§ 3.45 p.m.
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, with the permission of the House I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend The Secretary of State for Wales about the reorganisation of local government in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire and about proposals for the reorganisation of the Health Service in Wales. The Statement is as follows:
"Following the Statement on local government reorganisation in Wales by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on October 28 last, I have reviewed the situation in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire with a view particularly to eliminating the arbitrary divisions between towns and country.
"This review included a socio-geographic study of the area by the Welsh Office, and it examined a wide range of possible patterns for re-organisation of local government in the area. I am now satisfied that the needs of this area would best be met through a system of unitary authorities. I accordingly propose that in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire local government should be reorganised on the basis of three main authorities, each responsible for all the major functions in its area, one containing Cardiff (which will, of course, remain the capital of Wales), one Newport 1017 and the third Swansea. A White Paper setting out the details is published to-day.
"I am writing to each county, borough and district council in the two counties, and to their associations, inviting them to send me their comments on the White Paper, and I shall then arrange full consultation with them.
"These proposals relate solely to the geographical counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. In the rest of Wales the previous proposal that local government should be reorganised on the basis of 4 counties and 20 districts will stand.
"I am also publishing to-day a Green Paper with proposals for the reorganisation of the Health Service in Wales. As in England, the Health Service will be administered by area health boards outside but closely associated with local government. The boundary between the Health Service and the local authority public health and personal social services will be drawn in the same way. There will be area health board coterminous with the four new counties of Clwyd, Gwynedd, Powys and Dyfed and with the three unitary areas which I now propose for the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. These are firm decisions, but the other proposals in the Green Paper are for general discussion. I shall be consulting the interested parties in Wales and I shall be associated with the consultations which my right honourable friend will be having on those proposals which will be common to England and Wales."
§ 3.49 p.m.
§ LORD BROOKE OF CUMNORMy Lords, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend Lord Aberdare I should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement. As to the National Health Service part, am I right in thinking that it is proposed that the arrangements in Wales shall be broadly idential with those in England, except that there will be no intermediate body between the area health boards and the responsible Government Department? As regards local government, I wonder whether the noble Baroness could explain why it is proposed to assimilate the local government 1018 arrangements in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire to the arrangements in England, and to leave a distinctive Welsh arrangement of local government only for North and Central Wales. It seems unnecessarily complicated, and a cruel carving-up of the unity of Wales.
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, the noble Lord is of course correct in his assumption concerning the Health Service. On his second point, I am sure he would be the first to agree with me that this particular area is much more highly urbanised, and in fact much more closely populated, and therefore must be considered in a slightly different way from the rest.
§ LORD OGMOREMy Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement, may I ask her some questions? First of all, why have the Government changed their mind with reference to local government in Wales within two years of the publication of their White Paper (Cmnd. 3340)—a White Paper which broadly was accepted in Wales as a whole? Secondly, following on what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has said, would it not be highly inconvenient in a small country like Wales to have two completely different systems, one in the area now covered by Glamorgan and Monmouth, and the other in the rest of Wales? Thirdly, will this decision which the Government have taken prevent the implementation of the proposals of the Crowther Commission on the Constitution, if those proposals should include a domestic Parliament for Wales or an elected Assembly for Wales? Lastly, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she will explain a little more fully what she means by this rather obscure reference to Cardiff? How can Cardiff remain the capital of Wales if it is itself part of a larger area and is no longer an autonomous authority?
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, I should like at once to reassure the noble Lord on his point about Crowther. We are awaiting the Crowther Report, and this Statement does not in any way affect the final outcome of the decisions taken from the Report. So far as the question of the Government having changed their mind is concerned, I am sure the noble Lord would agree that it is, after all, a dynamic and flexible policy which looks all the time at the proposals that were 1019 originally in the particular Paper to which he referred. They were, I stress, proposals, just as in fact some of the points in the Green Paper are proposals, and therefore must be always subject to investigation.
The Study which was carried out relates again really to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I am sure the noble Lord will agree that this particular area of the Principality is different in several ways (though we need not go into them to-day) from the rest of Wales, but notably it is highly urbanised and the population areas are closely linked together. The Study took into account a number of factors, not only the patterns of living but the patterns of movement, of work and of travel; and these recommendations were the result of the very close consideration by my right honourable friend of the Study's findings.
§ LORD HEYCOCKMy Lords, may I ask my noble friend a question? At the conclusion of the last debate on Welsh Affairs I posed three questions, and I will relate my remarks to two at this moment. One was whether the Maud Report, whose publication was then imminent, would have any effect on local government reorganisation in Wales. My second point was that made by the noble Lord: whether the Constitutional Commission were going to have any effect upon it. I believe, frankly, that in the Statement which has just been made the Government have gone away completely from what we understood in respect of local government reorganisation. As we are well aware, when the Royal Commission on Local Government was established (there was Wheatley for Scotland, and Maud for England) Wales got a Departmental Committee because it was then assumed that the reservoir of experience from the previous 1958 Commission would be available and that local government reform would come much more quickly in Wales. But we have completely departed from that. We are now, if I may say so, putting it very clearly, influenced by the Maud division.
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate that this is not a debate on Wales but 1020 simply questions on a Statement. I should not like in any way to pre-empt a debate on this subject, although I am quite certain that we shall have one soon in this House. I would merely say to the noble Lord that the position in Wales is not identical with that in England. If he looks at it carefully, he will see there are several quite distinct differences, and I think he is perhaps rather assuming too much.
§ LORD OGMOREMy Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she will reply to my final question, which I think she overlooked, regarding the effect of these proposals on Cardiff?
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, I did not reply to the noble Lord because I am not quite sure what effect he was suggesting these proposals would have. Cardiff will remain, as I mentioned in the Statement, the capital of Wales. Although it is to be part of the unitary authority, it will be, as it were, still pre-empting certain powers.
§ LORD OGMOREMy Lords, I am sorry that I did not make myself clear. What I meant was this. The new authority will be a large authority—presumably at least half the present Glamorgan. Will the whole of that authority be the capital of Wales, or will the bit that is now Cardiff be the capital of Wales? That is what I meant.
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, subject to correction I understand that it will be Cardiff—the City of Cardiff.
§ LORD BROOKE OF CUMNORMy Lords, is the noble Baroness aware of any other case where the elected council of the capital city of a country would have no more powers than those of a parish council?
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSMy Lords, I should not like to answer a question like that, which if I were answering in another place I would suggest was heavily loaded. I cannot give any reply. I have not had time to study other countries in their relation to their capital, or indeed their structure of central and local government. I hope the noble Lord will accept that these are proposals and that they will still be discussed at great length. Perhaps the noble Lord will return to this point when we have a debate on the subject.
§ LORD ILFORDMy Lords, is the noble Baroness able to say a little more about these three new areas created around Cardiff, Newport and Swansea? Are these to be metropolitan areas like the metropolitan areas to be formed in England, or will they be something quite different?
§ BARONESS PHILLIPSNo, my Lords; they are not to be metropolitan areas.