the same powers in respect of roads and highways as English districts. I ask the Under-Secretary to think carefully along the lines indicated in the amendment.

§ Mr. Younger
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Dr. Miller) has raised an interesting point. It really comes down to a matter of opinion based on the principles of the local government reform on which we are embarking.
502 As the hon. Member has said, it is quite correct that we want to see the districts with a good, sufficient and powerful task to do, sufficiently attractive that it will attract young people to serve on the districts and sufficiently large a task that it will attract proper staff, and so on. But the consequences of doing as the hon. Gentleman would like in this amendment are rather more far reaching and consequences about which we ought to be very clear before we risk agreeing to them.
The use of roads is something in which all of us partake, and we do so in a way that does not lead us to regard different pieces of road as acceptable at different sorts of standards. The advantages still seem to lie with a unified responsibility for the maintenance and construction of roads. If we are to have a unified responsibility, which I think we should have, it is at the level of the regional or islands council that we ought to have it.
First—the Wheatley Commission recognised this—road planning is intimately related to other functions that are conferred on regional and islands councils, such as strategic planning, industrial development, and transportation. There would be substantial disadvantages if the major responsibility for roads were at a level different from that of responsibility for these other services.
The question of the use of manpower is very important. Road construction and maintenance, traffic management and road safety are fields which involve great expenditure and the use of increasingly sophisticated techniques, particularly in the planning and design of roads and in traffic management. A very real problem is the supply of suitably qualified professional and technical staff to enable these functions to be discharged. Many local authorities are now unable to fill their complement, and this, in turn, is reflected in the speed with which the need for road schemes can be assessed and the necessary schemes prepared.
Centralisation of roads functions in the regional authorities will by no means cure all the problems, but it can make a substantial contribution through the efficient employment of the limited supply of highly qualified professional and technical staff.
The amendment is not necessarily directed at minor roads. Particularly in 503 the cities, the functions proposed to be given to district councils could call for a good deal of highly skilled supervision, with the result either that skilled manpower would be fragmented or that the maintenance of quite important roads might suffer.
Another difficulty which emerges is that if the amendment were accepted there would be changes of responsibility at local authority boundaries which could result in the adoption of undesirably different standards which the road user would find difficult to under-stand. This, with the other factors already mentioned, would put a heavy premium on co-operation between the various authorities concerned. I would not suggest that the different authorities would be unreasonable, but all this would inevitably take time and add to the problems of operating a co-ordinated road policy in a particular region.
I recognise that the amendment is well thought out and that what lies behind it is a firm conviction that there is wisdom in the spreading of these functions as widely as possible. I recognise that there will be large and efficient district councils who could discharge the functions proposed in the amendment efficiently. But that will not always be the case and the basic objection to the amendment is that a system of divided responsibility will lead to a wasteful use of resources sooner or later.
Clause 56 already gives local authorities a general power to delegate functions to other local authorities. It seems, in the light of what the hon. Member said. that in places where the district council could make a significant contribution to the road network, that would be a good way of proceeding. If a regional authority sees advantage in delegating the roads function to a district council I would have no objection to and would very much approve of such an arrangement being made. I think there might be much less danger of an unhappy working relationship between two authorities in a free agreement rather than if an arrangement were imposed.
I hope that the hon. Member will feel that it has been worth while raising this matter, but unified control of roads is desirable and there is a perfectly good 504 procedure for allowing a delegation of functions from regions to some districts as appropriate, which would be the best way of achieving what I know he would like to achieve.

§ Dr. Miller
As the Under-Secretary has twice mentioned the distinct possibility of the delegation of power from one local authority to another, I feel that I should withdraw the amendment. I am not entirely satisfied that the whole subject of centralisation is sufficiently in the mind of the Government in respect of the dangers which it could bring and I should like to feel that decentralisation, the devolution of power, is something which could be enshrined in legislation.
However, since the Under-Secretary has twice indicated the willingness of the Government perhaps even to encourage local authorities to divulge some of these powers, I regard the situation as relatively satisfactory. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.