population range over which to provide these services was 250,000 to 1,000,000. Wherever possible, both types of services should be in the hands of a single unitary authority. Areas for the new authorities should be capable of being effectively and democratically administered by a single council. Accordingly, the different categories of council would have the following powers and responsibilities: Provincial councils: Drawing up of strategic development plans. They were to take over the functions of the existing regional economic planning councils. Unitary area councils: Both physical environment and personal services Metropolitan area councils: Planning, transport and general housing policy. Metropolitan district councils: Education and personal social services. Local councils It had originally been envisaged that parish councils should also be abolished, but the Secretary of the National Association of Parish Councils (NACP), Charles Arnold-Baker, convinced the commission that they should be preserved. Derek Senior's memorandum of dissent The commission was nearly unanimous, with some reservations as to the exact geographic details. One member of the commission, Derek Senior, dissented entirely from the proposals, and put forward his own in a memorandum of dissent (Cmnd. 4040-I), which was slightly larger than the report itself. He would have preferred a two-tier system, with 35 city-regions of varying size, along with 148 districts. These were to be further grouped into five provinces. At a lower level, there would be 'common councils', roughly equivalent to civil parish councils, which would also cover communities within large towns; special arrangements were to be made for the area surrounding Berwick-upon-Tweed. These proposals effectively ignored traditional boundaries, to a much greater extent than the Report itself did. Reaction Immediately after the report was published, Prime Minister Harold Wilson said that he accepted the recommendations "in principle" and committed the government to "press ahead quickly" on the legislation necessary to implement it, later clarifying that legislation would probably follow in the 1970–71 or 1971–72 parliamentary session. The Labour Party Government issued a white paper entitled "Reform of Local Government in England" (Cmnd 4276) in February 1970, broadly accepting the recommendations of the report. The Government had however added two new metropolitan areas: West Yorkshire (with the five Bradford/Leeds/Halifax/Huddersfield/Mid-Yorkshire unitaries as districts), and South Hampshire based on the Southampton and Portsmouth unitaries, with the Isle of Wight being a separate district. Observers felt that the Conservative Party, then in opposition, had no urgency in defining their position. The shadow spokesman