Clause 37
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
11:15 am
Andrew Gwynne (PPS (Rt Hon Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC, Minister of State), Home Office; Denton and Reddish, Labour)
Based on local knowledge, I think that the proposal is the correct one. My constituency has two local authorities, and one of them—in Tameside—was formed in 1974 when nine very independent towns came together. To this day, they remain very independent. Those towns are: the urban districts of Audenshaw, Denton, Droylsden and Longdendale, and the municipal boroughs of Ashton, Dukinfield, Hyde, Stalybridge and Mossley. When the borough was created, it was divided into 18 wards reflecting those towns. To a lesser extent today, those wards still reflect the townships of Tameside. Things got complicated in 1980, however, when an extra ward was given to the borough. Parts of the old boroughs of Dukinfield and Stalybridge were cobbled together into a new ward called Dukinfield Stalybridge ward, which confuses matters greatly because we also have the wards of Stalybridge North, Stalybridge South and Dukinfield.
Furthermore, in 2004, following the most recent boundary changes, the ward of Audenshaw, which had 10,000 electors, and the ward of St. Peter’s, which had 7,000 electors, had their boundaries altered because the average number of electors in each ward in Tameside was 8,000. To the great dismay of electors in Audenshaw—admittedly, a very small number—who are proud of their Audwinian roots, they were moved in to an Ashton ward, with which they have nothing in common. So, first, they were moved in to the ward of Ashton St. Peter’s, and then, at the next election, in to the Ashton-under-Lyne parliamentary constituency, despite the fact that their area of Audenshaw has been in the Denton and Reddish constituency since it was created in 1983, and in the same parliamentary constituency as Denton in every election since 1916, I think.
Some wards in Tameside no longer reflect the township boundaries. For example, Dukinfield is divided between the wards of Dukinfield and Dukinfield Stalybridge. Dukinfield ward is in the Denton and Reddish constituency and Dukinfield Stalybridge ward is in that of Stalybridge and Hyde. At the next election, Audenshaw will be divided in part between Denton and Reddish and Ashton-under-Lyne constituencies.