WYE AND USK RIVER BOARD AREA ORDER, 1951

HL Deb 22 November 1951 vol 174 cc532-6

5.47 p.m.

LORD RENNELL rose to move to resolve, That the Wye and Usk River Board Area Order, 1951, made by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Minister of Local Government and Planning on May 22, 1951, a copy of which was laid before the House on July 3, 1951, be annulled. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which stands in my name is a Resolution to annul the Wye and Usk River Board Order, which has been before your Lordships' House from last Session under the Special Procedures Act. A few points on the background of this Order may be desirable, and may I say here that I have no interest in the Order in any form, though I live in the area which is mainly affected? The history of the Order is this. It was made under the River Boards Act, 1948, but the title of the Order, as it appears on the agenda, is slightly misleading, in that the Order is entitled the Wye and Usk River Board Order, whereas it is made clear in the context that the area affected is the catchment area or drainage area of the rivers Wye, Usk and Ebbw.

When this Order was proposed it aroused a storm of protest from all the local authorities in the Wye area and in many neighbouring counties. In fact, at the time the Order was proposed protests were lodged by the Herefordshire County Council, the Hereford City Council, the Wye Catchment Board, the Wye Board of Conservators, the Gloucestershire County Council, the Radnorshire County Council and the Birmingham City Council, as well as by all the urban and rural district authorities in the Wye area, with the exception of one or two quite insignificant areas. The effect of this protest was to cause the Ministers at that time to institute a local public inquiry, which took place in Hereford in June, 1950, at which all the authorities to which I have already referred, all of whom protested against the Order, were represented by counsel. The findings of the inquiry have not been published, and though they have been asked for by the Herefordshire County Council and the City Council, the Ministries concerned, for reasons which are not clear, have not yet seen their way to publish the findings. The Ministries persisted with the Order after the inquiry, as a result of which, under the Special Procedures Act, petitions of general objection to the Order were lodged in Your Lordships' House by the Herefordshire County Council, the Hereford City Council, the Wye Catchment Board and the Conservators of the Wye. Letters in support of objections have been written by the Gloucestershire County Council, the Birmingham City Council and the Radnor County Council, though these bodies, not being immediately, affected, did not themselves petition.

The main reasons for objection to the Order are that the control of the Wye, which is at present vested in the Wye Conservators and the Catchment Board, is being adequately carried out by these two bodies. The ostensible reason for the Order for the inclusion of the areas of the Usk and the Ebbw—which, as your Lordships know, runs into the Usk at Newport—is to increase the rateable value of the area, in order to have more revenue to draw upon for the necessary works on the rivers concerned. But experience has shown that the revenues administered by the Wye Conservators and the Wye Catchment Board are adequate to deal with the river. They have no lack of money, and the Wye Fisheries have been subject to one of the most enlightened pieces of legislation of any salmon fishing river in the United Kingdom. In fact, the fisheries have improved out of all belief in the last twenty-five years, and the revenues of the Conservators show a surplus. It is therefore unnecessary for the Wye Conservators to draw on an area of greater rateable value.

The effect of the Order, if it were to become statutory, would be to create an area of a larger rateable value; but it would also give a preponderance in representation to the more highly-rated areas concerned. The Wye Catchment Area can hardly hope for more than, say, eight of the twenty-six county and county borough representatives. There is, further, the difficulty that, with the larger area, there is no centre from which the three river boards can be conveniently administered. It is, therefore, and has been, the plea of the local authorities in the Wye Catchment Area, to be allowed to administer their affairs, which they claim—and as was shown by the inquiry—has been done ably and competently and to everybody's satisfaction.

The main reason for objection to this Order, so far as I am concerned, is that it takes away front local authorities the administration of their own local affairs, and places the administration by a majority in the hands of people who are removed, both physically and geographically, from the area which they are supposed to be administering. It wag claimed by the two Ministries concerned with the area that the larger revenues would enable more and higher-salaried officers and experts to be imported into the administration of the greater area. I take it that noble Lords on both sides of the House are agreed that the creation of more civil servants or quasi-civil servants is not a policy that anyone is likely to pursue. The reason, I suggest, that was advanced for the better administration of those areas, falls to the ground, not only for that reason but also because more officers are not necessary so far as the Wye is concerned. In moving the annulment of this Order I am asking that the administration of an area which is now competently administered by local people, who are well able to do the work and have the revenues to do so, should be left in their hands. I am asking for agreement to the general principle that local authorities and local people ought to administer their own local affairs. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That the Wye and Usk River Board Area Order 1951, made by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Minister of Local Government and Planning on the 22nd May, 1951, a copy of which was laid before the House on the 3rd July, 1951, be annulled.—(Lord Rennell.)

5.55 p.m.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I do not wish to criticise the very effective case which has been put before you by the noble Lord who has just spoken, but I think it is desirable that a few words should be said from these Benches in order to safeguard any future action that we may feel it necessary to take in regard to new Orders. The Order now under discussion undoubtedly was initiated, and probably written, before the late Government went out of office. We are now confronted with a new Government with responsibilities of its own, and we agree that if the new Government are persuaded of the rightness of the case presented, they have a perfect right to agree to the annulment in order that the circumstances may be reviewed once more.

I would, however, suggest one point in connection with the matters raised. No one in this House is pledged to a policy of centralisation. That word has now become a word of political abuse. On the other hand, I hope that no Party in this House is so pledged to decentralisation that decentralisation is carried to the point of weakness. Therefore, I plead that, if the Government feel it right to accept the Motion annulling this Order, when they have reviewed the circumstances they will keep themselves clear on the one hand from over-centralisation and, on the other, from over-decentralisation. I need not say anything further on the Order to-night, except to add that when we see the Orders which may arise from the annulment of this Order we shall reserve the right to study them with very critical eyes.

5.58 p.m.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (LORD WOOLTON)

My Lords, my right honourable friends the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Housing and Local Government have been into this question, as I have myself since the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, told me that he proposed to raise this subject. I do not wish to detain your Lordships with arguments on the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd will perhaps allow me to assure him that in reviewing this matter we have had no political motives in our minds; we have been looking at it from the point of view of practical workability and general convenience. The Order suggests a marriage, in effect, between two areas that are widely different. I am sure that the previous Government thought that it was going to be a marriage of convenience, but the number of protests against it have quite clearly shown that there is very little probability of the three bodies working harmoniously together. In those circumstances, we think it would be right to annul this Order and to promote support for fresh Orders for separate river boards for the Wye and the Usk. It may be that in time to come, when the boards know one another better, it will be possible to have some amalgamation along the lines of the present Order. In the meantime, we think that we shall get more effective action by annulling this Order and bringing subsequently before your Lordships two separate Orders. Therefore, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, I accept the Resolution that has been proposed, and we will annul the Order.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at six o'clock.