Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill

§ The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

It is almost exactly three years since I stood at the Dispatch Box and announced the Government's intention to move towards a system of all-purpose local authorities in Scotland. In those three years, the discussion has been lively and the interest has been great. But after three consultation papers on local government and on water and sewerage, a White Paper, a Second Reading debate, almost 180 hours of debate in the Standing Committee and a two-day Report stage, we are now on the home straight of this particular marathon. This seems the right moment at which to express a word of thanks to all those—hon. Members, local authority councillors and staff, interested organisations, the general public and Scottish Office officials—who have contributed to the Bill. It is the better for their contributions.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) for so skilfully and patiently steering the Bill through its stages in the House, ably assisted by his fellow Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) and for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro). This also seems an appropriate moment—dare I say it?—to go back to basics: back to the basic principles underpinning the reform, because the arguments that led every political party in Scotland to propose single-tier local government for Scotland during the 1992 general election are as valid today as they were then and as valid as when Lord Wheatley's commission acknowledged them. The reform is about accountability and effectiveness in local government. The present two-tier structure lacks accountability in the most dramatic way. The "crisscrossing of responsibilities", which Lord Wheatley rightly identified as a fundamental problem in any multi-tier structure of local government, is an insurmountable barrier to real accountability.

§ Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian)

Will real accountability apply to the right hon. Gentleman's three new water super-quangos?

§ Mr. Lang

I shall come to the water authorities later.

Everyone, from the Labour party to polling organisations, has found that far too many Scots are unfamiliar with what tier of local government is responsible for what service. It is little wonder that people are confused. Currently both tiers of local government are involved in a huge range of functions—conservation areas; the countryside; development control; grants to voluntary bodies; industrial and economic development; leisure and recreation; listed buildings and ancient monuments; planning; nature conservation; tourism; and urban development. In the circumstances, it is quite impossible to have a properly accountable system of local government. 213 And if councils are not properly accountable they lack authority and credibility. For too long, these problems have afflicted local government in Scotland.

§ Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland)

Under the Bill's proposals, it will be possible in some areas to have a single-tier authority dealing with some functions, a joint board involving two authorities with other functions, and a joint board involving three authorities with yet others. That being so, does the right hon. Gentleman believe that members of the public will know where responsibility lies? Will not there be even more confusion?

§ Mr. Lang

It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman is not aware of the distinction between joint boards and elected councils. People will look to the single-tier, all-purpose elected council and its members for all local services. How these are delivered—whether through joint boards, through committees or by means of other shared or customer-client arrangements—will be a matter for authorities to develop.

Under the new structure of all-purpose councils, local people will know exactly who is responsible for local services in a way that is impossible in a multi-tier structure. The absence of confusion over responsibility will put local people in a far better position to encourage councils to be responsive. It will clear the lines of accountability, and it will be a shot in the arm for local democracy in Scotland.

It will also yield for Scottish local government that other characteristic that has been denied it by the current two-tier structure—maximum effectiveness. Of course, the present regional and district councils do, by and large, discharge their functions competently, within the constraints of their structures. But they are hamstrung by being part of a two-tier system. The fact that the new councils will be responsible for all local services will ensure that those services are delivered more effectively. Bringing together, under one roof, services such as housing and social work or education and leisure and recreation will bring immense benefits to local service delivery. The positive benefits of greater co-operation between those responsible for securing services will be achieved, and the present friction between tiers of government, which is all too familiar, will disappear altogether.

§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)

How will the service of strategic planning be delivered?

§ Mr. Lang

Planning will be a matter for the single-tier local authorities, which will co-operate with one another in the case of planning on a broader scale.

If the new local authorities are more accountable and more effective than their predecessors, they will be more powerful. In any case, each new council will have more powers than either of its predecessors. As the sole elected council for its area, each will speak with undoubted authority for the communities that it represents. And because it will be able to co-ordinate local service delivery to an unprecedented degree each new council will have an enormous ability to act as a force for good in the area that it represents.

As a result of the Bill, these huge gains in local government are coming over the horizon for the people of Scotland. I am pleased that, thanks to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood and other hon. Members, as well as of local authorities and others, the boundaries of the new authorities should he so widely acceptable. From the start of this reform, we have made it clear that three 214 principles will apply to the determination of the boundaries of the new authorities. First, the new structure should not be based exclusively on either of the existing tiers of local government. Secondly, the new units need not be of uniform size but should reflect local circumstances. Thirdly, Parliament should have the final say over the boundaries of the new councils. That was the case under previous reforms, and is the case here. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary has met more than two dozen delegations from different parts of the country, led by hon. Members, and I have also met hon. Members and others. In total, the House has spent more than 22 hours debating the boundaries of the new authorities. Boundaries are a serious matter, and we have taken them seriously. Significantly, despite their at times offensive rhetoric, the Opposition divided the Committee only three times on the subject of boundaries.

The result of the work that has been done over the past three years is a structure of 32 authorities. It may not be everyone's ideal structure, but it is a structure based on consent. Every one of the new authorities enjoys the support, either of existing local authorities directly affected or local Members of Parliament, or both.

With the exception of minor boundary variations enjoying local support, the boundaries of the new authorities are those that emerged following the previous reform of local government. The overall total of 32 authorities represents the midway point between the range of options canvassed in the Government's second consultation paper. The House has sought to make far fewer changes to the scheme proposed for the present reform than the dramatic changes that it wrought on the Wheatley proposals of 20 years ago.

§ Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton)

I want to nail one canard immediately. The Secretary of State said in an article in Scotland on Sunday a couple of weeks ago that the boundaries were based on consent. He is now trying to make out that the fact that there were only a minimum number of Divisions in Committee on boundaries showed that there was popular support for the proposals. We are opposed root and branch to the redrawing of the Scottish council map on a party political basis, which is what the Government have done. However, to take up the time of the House and the Committee with hours and hours of voting on that map would not be productive. The Bill and the boundaries will die. The issues, not simply the Government's gerrymandered lines, must be brought to the attention of the Scottish public.

§ Mr. Lang

We are seeing a change of policy from the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson). He was happy to waste the time of the Committee by talking and voting on a range of other matters. The fact is that most Labour Members are content with the local boundaries for their areas—[Interruption.] Yes they are—perhaps they have not been saying to the hon. Member for Hamilton what they have been saying to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and me. If the Labour party were as opposed to the proposals as it pretends to be, it would have divided the Committee. [Interruption.]

§ Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes)

Order. There is now too much noise, to the point where I cannot hear what the Secretary of State is saying. Interventions are one thing, but repeated sedentary commentaries are another.

§ Mr. Lang

The structure that we have is sensible, balanced and durable. It is the right structure for Scottish local government for the 21st century. Of course, there are those who do not support the structure or have complaints about particular parts of it—that is inevitable in such a complex exercise. But I believe that now is the time to draw the line under the consideration of boundaries. The Government believe that the structure that we have now is the right one and are not contemplating further changes to it.

We also believe that the structure will yield continuing savings in the years ahead. We have made it clear throughout the reform that costs are only one part—admittedly an important part—of it. What matters most is obtaining the right structure of local government. It is therefore particularly pleasing that the reform will yield savings over the longer term. Of course, there will be transitional costs, but they will be a price worth paying for longer-term savings and a better, more durable structure of local government.

The structure that we have settled on will comprise 32 authorities, compared with our original proposals for 28. All four additional authorities are the result of proposals made by Opposition Members and accepted by the Government. That will, of course, have implications for the costs of reform and for the savings. We now estimate that the short-term costs will be up to £5 million less than was estimated on Report, at a ceiling of about £190 million, while the consequential long-term savings will also be a little lower, at up to £52 million a year. That is still a saving of £1 million a week, and the savings will continue in the long term.

It is on the subject of costs that the Opposition have got themselves into a terrible mess. In November, the Scottish Labour party published a briefing paper that stated that local government reorganisation would cost £200 million. Three weeks later, the hon. Member for Hamilton said that local government reform would cost at least £500 million. By March, the figure had risen to £720 million. The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) said that his own Fife council tax payers would face huge increases in their bills to pay for local government reform. He said that a band D council tar( would rise from £621 to £1,061 in Dunfermline and from £664 to £1,094 in Kircaldy—and all that despite the fact that Labour-controlled Fife region, where I understand the hon. Gentleman learned what he knows about such matters, has stated that a single-tier Fife authority will produce savings of almost £5 million per annum.

§ Mr. Dalyell

Will the Secretary of State make available to professionals such as David Chynoweth—not politicians, but the professionals who conducted the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities report—the background working and evidence on which his figures are based? Will the Scottish Office workings be made available to COSLA? Yes or no?

§ Mr. Lang

Those figures have been considered extensively in Committee. The Touche Ross report has been published, discussed and revised in the light of input from COSLA and others. The combined estimates of all the local authorities—which have shown estimated savings for their own areas—added to the Touche Ross report and 216 the fact that we are halving the total number of authorities in Scotland, underline the probability that the figures are broadly accurate.

Up and down the country, local authorities have done detailed work on how a single-tier structure will produce savings. From Highland region to Cunninghame district and from Dundee city to the Borders, local authorities have established clearly that a single-tier structure will produce savings. Of course, the final figures will depend on decisions to be taken by the new councils. But what is clear today is that the Opposition have been flying blind on the issue and indulging in plain old-fashioned scaremongering.

§ Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East)

Does the Secretary of State accept that he is making a fool of himself in trying to say that the figures of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy will not be properly challenged by the Government? The figures are being dismissed as though they have been done on the back of a cigarette packet. They have not been challenged by the Government, who have not refuted the figures in the Committee or in the House.

§ Mr. Lang

As I have said already, of course the CIPFA figures are taken into account. But the figures have been gone over in great detail. We have used outside professional consultants and published the figures. Local authorities have commissioned studies by consultants that sustain the general trend of the figures. The Opposition will not accept the figures simply because they do not suit their case.

A major part of the Bill involves the restructuring of water and sewerage services in Scotland. From the time of the first consultation paper in 1991, the Government have made no secret of the fact that they expected that the provision of water and sewerage services would best be handled by organisations separate from the new unitary authorities. The scare-a-day Labour party immediately claimed that we were hellbent on privatisation. We said that we were looking for a Scottish solution to a Scottish problem, and that we meant what we said. We considered a range of options, including privatisation, and rejected them. We settled finally on three new publicly owned water authorities. Water and sewerage services are being restructured within the public sector.

The new structure will produce two key benefits. It will make maximum use of existing resources through economies of scale and it will deliver the necessary new resources for investment on the best terms possible. The result will be lower prices for consumers of water and sewerage services than would be possible if the present structure were retained.

§ Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan)

I want to explain to the Secretary of State why we doubt his commitment not to privatise. While the Secretary of State says that he is veering away from privatising water, the President of the Board of Trade apparently wants to privatise the Royal Mail. Does the Secretary of State believe that privatisation of the Royal Mail is any more popular than the attempt to steal Scotland's water?

§ Mr. Lang

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me away from the subject of the Bill. I shall resist the temptation to respond as I should be rapidly called to order if I tried to do so.

217 The new structure will also have within it a clear focus of accountability in the shape of the new customer councils. For the first time, consumers of water and sewerage services in Scotland will have a powerful watchdog working on their behalf, with the sole objective of ensuring that the new water and sewerage authorities are as consumer friendly as possible.

It has taken us three years to arrive at the new structure for water and sewerage services in Scotland. It will be several years before the new authorities are fully up and running. They are the Government's solution to the problem; they are a long-term, durable solution and I hope that in future councillors will play their part in helping to secure the efficient delivery of water and sewerage services by serving on the new authorities and the watchdog consumer councils.

The Bill has posed all sorts of difficulties—for the Labour party, of course. After all, the Opposition were in the vanguard of the calls for local government reform in Scotland—not that the hon. Member for Hamilton was aware of that when he embarked on his misplaced campaign of opposition to the Bill.

The hon. Gentleman and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State addressed the same annual conference of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities in March. My right hon. and learned Friend reminded the conference of the Labour party's commitment to single-tier local authorities; and to a radical vision of local government in Scotland spelt out in its policy document on the subject. He reminded the conference of Labour's vision of much additional service development in the future taking place through partnership or contractual arrangements with other agencies. Local authorities should be able to develop their enabling role, Labour claimed, frequently acting as the commissioning agency rather than the direct provider of services. That and other commendable statements included in my right hon. and learned Friend's speech so confused the hon. Member for Hamilton that he set off on a desperate search to find the policy document in question, but his search was in vain.

In desperation, he wrote to the Minister of State four weeks after the original speech to ask for the precise source of the quotations that he had used. Happily, to enable the hon. Gentleman to obtain a copy of the document, my right hon. and learned Friend suggested that he write to Mr. Jack McConnell at the Scottish Labour party, Keir Hardie house, 1 Lynedococh place, Glasgow: telephone number 041 332 8946; fax 041 331 2566. In case he has not had the time to so, I have a copy here which I shall willingly lend to the hon. Gentleman after the debate.

Of course the hon. Member for Hamilton must be surprised that the Bill has got this far. After all, he took personal charge of the campaign to persuade Conservative Members to vote down the Government's proposals. It was a complete and total failure.

If we are to believe the hon. Gentleman, the House's consideration of the Bill has been an uninterrupted succession of parliamentary triumphs for the Opposition. In the Municipal Journal of 29 April, he listed 13 concessions supposedly wrung from the Government by the Opposition—it might seem impressive, but on closer inspection the 13 so-called concessions are not what quite what they are said to be. Let me list some of them.

First, 218 denominational school catchment areas to be protected by the Secretary of State's veto — they always were; nothing has changed.

Secondly, Scottish police boards to be made up solely of local councillors — they always were; nothing has changed.

Thirdly, names of present fire brigades to be retained — that is a devastating one, but it involved no change to the Bill. Perhaps it explains the headline in The Herald of 1 November:

Labour to set fire burning under Tory MPs". Fourthly, Cash from property disposal to go to new councils and not to the Treasury — it always did; nothing has changed.

Concessions five and six: Water disconnection ban in Scotland to be specifically in statute for the first time and, Water disconnections to be outlawed". In other words, two of the so-called concessions claimed by the hon. Gentleman are one and the same and were simply a statement of unchanged Government policy. Nothing has changed.

As Marlowe might have put it:

Is it not passing grave to be a King, And ride in triumph through Persepolis? It has been quite an odyssey since that June day three years ago when we first published proposals for single-tier local government in Scotland. It was to be the reform that never was. First, it was to be the reform that was Treasury driven; then it was the reform that the Treasury would veto. It was to be the reform that would be destroyed by rebel English MPs—the reform would be wrecked in Parliament. Here we are on Third reading, however, our plans firmly on time and on track. The reason why they are on track is that the arguments in favour of all-purpose authorities are compelling. The strength of the arguments was recognised by the Wheatley commission, by the Stodart committee and even by the Labour party.

The case for single-tier local government was made before the last restructuring and has continued to be made since. The case for single-tier councils has proved so persistent and persuasive throughout the past two decades that reform has been inevitable. If there was a strong case for all-purpose authorities before—when, as one commentator put it—the dominance of municipal provision was unquestioned", there is an overwhelming case now that local government has changed.

Now the emphasis is on the strategic role of local authorities rather than on the role of providing services directly at their own hand. As the Labour party's own policy document urges and as the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) once put it,

To achieve the best and not just the basic public services, we must modernise and transform our social and economic fabric by creating new partnerships between public and private sectors. This reform of local government is far reaching.

§ Mr. Dalyell

Will the Secretary of State give way?

§ Mr. Lang

No. I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman.

The reform is designed to make sure that our councils reflect the 21st century and not the 1960s. It is based on the simple but compelling premise that one local authority in 219 each area should be responsible for all local services. It is designed to restore diversity to the structure of local government and to restore vibrancy to our local councils.

Under this reform, each local community in Scotland will be represented by a single strong council. Councils will be in harmony with their communities, not out of tune. There will be city councils for our cities and rural councils for rural areas—a new, stronger local democracy. That is what the people of Scotland want and in just 677 days from now, that is what they will have.

§ Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton)

I shall first refer to the regrettable and perfectly understandable absence of Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), whose wife died this weekend. On behalf of all my colleagues, I express the deepest sympathy for the hon. Gentleman in his bereavement.

Let me make one first and obvious comment as we start the Third Reading debate. The Bill is not a reform. On the contrary, it represents a partisan dismembering of Scottish local government structures which have lasted, endured and served Scotland well for the past 20 years. It is not a rationalisation of the two tiers of local government for more efficient, effective local councils. Instead, it is a brutally cynical exercise, creating small, unviable councils leading, as night follows day, to the bulk of the decisions being taken by anonymous joint boards dominated by the fiat of the Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Bill is not a means of saving public money by eliminating one level of local government. Instead, it is a messy, ill-thought-out, divisive and politically corrupt exercise which will be enormously expensive and which will deliver no savings to the taxpayer. It is not a reorganisation of Scotland's local democratic structures, which, if it had taken place in the right circumstances, might have enhanced the delivery of services and revitalised decision-making at a local level. Instead, it is a weaselly redrawing of the map of Scottish local government to the perceived advantage of the Tory party in future local and parliamentary elections.

It is not a measure based on any independent study or on principles of what is good for Scotland. It is not based on consensus or review or genuine consultation. Instead, and sadly for Scotland, as for democracy itself and for the vitality and effectiveness of local government, it is rooted in chicanery built on malice, long-term Tory electoral failure in Scotland and constructed on a bed of obsessive centralisation. For all those reasons, it is doomed and it deserves to be doomed.

Yesterday, in a bizarre theatrical event held at the Scottish exhibition centre in Glasgow, the Secretary of State launched the Tory Euro-campaign, complete with an audience that applauded the Secretary of State's every word. The Secretary of State implies that people just turned up—they just happened to the passing the SEC on a sunny Monday morning at 9.30, wandered in to hear an amazingly revitalising discussion and applauded every word from the Secretary of State for Scotland. That was quite an achievement, given the number of supporters that the Secretary of State still has in Scotland.

220 I was interested in one of the things that the Secretary of State said, which undoubtedly got applause from the hand-picked audience: There has been a clear indication that the people of Scotland, like the people of the rest of Britain, are too worried about the centralisation process of Europe, about Europe playing too dominant a part in our lives. It would appear that the Secretary of State for Scotland, that born-again Euro-sceptic, is too worried about the centralisation process in Europe. The Bill centralises, in his own hands and those of the faceless joint boards and quangos, practically every service that is delivered by local government: education, social work, transport, police, fire, trading standards, regional chemists, regional analysts—even children's hearings reporters—and, most importantly, in three super-quangos directly responsible to him, Scotland's water. What worries and concerns the people of Scotland is not the ghouls and ghosties that the Secretary of State dreams about in Brussels, and which he proclaims in the empty halls of the Scottish exhibition centre in Glasgow, but his Edinburgh centralisation.

Consideration of the Bill in the House of Commons is coming to an end, but it still has quite a long way to go before the Secretary of State's new model of emasculated, gerrymandered local government is in place in Scotland. The Government have lost the argument at every single stage. There is no more convincing, unavoidable evidence of that than the miserable 13.7 per cent. of the Scottish vote that the Conservative party got in the regional elections only three weeks ago. Who would have thought, a generation ago, when the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party had a majority of the Scottish electorate, that the Conservative party could sink so low as to come barely above the election campaign record of Screaming Lord Sutch? Fewer than 14 Scottish people in every 100 now support the party that pretends to have the power and control over Scotland today.

The Government still have the trappings of power in Scotland—the cars, civil servants, glossy pamphlets, big launches and big offices and buildings—but with 86.3 per cent. of the people of Scotland against them, Ministers are left with all the vain credibility of the old eastern European apparatchiks. That is what they are. They are in office, but they have no authority. They strut around the stage of Scottish politics, but the emperor has no clothes. They still have the power, and they draw more and more of it to the centre and into their own hands as they chip away at local democracy, but, without public consent and support, they are corrupting that power, and the wise and intelligent people of Scotland will never forgive them for that.

Of course, the Bill has not escaped undamaged. The Government were forced to abandon their clear, undoubted intention immediately and fully to privatise water in Scotland on the English model.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart)

indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Robertson

There is no doubt that that was the Government's intention, and some hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), who, with theatrical affectation, shook his head at that point, wanted that. They are ideologically committed to it, but they were forced by the pressure of public opinion to back away from that.

§ Mr. Stewart

Prove it.

§ Mr. Robertson

The hon. Member for Eastwood, heckling from a sedentary position, says, "Prove it." Last week, I pointed to the fact that a mere handful of lines are used in the Government's consultative document to describe the option that they eventually chose, but 250 lines are devoted to describing the privatisation option and its attraction. That, combined with what they did in England and Wales, and what the Prime Minister blew the gaff on at the Dispatch Box, is as good a proof as the people of Scotland need. If the hon. Gentleman wants to question that, I refer him to the statistic that should haunt him and every other Conservative Member—13.7 per cent. of the people of Scotland support them and 86 per cent. are against them.

§ Mr. Bill Walker (Tayside, North)

The hon. Gentleman was in Committee and will be aware of my views on privatisation. I am bitterly disappointed, because I happen to believe my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench when they tell me that they are not going to privatise. I personally want privatisation.

§ Mr. Robertson

At least the hon. Gentleman is honest in declaring his objective. Would that other people had the same honesty in declaring their private ambitions before the force of public opinion in Scotland turned them away from what we know was their intention.

§ Mr. Phil Gallie (Ayr)

Surely this is old hat. Surely we have heard it all before in Committee. Is it not the case that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State went out to consultation, the people of Scotland came back and suggested that they did not want privatisation, and to his credit my right hon. Friend listened and acted?

§ Mr. Robertson

If the Government were capable of listening to the people in the way in which the hon. Gentleman would have us believe, they would listen to the people of Scotland who say that they do not want the Bill and would take it away and rethink it, or better still abandon it completely.

§ Mr. Raymond S. Robertson (Aberdeen, South)

The hon. Gentleman has counted the lines in the consultation document on water and drawn a conclusion. In the Labour party manifesto of- 1992, there were 15 lines on law and order. Am I therefore entitled to draw the same conclusion about the Labour party's commitment to law and order?

§ Mr. Robertson

The hon. Gentleman is vice-chairman of the Conservative and Unionist party in Scotland—a position that he has held for precisely the period that it has taken the support for the Conservative party to go down from 30 per cent. to 13 per cent. Having burnt his fingers in that spectacular way, he might at least have thought up some better lines than that. The comparison is between the 15 and the 200-odd lines, but the evidence is not in what I say. It is not based on what the hon. Gentleman would have us believe. It is in the figure of 86 per cent. of the Scottish people who voted against the Conservatives three weeks ago in the regional elections. That is the proof. They simply do not believe the Conservative party, and they have every right not to.

In Committee, the Government were obliged—originally, they did not want to, and said that they did not have to and that it was superfluous—to put the illegality of water disconnections in Scotland on the face of the Bill. When that matter was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for 222 Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish), the hon. Member for Dumfries said that it was absolutely unnecessary and that there was no need to put it in the Bill, because it was in the Water (Scotland) Act 1980.

The reality is that the Government came back and put it in, because they needed to, in one further vain attempt to persuade the people of Scotland that their ambition, which they still harbour, was not to be realised immediately. They were forced to endure the record-breaking Committee, from which the Secretary of State for Scotland had scuttled away at the beginning, right up to the humiliation of the regional elections. That is one of the things that I said on Second Reading. The regional elections would provide a forum, a referendum, on the Government's proposals. If the Government are interested in the views of the Scottish people, let them learn the lesson of the elections. In Committee, they had to abandon the wildest gerrymandering proposals in the Bill—the amputation of Berwickshire from the Borders and the ludicrous Balerno corridor that they proposed between the Lothians—and, of course, their timetable for the unwanted reorganisation is now a complete shambles.

The Bill simply cannot receive its Royal Assent until October or November of this year, which will leave only six months until the proposed shadow elections in April of next year. Of course, Ministers can ignore wholesale public hostility to the Bill and reorganisation. They can—they are daft enough, suicidal enough and idiotic enough—simply fly in the face of the electoral humiliation that they have just experienced and press on regardless.

The Government can, if they want, use the draconian power conferred on the Secretary of State in schedule 2 —one of the many draconian powers contained in the Bill —to draw in secret, on the back of some used Tory party leaflets, the new ward boundaries on which the elections are likely to be fought. They can bring those proposals to the House of Commons for a one-and-a-half hour debate, although I promise that they will be given a rough ride if they try such tactics. They can do all that because they have the technical powers, even if they do not have the consent of the people of Scotland.

If the Government are unwise and suicidal enough to do those things, however, they will deliver this reorganisation only at the expense of devastation of vital services for the most vulnerable people, and at huge cost in the disruption and uncertainty caused to business and commerce across Scotland.

Yesterday, at a press conference, I sat beside the chairman of Glasgow chamber of commerce. In measured tones, he told the assembled press, "Glasgow chamber of commerce is still not persuaded that this reorganisation is necessary." Ministers should take careful note of that declaration: it was made in public by someone who is intimately connected with business in the west of Scotland and who represents the largest group of business people in that area.

There will be disruption to special needs education, community care, transport and strategic planning. All that disruption is predictable: people with no political partisan interest have drawn it to the attention of the House. The timetable for the reorganisation is in ruins, not because of a lack of co-operation on the part of Scottish councils but as a result of the incompetence, slipperiness and arrogance of Scottish Office Ministers.

223 In The Guardian on 7 May, Mr. Martin Kettle—a distinguished journalist and an outsider viewing the Bill perhaps for the first time—had this to say: the carving up of Scotland's local councils in the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Bill is one of the most disgraceful pieces of one-party political arrogance in modern times. He was spot on. We have spread the same message throughout Scotland, and the pitiful 13.7 per cent. of votes obtained by the party of government shows that we have succeeded in getting it through to the people.

The Bill, like the reorganisation that it promises—indeed, threatens—is flawed at its very heart. The atomisation of Scotland's local government set-up into a patchwork of some large, very many tiny, all-purpose and in many instances unviable councils will be an extremely expensive, hugely unpopular and unsuccessful folly. If they notice it at all, the history books will call it Lang's folly. Perhaps it will be the Secretary of State's farewell shot as he takes off to lead the English Conservative party, as he is widely tipped to do. If he can do for it what he has done to the Tory party in Scotland, he will do a great service to the British people.

Three hundred thousand employees of Scotland's councils are about to be thrown into an unemployment limbo, with only European law—the acquired rights directive—to help them. As that European legislation helps them, it will also make a mockery of the Government's figure for savings, which seems to derive entirely from the idea of sacking people from their jobs in local government. Today, the House has yet again been faced with brand-new figures—brand-new revisions of the previous totals, which we were told represented the actual savings and costs of local government. We are never given the background information and calculations and the Secretary of State repeatedly refuses to give detailed answers to the detailed points in letters sent to him.

The services expertly delivered by people in local government will be thrown into the turmoil of a transition so ill-thought-out and lacking in popular support that every facet of Scottish life will be affected and damaged. It will be remembered that it was this Conservative Government who, in Scotland, invented and pursued the poll tax. Sensible people thought that the Government might have learnt from that profligate fiasco, but, as the Bill shows, they seem to learn very little from such expensive disasters.

The Bill deserves only one fate: to be abandoned now. Privately—secretly—Ministers and Back Benchers would love to do that. It has no future; it will be swept away with the Labour victory that the local election results show to be inevitable now. If it is remembered at all, it will be remembered for one thing only—as one more spectacular stupidity that contributed to the demise of the Scottish Conservative party. In that one respect, it will have made its contribution to the good of Scotland. I urge my colleagues to vote against it.

§ Mr. Dalyell

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have given you and the Clerk notice of this point.

I hope that I do not have a vindictive record in the House, but I feel that a matter of principle is involved in deciding whether those who are not fully fledged civil 224 servants—however considerable and malign their influence on the Bill may be—should sit in the Box. Will you raise with Madam Speaker the question of those who are not fully fledged civil servants in the Scottish Office sitting in the Box?

§ Madam Deputy Speaker

I am not aware that the occupant of the Chair has ever recognised the existence of those who occupy what is usually called the Officials' Box. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me warning of his point of order; I shall certainly ensure that the matter is taken up with Madam Speaker, but I know from what he has said that he does not expect me to take it further at this stage.

§ Mr. Raymond S. Robertson (Aberdeen, South)

I shall be brief, as I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.

The day after the publication of the White Paper that started this whole process, The Press and Journal carried the banner headline "Aberdeen achieves goal". Following the conclusion of the Bill's Commons stages tonight, that goal will take an important step nearer to reality.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State observed, as the Bill nears the end of its stages it is appropriate for us to look back. I think we can safely say that we have enjoyed—if that is the right word—an Opposition Supply day, a Grand Committee debate in Edinburgh, a debate on the Gracious Speech, a Second Reading debate and marathon Committee and Report stages before arriving at Third Reading. During all those hours of debate, Conservative Members have become used to hearing Opposition Members quote the words of various councillors and officials in an attempt to gain votes against my right hon. Friend's proposals from different parts of Scotland.

In Committee—thanks to the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes)—we all became experts on what virtually all his constituents were thinking, and got to know them all virtually by name. We became very used to hearing from the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) about the various letters and phone calls that he had received from all over Scotland. Throughout his tour of the disgruntled of Scotland, however, we never arrived at Aberdeen. That town was never prayed in aid by Opposition Members as they searched for one-liners to quote, looked for scare stories to run and predicted doom, gloom, rebellion and chaos. It must irk the hon. Members for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) that their colleagues in Aberdeen never once gave them a sound bite during all those hours of debate.

Why is that? Could it possibly be because every political group in Abderdeen district council, on the day of the White Paper's publication, fell over itself to support a single-tier Aberdeen? Could it possibly be because the Labour group, responding to the White Paper last year, said: In short, local government in Aberdeen could be improved by re-establishing the City as a unitary authority. The Council argues that this would promote a more efficient, acountable, economical and responsive local administration and service delivery"? Before Opposition Members shout "All under a Scottish Assembly", I shall tell them that, in the council's entire response, the words "Scottish Assembly" do not appear at all.

225 Or could it possibly be that the Labour party in Aberdeen took to heart an editorial in The Press and Journal on 19 August last year? It said: The clearest signal to the electorate today that Aberdeen Labour councillors have at least some regard for the welfare of their city would be a vote backing single-tierdom that they have sought for so long. Or would that require backbone, commonsense and independence of spirit that seem in desperately short supply in Labour local-government cliques?

§ Mr. Wallace

I seem to recall that, on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) was very much against the inclusion of Westhill in Aberdeenshire as opposed to Aberdeen. Is he now satisfied with the Aberdeen single-tier authority as presently constituted?

§ Mr. Robertson

I am absolutely in favour of it: I voted for it in Committee. Or could it possibly be that everyone who cares about local democracy in Aberdeen all agreed with Labour's councillor, Jean McFadden, when she identified that the real threat to local government in Scotland would come in the form of a Scottish Assembly? Writing in the Glasgow Herald, she said: I think we have to be very much on our guard here. There may well be a tendency for the Scottish parliament to suck up power from below. From whatever angle it is approached, the message from Aberdeen is clear. The people of Aberdeen, the politicians in Aberdeen and the business community in Aberdeen all want the Bill.

It is an appropriate time to say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to other of my hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench that the challenge for us on this side of the House over the summer, into the autumn and on to the shadow authority elections is to ensure that, elsewhere in Scotland, the reforms and the plans are as clearly understood by the people of Scotland as they are in the granite city, because the message from Aberdeen—[Interruption.] The message from Aberdeen is that, when the proposals are understood, when the scares give way to facts, the people respond and they are enthusiastic.

§ Mr. Connarty

Moving on from the boundaries, will the hon. Gentleman cite one example of a councillor in the city of Aberdeen, Labour or otherwise, who supports the proposals for water, for the police or for any of the other services?

§ Mr. Robertson

In supporting the concept and supporting the plans that my right hon. Friend is clearly setting out, of course they support the plans in their entirety. They have not selected one aspect of the plan—as the hon. Gentleman has implied—and said that they support one thing but not anything else. They accept a single-tier Aberdeen as the best way to provide services for the people of Aberdeen and all that that entails.

The hon. Member for Hamilton has made much of the local election results on 5 May. Indeed, many Opposition Members have done that. Again, interestingly, they have not mentioned the results in Aberdeen. Perhaps that is because in my constituency all Conservative regional councillors in the city—John Porter, Jack Dempsey, Joy Gordon and Tom Mason—campaigned hard for a single-tier local authority. They all put that at the centre of their appeal,and all won. Their election address made that very clear. They were all handsomely returned and, indeed, in one of the divisions in which the hon. Member for 226 Hamilton came to Aberdeen on a bank holiday and campaigned hard, we increased our vote and our majority. So I say to my hon. Friends, "Come the general election, invite the hon. Gentleman along: he will do wonders for your vote."

I am not for a moment belittling or criticising the many fine Conservative councillors who lost on 5 May, or the many outstanding candidates who never made it. However, I am told constantly by Opposition Members to listen to the people and to learn a lesson from 5 May. The lesson that I take from my constituency is one from which my party and the whole of Scotland can learn: from now to the shadow authority elections in April, we must challenge head-on every scare, every misrepresentation, every half-truth and every untruth. In doing so, we shall have nothing to fear.

§ Mr. Robert Hughes (Aberdeen, North)

The hon. Gentleman will find it difficult to challenge them because he spends all his time making them up himself.

§ Mr. Robertson

One of Scotland's national newspapers said today that the debate marked the end. How wrong it is. The debate marks only the beginning of the end of round one. In round two, the debate will move away from this place, as we on this side take to the Scottish people my right hon. Friend's vision for local government in Scotland. It is a new era in the affairs of local government —strong, accountable, powerful unitary authorities—yet, at the same time, councils, by their very nature, will be sensitive to local needs and responsive to local requirements.

In the run-up to April, we shall take every opportunity to remind our fellow Scots that that is in stark contrast to what is on offer from each of the Opposition parties. They offer an assembly in Edinburgh which would plunder the powers of local councils and take them to Edinburgh, thus denuding councils and town halls up and down Scotland of their rights and responsibilities and centralising them on Calton Hill. They offer to take decision-making away from the people rather than empowering the people through one councillor and one council.

That is the choice facing the Scottish people in April. For us, the shadow authority elections start the day after the European campaign ends. We shall campaign hard for the measures in the Bill, for the councils that it will create and for the new partnership in local government that will result. I have no doubt that, when we do that and take our message to the Scottish people, they, in turn, will respond.

§ Mr. Norman Hogg (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) will forgive me if I do not follow what he said about Aberdeen. I can only say as an Aberdonian that it is certainly not my conclusion that the people of Aberdeen are flocking in great numbers to support the Conservative party. If they are doing that, as recently as three weeks ago there was precious little evidence of it. There is precious little evidence, too, that there is any support for the Bill in Scotland. It has been universally condemned. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which the Secretary of State did not seem to like recognising, was opposed to the Bill. Individual local authorities were 227 opposed to it. Individual councillors, irrespective of their party, were opposed to it. But, most important, the people of Scotland were opposed to it.

The Secretary of State said that he was going "back to basics" and he said that there were three basic principles on which the reform—he calls it reform—or the reorganisation was founded. He went on to tell us what those three principles were and it seemed that they were mechanisms only, designed to be convenient for the Conservative party and not for any other purpose. I shall give him three principles on which any reform ought to have been founded: first, to provide the best arrangements for representing the people and the communities, which they, not the Government, recognise; secondly, to provide the best arrangements for democratic control over the local bureaucracy; and, thirdly, to provide the best arrangements for cost-effective and efficient delivery of services.

None of those principles is contained in the Bill, which, in fact, is a most unprincipled measure, reflecting an unprincipled Government who have devised and drafted it. What principle drove the Government to drafting the Bill? There is no principle at all. It was designed to facilitate a Conservative party that has all but passed out of Scottish political and public life.

Of course, as they see it, there is a need for success, somewhere, anywhere, by creating unrepresentative councils out of places which often have nothing in common. All hon. Members would be able to tell the House of some eccentricity or madness in their area that has been dreamt up by the demented hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart). It is his fault that we have such a situation on our hands. It is his fault that it is happening. He is kowtowing to the chairman of the Conservative party in Scotland, Michael Hirst. [HON. MEMBERS: "Sir Michael Hirst".] Yes, Sir Michael Hirst. In fact, I am quite sure that it would be a good idea if the council at East Dunbartonshire was renamed Hirst. That would be an appropriate name. Sir Michael, unelectable and unelected, has determined what should happen in the reorganisation. Some of us find such an apparatchik an unacceptable influence, but altogether consistent with what is going on nowadays in the Conservative party in Scotland.

§ Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross)

The last time the extraordinary exercise of local government reorganisation was undertaken, Fife regional council did not add one hen or chicken to its population or alter its responsibilities in any way. It nevertheless increased the membership of its police from 16,000 to 18,000 and that of all other services by three. A socialist organisation did that: will it do the same this time?

§ Mr. Hogg

I agree that Fife regional council, like most in Scotland, is a socialist council.

There is further evidence of gerrymandering in my area. There is no consent for the measure among the political parties—including the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Tory party and even Cumbernauld and Kilsyth Scottish National party—in so far as it has a view on anything—and certainly no consent among the ordinary people who have petitioned the Government, written letters, signed postcards of protest and voted against Tory candidates in local elections. However, it all adds up to nothing because this authoritarian Government are determined to push through 228 this measure. We have arrived at a new slogan for the Tory party. Nowadays, it is "Whitehall, not town hall", which is the very opposite of what Tories said once upon a time.

Cumbernauld and Kilsyth has historical and administrative links with East Dunbartonshire with which it should be linked. However, that did not serve the ends of Sir Michael Hirst or those of the Tory party which is trying to create particular conditions for Bearsden and Strathkelvin. It is a serious charge—

§ Mr. Gallie

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. In view of his comments, and given his support for the notion of single tier authorities included in Labour's manifesto at the previous election, and given what I understand to be his "anti-feelings" for a Scottish Assembly, would he have been happy with the changes had he got his way over the boundaries that he wants for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth? If so, it is a pity that such an argument was not advanced in Committee.

§ Mr. Hogg

The answer is that I hope that I can always see the bigger picture. I hope that I come to the House with a view on Scottish local government as a whole and am not driven by parochial considerations of the type that apparently motivate the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie). Even if the Minister agreed with what I wanted in respect of Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, I would still be immensely unhappy with the Bill and would vote against it for the reasons already set out by my party's Front-Bench spokesmen on Second Reading, in Committee and again today. I hope that that clarifies the position for the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. George Kynoch (Kincardine and Deeside)

The hon. Gentleman has made some pretty strong accusations about how the boundaries were created. Unless I missed something in Committee, I did not hear the Labour party offer any proposals on boundaries, with the exception, I think, of Ayrshire.

§ Mr. Hogg

In fact, the Opposition tabled amendments affecting Cumbernauld and Kilsyth and East Dunbartonshire and they were consistent with the view that I am advancing now. The hon. Gentleman is therefore wrong.

It has become clear that the Government have tried to arrange things in my area in the hope that another part of Scotland will ultimately return a Conservative Member of Parliament and a Conservative-controlled local authority. There is no prospect of either likelihood being realised.

If there were a case for local government reform, the Bill has certainly not met it. A body such as a royal commission should have been charged with reviewing existing arrangements; there should have been full public consultation; the Government should have sought a consensus on any proposals for change; and, above all, any proposals should have had the confidence of the Scottish people. The Bill fulfils none of those criteria.

To use an old phrase, this is a wicked Tory Government. They are far removed from the principles on which the Tory party once thrived. This is not a matter of conviction politics; it is a product not of conviction politics but of expediency. There is no concept of one nation, just autocratic diktat. There is no belief in the people or the judgment of the people. The Government simply believe that they know what is best for us, that they are our betters, and that they can tell us how to behave and think.

229 The Scottish Office has no respect for the people or great institutions of local government in Scotland. The people have sensed that the Government have no respect for them, which is why the people have no respect for the Government and why 13.7 per cent. Tory support in recent elections stands as a condemnation of the Secretary of State and his Front-Bench team who have so clearly failed to take account of the view of the Scottish people.

This is a squalid Bill. It is the most squalid measure that I have encountered in my 15 years in the House. I am ashamed that it will be passed. The fact that it has been brought before us does not increase the respect in which Parliament is held. The people of Scotland will have none of it and they will have nothing to do with the Conservative Government. The Conservatives will be swept away in whatever elections they put up candidates.

§ Mr. George Kynoch (Kincardine and Deeside)

I listened to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with great interest and watched the reaction of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish). When my right hon. Friend referred to the confusion between the tiers of local government—confusion that I have encountered in my constituency—the hon. Member for Fife, Central shook his head and did not appear to accept that such confusion existed. I can only quote from a document published in February 1990 which stated: The continuing widespread confusion about what tier carries out what functions undermines accountability. That document, entitled "The Future of Local Government in Scotland", was the Labour party's pre-election policy document. It has been universally accepted that there is confusion between the two existing tiers and, as was mentioned on Second Reading, all the Opposition parties have at some stage advocated single-tier unitary authorities.

I also listened with interest to the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), but I heard nothing new. Since I have been a Member of Parliament, and since the consultation documents were published, the hon. Gentleman has done nothing but scaremonger. He has spread scare stories about the setting up of a most cost-effective and efficient tier of local government, and about water and sewerage.

As the hon. Member for Hamilton repeated something that he said on Report, I shall repeat something that I said. I heard him say on the BBC "Scottish Lobby" programme that the issue of water privatisation was a dead duck and that the Government had made it virtually impossible for Scottish water to be privatised because of the insertion of clause 79, which enforces current legislation preventing water supplies from being disconnected.

The hon. Member for Hamilton clearly said that; have it on videotape, and if he cares to ask to see it I shall be more than happy to arrange for it to be played back to him again and again. He does the people of Scotland a grave disservice by continuing to peddle such scaremongering to people who are less able than he to argue the point, and who have been told clearly many times by the Secretary of State and his Ministers that Scottish Water will not be privatised. However, we need to do something about it; we need to make it a better organisation, and to take it forward in order to find the £5 billion in capital expenditure that will be needed over the next 10 to 15 years, and to cope with the new structure of local government.

230 I talked about confusion. One of the main areas of confusion—

§ Mr. Salmond

The hon. Gentleman will have heard his colleague from the north-east, the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), express satisfaction with the Conservative party's results in the local elections. I found that confusing, so I checked in the edition of The Herald dated Saturday 7 May, which gives the local results by parliamentary constituency. It turns out that the Tory party is 8 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, South, 30 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, North, 26 per cent. behind in Aberdeen, Central, 47 per cent. behind in Banff and Buchan, 17 per cent. behind in Gordon, 30 per cent. behind in Moray and 16 per cent. behind in what would be the constituency of the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch)—Deeside and Howes. Is the hon. Gentleman as satisfied as his hon. Friend is with those results?

§ Mr. Kynoch

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about the local election results, but what he does not take into account is the role of independents—[Laughter.] In my constituency the issues were significantly clouded—[Interruption.] However, I shall not embark on that argument, because I know that the hon. Gentleman is engaged in a battle with his Opposition colleagues in the Labour party over what the result of the Euro-election in the north-east of Scotland will be. However, I can tell him that his figures are totally wrong; if he considers the general election results he will realise that the Conservatives will win with a majority of 20,000.

Before I am ordered to do so, I shall now return to the Bill. I was talking about confusion between the two tiers of local government, especially on planning. In my constituency, the picture for long-term and strategic planning is at present one of great confusion. There is talk in Grampian of a proposed new settlement. Kincardine and Deeside had already thrown out the idea at district level, but Grampian region initially decided to approve a new settlement in my constituency. Confusion existed while the proposal ping-ponged backwards and forwards between the region and the district. Finally, it was thrown out by the previous administration in the region, much to the annoyance of the Labour convenor.

The issue will not go away. While we have a district council and a regional council that can take totally opposing views there will be total confusion, and that does not serve the best interests of the local community, nor the future of the area.

As the Secretary of State said, we have had a long period of debate on the local government reform. I had forgotten that it was as many as three years ago that my right hon. Friend introduced his first consultation document. I remember that in the run-up to the general election a major part of my campaign was the fact that we regarded the reform as a key piece of legislation for the future, so that we could get rid of the two tiers and consolidate them into one, so that local government would be better and more effective.

Throughout the consultation period, my right hon. Friend has listened effectively. I especially commend him and his Ministers for the amount of listening that they did in Committee. My right hon. Friend knows that some of us were concerned about various issues, whether those were minor details concerning boundaries or the need to look 231 after the interests of the rural communities with regard to water services. On all those issues my right hon. Friend has listened and has moved. He commended his ministerial team; may I add to that my commendation of the long-suffering Whip, the Lords Commissioner to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope).

Having sat through 177½ hours of debate in Committee, listening to debates such as the one about the word "reasonably", which lasted three hours, at one time I questioned whether the Opposition were opposing or simply trying to obstruct. However, I know that they were in order because the Chairman kept them in order. I take my hat off to, and commend, both the management and the chairmanship of the Committee. Because the Committee stage was allowed to run for its full 177½ hours, the Opposition were left with no excuse for saying that their concerns and worries had not been fully aired.

Yet the Opposition continue to peddle their lies about water—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] They continue to peddle their distortions about water. They are still arguing that the Government are intent on doing something that the Government do not intend to do. Typical of their behaviour throughout has been the fact that they cannot oppose in a constructive manner. I have not heard them make constructive proposals on any issue.

Throughout our proceedings, the Opposition seemed intent on arguing the case for looking after local government employees' jobs. I commend them for that, because in any reorganisation, whether in business or in local government, one must ensure that the transition from one structure to another is made in an orderly fashion so as to safeguard the rights and the best interests of employees. Unfortunately, change is sometimes necessary. To obstruct on the sole basis that jobs will be lost is totally unconstructive in terms of looking after the interests of the people whom we are here to represent—the people of Scotland, the ratepayers and the taxpayers of Scotland.

§ Mr. Connarty

Is the hon. Gentleman really trying to sell to this House a package saying that all the people who wrote in and whom the Opposition represented—all the lobbying organisations such as Enable and Relate, and all the people who wrote in about special education, about the destruction of children's panels, and about many other issues—were trying to be obstructive? Will he not give credit where credit is due? A case was put for many people in Scotland who do not want the Bill, yet the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends ignored them.

§ Mr. Kynoch

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I recognise that the Opposition put forward cases on behalf of organisations such as Enable, on behalf of children, on behalf of children's panels, and so on. However, the Opposition have not accepted that within the Bill as drafted my right hon. Friend and his Ministers have allowed the flexibility for the new councils to provide the services in the best possible way for their constituents.

The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) does not accept that what may be a good structure in the central belt is not necessarily the best structure in the north-east of Scotland. I commend my right hon. Friend's proposal for the north-east, which is now clear in the Bill. The Bill will 232 give us a single-tier authority big enough to provide the services in the area, and big enough to command the highly qualified staff that will be required to deliver those services, but one which will, at the same time, be able to decentralise to provide local services.

§ Mr. Jimmy Wray (Glasgow, Provan)

Will the hon. Gentleman retract his statement that the Opposition lied? We have made it clear that where water is concerned there are no ifs, no buts and no whats. We do not want privatisation; we do not want franchising; we do not want quangos.

§ Mr. Kynoch

What I said about the Opposition's attitude to water relates clearly to the fact that the Secretary of State has said many times—as have the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State for Scotland, my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart) in Committee—that water privatisation is not on the agenda. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastwood said that Scottish Water would not be privatised by the front door, by the back door or by any other door. That fact has been stated on innumerable occasions, yet the Opposition still distort it, and the people of Scotland do not know what to believe.

I argued strongly—and the hon. Member for Hamilton has accepted the argument—that the provisions in clause 79 concerning disconnections have made it virtually impossible to privatise Scottish Water. The prospect is not on.

§ Mr. George Robertson

I did not say that it was virtually impossible to privatise water simply because the Government had included a provision with regard to disconnections; I said that it would make privatisation much more difficult. But the Government have never been prevented by such difficulties in the past and they will not be prevented in the future either. During the election campaign, the Government promised that they would not extend the scope of value added tax, but they have now extended it to domestic fuel. Why should we believe their promises about water, any more than their promises about VAT?

§ Mr. Kynoch

If the hon. Gentleman had been present earlier this afternoon, he would have got a response to that: it was never referred to.

I shall draw my remarks to a close by saying that the Bill is nearing its completion in this House and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) said, going on to another phase in another place. It is important that we encourage local authorities which thus far have not co-operated with the Government during the passage of the Bill to co-operate now in the interests of the people of Scotland.

In Grampian and the north-east of Scotland, the Association of District Councils in Grampian, under the current chairmanship of Councillor Doreen Ewing, convenor of Kincardine and Deeside district council, has already started talking in outline about the way forward under single-tier authorities, but it has been thwarted in taking the matter much further by the non-co-operation of Grampian regional council. I implore my right hon. Friend to do whatever he can to encourage the new administration in Grampian region to co-operate with his Department by providing the necessary information to enable it, in turn, to give the financial information back to the existing 233 councillors in the area, thus enabling them to plan the way forward. It is in the best interests of the people of Scotland that the Bill should go forward as smoothly and as quickly as possible.

§ Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland)

First, I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) in extending sympathy to the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), the Under-Secretary of State, on his recent sad bereavement and I am sure that I speak on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends in doing so.

It seemed that the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch) was unable to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Hamilton that the Government completely deceived the electorate about their intentions on value added tax and extending the VAT base. The hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside cannot now understand why the people of Scotland have difficulty believing what the Secretary of State said on water privatisation. The credibility of Tory Members and Ministers in Scotland is so low that if a Scottish Tory said that snow was white, most Scots would want to suspend judgment until next winter so as to check for themselves. That is the sort of loss of credibility that Tory Members have suffered, and they cannot complain if the people will not believe at first hand what they say.

The Bill is a thoroughly bad Bill. It is unwanted, it is ill thought out and it is anti-democratic. It is true that during its passage in Committee and on Report a number of boundary changes were made which my hon. Friends and I wished to see. We wished to see the restoration of Westhill to Aberdeenshire—we welcome the conversion of the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson) to that move—the restoration of Berwickshire to its proper place in the Borders, the establishment of a separate council for Inverclyde, and the restoration of Ralston to Renfrewshire. Those changes are eloquent testimony to the power of Liberal Democrat success at the ballot box. On this Bench, however, the test never was and never would be the niceties of boundary lines. Placing Westhill in Aberdeen city or in Aberdeenshire matters little if neither authority has power to deal effectively with local issues affecting the area. The real test is whether the Bill will strengthen and improve the quality of local democracy and by that test it fails miserably.

The Bill is unwanted because there is no real democratic mandate for it. On occasions when Tory Members have quoted—as they have done today—from the manifestos of the Scottish Opposition parties citing support for single-tier local government throughout Scotland, they have conveniently ignored the context of a home rule Parliament in which those commitments were made. Indeed, the exclusively Scottish issue of Scottish local government should be determined in a Scottish Parliament.

Nor can the results of the local elections on 5 May be taken as an endorsement of the provisions of the Bill. Even in Aberdeen, the Tory party came in fourth place with only 16.4 per cent. of the vote. If that is the kind of result that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South regards as a ringing endorsement of the Government's proposals, I hope that it will be repeated at the next general election.

§ Mr. Kynoch

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. Perhaps he will point out to his friends on the Labour Benches that the Labour party actually lost four seats in Aberdeen city.

§ Mr. Wallace

I am happy to take the opportunity to say that the Liberal Democrats did well in Aberdeen city. Among the issues on which our campaign was based were the Government's proposals for local government and for the future of water and sewerage services, so the Conservative failure at the ballot box shows what the people really think of the proposals.

In Grampian region, the number of Tory councillors is now down to single figures in a region which their party controlled for eight years, and there is not one Tory councillor left in Fife, where the Tory party is even in a worse position than the Communist party even though it got 10 per cent. of the vote. Perhaps if Tory Members want to join us in campaigning for proportional representation —that is not a feature of the Bill, which shows once again that the Bill is undemocratic—we would certainly welcome their conversion.

The water and sewerage provisions in the Bill are unwanted. People know that the issue is about quangos. Certainly, my experience during the local elections in different parts of Scotland showed that the people clearly understood what the issue was about—it was about taking responsibility out of the hands of elected councillors and putting it into the hands of placemen and placewomen. A vital service which has been in municipal hands for many years is disappearing out of the hands of those with elected responsibility. Having travelled throughout Scotland, I cannot claim to have been deafened by any clamour to pass the Bill today.

The Bill is also ill thought out. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) served diligently on the Committee on behalf of my party's interests. On many occasions, I found him in his office suffering from frustration and disbelief at how ill equipped Ministers had been to respond to detailed probing on various aspects of the Bill, not only in response to partisan points that were being made, but on matters of substance relating to the delivery of important services. I recall one evening going to watch the proceedings of the Committee from the public benches and seeing the Under-Secretary of State stand up and, in response to a question or an intervention from the hon. Member for Hamilton, contradict a Government amendment that he had just moved. I accept that one can make mistakes late at night, but the thing that really worried me was that the Under-Secretary of State did not realise that there was a contradiction, which shows how little understanding Ministers have of what they are trying to do in the Bill.

Today, we heard the Secretary of State say that joint boards would not confuse the electorate—we would all know that it was a responsibility of the councils. It is not so many years ago—it must be a number of years because the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was the Member for Edinburgh, South and a Scottish Office Minister at the time—that I went to see the hon. Gentleman about a joint board for the police in the northern constabulary where, clearly, most of the members who came from Highland region were trying to make decisions which would adversely affect the Islands interests and 235 where the locally elected councillors for the Islands had only limited powers. Joint boards will cause confusion—that has been underestimated by the Secretary of State.

Hon. Members who were in the House last Tuesday will recall the hon. Members for Midlothian (Mr. Clarke) and for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) asking about the consequences of water no longer being pumped from disused mines. Not only did the Secretary of State seem to have difficulty answering the question; he appeared unaware that it was even a problem. There are a number of such issues on which I am sure that there will be problems when the Bill is enacted.

In the same debate, the Secretary of State was asked why there were only three authorities instead of four or five. We are still waiting for an answer. All that we get is a bold assertion that that is what it says in the Minister's brief. Unlike previous restructuring, this reform or restructuring of local government has not been preceded by an independent commission or detailed analysis; nor does it proceed on a generally consensual basis. That does not bode well for the Bill's implementation, because even with good will it is likely to drive down morale, especially among staff whose future employment and conditions are still in doubt.

§ Mr. Dalyell

It has done already.

§ Mr. Wallace

As the hon. Member for Linlithgow says, it has done so already.

Perhaps most important, the Bill is anti-democratic. The transfer of water and sewerage services from elected to non-elected hands is, beyond doubt, an undemocratic reform. To pile more than 180 measures on top of the 160 measures that have already been introduced by the Government to transfer power and responsibility from local to central Government is in itself fundamentally anti-democratic.

Conservative Members ought to be aware that the powers given to the Secretary of State by order could be used by a Secretary of State from another party. If an incoming Secretary of State for Scotland chose to use them to clear the placemen and placewomen out of the water authorities and replace them with elected councillors, he or she would have my full support.

Above all else, the Government have abused the language by saying that the Bill will be a shot in the arm for local democracy. It is an abuse of the English language because they are doing one thing and claiming that it is the opposite. Most important, they have not listened, learnt or changed, especially in the light of the Strathclyde referendum.

In a letter to the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on 22 December, the Prime Minister said of the measure, with particular reference to water: The Bill will shortly begin its parliamentary scrutiny. That will provide the opportunity for both principle and detail to be publicly debated and at the end of the day Parliament will decide what is to become law. That is the right approach and one which allows Scottish opinion to be given expression through Members of Parliament. It is evident that Scottish opinion has not been given such expression.

The most significant contribution to our discussions last week came from the hon. Member for Linlithgow, who said during our debate on water: 236 The issue will become the attitude of people in Scotland towards the Union. Because of political history I, of all people, am empowered to tell him"— the Secretary of State—

that if he goes ahead he must not start lamenting when the Union turns sour."—[Official Report, 17 May 1994; Vol.243, c. 725.] Neither I nor my party want Scotland to go down a costly road to independence, but we should reflect on the fact that the threat to the Union in this century did not come from the parties of home rule but from intransigent Unionists—and that is still the case today. When the then Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, moved the Government of Ireland Bill in 1912, he said: We are content to delegate local matters to the different constituent units. However well we may transact … our common and Imperial affairs, we must perpetually bungle and mismanage the affairs of each unit. That, Sir, is what Home Rule, as we understand it, and federation as we are going to pursue it, means for the people of this country."—[Official Report, 9 May 1912; Vol.38, c. 700.] This Bill is today's monument to Westminster's continuing bungled and mismanaged government of Scotland.