AREAS which are being used as a “cash cow” by their local councils for very little in return should be able to break away and form their own authority, ministers have heard.

Conservative MP Robbie Moore told the Commons that residents in his Keighley constituency felt the “root cause” of many of their problems was that their local council was based in Bradford, and not in Keighley itself.

He proposed to MPs that his Local Authority Boundaries (Referendums) Bill would solve the issue by allowing parliamentary constituencies to hold referendums to create their own councils based on constituency boundaries.

However, the Government rejected the Private Members’ Bill, saying it had no safeguards to prevent new councils being set up “on a party-political basis”.

Mr Moore told MPs: “In 1974, the city of Bradford Metropolitan District Council was created to administer the newly formed metropolitan borough instigated by the Local Government Act of 1972, and ever since that year when our area’s decision-making powers were stripped and our assets were simply handed over to Bradford City Hall things have never been the same.”

The MP said that his constituency and neighbouring Shipley “generate the highest revenue of tax to Bradford Council through our council tax and business rates payments”, but claimed local public services were not distributed fairly.

He added: “A root cause for so many of these problems is that many of my constituents feel that they are being used as a cash cow for Bradford with very little coming back in return.

“Council tax, business rates are all sent from my constituency to Bradford City Hall with nowhere near the equivalent of those funds coming back to be reinvested in our area.”

The Keighley MP explained that his Bill would allow two or more parliamentary constituencies to group together to create the boundaries of new local authorities if a referendum on the issue proved successful.

He said: “A petitioning system will be created to enable local government electors in any constituency area to indicate their support for a referendum to be held on the creation of a new local authority.

“If 10 per cent or more of people in these given constituency areas give their support for a referendum via the petitioning system then a referendum will be able to be held amongst all electors within those constituency areas proposing to form a new local authority area.”

“Once the referendum is held, if a majority of people have signalled they want a new council to better represent them, then the mechanics of setting up a new local authority should be enabled.”

Communities minister Kemi Badenoch said the Government “cannot accept this Bill in the way it has been drafted”.

She explained: “It would be very, very sweeping indeed. So we would be concerned by a number of aspects of this approach.

“First, parliamentary constituencies may not be a sound basis for establishing the right level of service delivery, that’s got to be a consideration. We also need to make sure the boundaries can be established only where there is a safeguard against anything that might lose the confidence of the local democracy.”

Ms Badenoch also insisted “a referendum could be promoted by some politicians of a particular party and lead to the creation of councillors primarily on a party-political basis”.

She added: “As the Bill is drafted, there’s no sort of prudential mechanism to stop something like that from happening.”

MPs ran out of time to finish debating the Private Members’ Bill.

It will fall to the bottom of the schedule and is unlikely to progress without support from Government.

Bradford Council was contacted for comment.