FRESH uncertainty last night surrounded the Government's plans for
council reform in Scotland after further concessions were announced. The
Government is to look again at its proposals as they affect
Central Scotland and Cumbernauld and Kilsyth.
Scottish Office Minister Allan Stewart told MPs debating the local
government reform Bill that, as far as Central was concerned, he would
discuss the matter with the Secretary of State and he was prepared to
meet MPs representing constituencies in Central region before the
Government reached a conclusion.
He gave no guarantees that the Government would change its original
plans for the area, but Labour's Henry McLeish said that the debate had
''moved forward'' and the Opposition withdrew a series of amendments on
the issue.
The controversy on Cumbernauld and Kilsyth basically surrounds the
Government's intention to place it in a new North Lanarkshire authority
along with Motherwell and Monklands.
Mr Stewart's announcement that he would look again at the matter also
led the Opposition to withdraw amendments, but the Minister made clear
that he is more prepared to stick to his guns on the North Lanarkshire
proposals than on Central.
Under the Government's proposals, Central would have broken up into
two separate authorities, a Stirling council which simply would have
comprised the present Stirling District Council, and an authority
combining Clackmannan and Falkirk.
The latter also would have taken in the town of Kincardine-on-Forth,
which is currently in Fife.
This move brought an angry reaction from Mr McLeish, the MP for Fife
Central, who said it was absurd, crazy and ridiculous to seek to break
Kincardine's historic ties with Fife.
Mr Stewart said there now were basically four options. In addition to
the Government's plan, there were proposals to leave Central region as a
single authority, to have Stirling, Falkirk and Clackmannan as three
separate authorities, and to link Clackmannan with Stirling instead of
Falkirk.
He said: ''It was in the context of trying to reconcile various
diametrically opposed views that we concluded there should be two
separate authorities for Central.
''Clackmannan and Falkirk were both relatively compact and heavily
industrialised, contrasting sharply with Stirling, which is more of a
service centre with a large rural hinterland.''
On the decision to move Kincardine-on-Forth out of Fife, Mr Stewart
said: ''We took the view that there were strong practical reasons for
its inclusion in the new Clackmannan and Falkirk authority.''
Nevertheless, he agreed to have a rethink on the grounds that there
was ''conflicting evidence and conflicting arguments'' about Central's
future.
Later, an attempt to establish a single authority for Clydesdale
failed after the relevant amendment was withdrawn by its sponsor, Ayr
Tory MP Phil Gallie.
Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson said last night: ''The
people of Scotland must be getting hugely confused signals over what the
Government is doing. Boundaries seem to move and shift with every whim
that comes into the Minister's mind.''
MPs last night rejected moves to create a
single-tier Dunfermline council outwith the rest of Fife but the
Government accepted a proposal for Inverclyde to be an authority in its
own right.
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