Mr Dunne contributed to the debate on the Future of Local Government in the House of Commons yesterday. He urged the Secretary of State Ruth Kelly MP and her Ministerial team not to ignore the local ballots of opinion in Bridgnorth and South Shropshire.
Mr Dunne said:
"I challenged the Government Minister to respect the views of the people in the current public consultation over Unitary.
I also challenged the Minister to come clean over his ability to impose cuts on individual councils if they have identified savings from Unitary but manage to remain as two tier areas. The reality is that the Government has no powers to single out councils and has not given itself such powers in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill going through Parliament. They would like to force savings and have threatened councils that will do so, but there are no statutory powers to achieve this, so it is a hollow threat being used by proponents of Unitary to hoodwink stakeholders to accept Unitary.
I also pointed out to the LibDems that their flagship council in Shropshire, South Shropshire District Council, has imposed the largest Council Tax of any authority in the West Midlands (at £1,443 per Band D property) and has the second largest increase in Council Tax over the past 10 years of any authority in the country (£796 per Band D property, up 123% since 1997) second only to another LibDem run authority (Kingston-upon-Thames)."
