What price for democracy?

The clock is moving on towards lunch time and Leicestershire County Councillor Rosita Page is anxious to get away. She's been here since 10 o'clock at a Learning Disability Forum.

Ms Page is part of the ruling Tory group and is observing the meeting as part of her responsibility for adult social care, which takes more than half the authority's budget - £127 million pounds.

She has to be 35 miles away in Market Harborough by quarter to two to chair a meeting on community safety. Because she's also a district councillor. More than half the county councillors in the East Midlands do the same thing. They're known as double or twin hatters.

Some say if we're electing the same councillors to both positions what's the point of having two authorities?

The Conservative MP for Broxtowe, Anna Soubry, is one of those who believes it would be cost effective and better for democracy if we got rid of district and borough councils.

She'd like to reinforce the importance of parish councils at a local level and bring back some town councils, for places like Beeston in her own constituency.

"There are a lot of people who don't know who their councillors are; they don't understand what their councils do," she says.

"I think we have too many tiers of local government. I would strip out the district and borough level, I would have more parish and town councils that really take control of very, very local areas and then have unitary councils that then do the big work on infrastructure, social services, adult social care, education and so on."

There is cross party support for the idea. It's also a view held by the Labour group on Leicestershire County Council. And it's now the view of Ms Page.

I catch up with her before her evening meeting of the Harborough Constitution Committee - not one which draws in the crowds to the public gallery - and she tells me she has changed her mind.

"I used to believe localism is better served by a district council," she says.

"But having seen it from the inside I believe we are wasting a lot of resources. I believe we'd be better served by a single council. We'd save by cutting seven district councils in Leicestershire."

Ms Page also says: "At district and borough level we deal with planning and waste but now a lot of what we provide is commissioned out."

Estimates of what Leicestershire alone would save vary. One figure from the Labour group in a report put it at £20m.

Colin Copus, a professor who specialises in local government at De Montfort University, Leicester, disputes that figure. He is also vehemently opposed to bigger local government. For him it's bad for democracy.

"We have almost like a folklore belief in this country that bigger local government is better, well if we've already got the biggest local government in Europe why isn't it the best?"

He cites research over 50 years saying it shows if councils get bigger it doesn't mean they get more efficient and save money,

"What does happen is the bigger they get the more democratic health fades," he says.

"Turnout at elections drop. Community cohesion starts to degrade the less local 'local government' becomes."

Ms Soubry and Professor Copus agree on one thing. We need more committed people who want to become councillors and one way of doing that is to pay them better.

Ms Page earns around £25,000 doing her two council roles. County council meetings are generally in the working day, districts at night. She gets home after her last meeting at nine in the evening. That's a twelve-hour day.

Ms Soubry says councillors shouldn't have to give up their work in order to become a councillor. She's also concerned that not all councillors pull their weight.

"We don't want those councillors from whatever political party who aren't like Rosita and work 12 hours a day who might be taking an awful lot of money and not putting the hours in and I'm slightly concerned that there are some of those," she says.

The MP says we need a proper sort out, a proper review. The last big shake up was in 1972 when 800 councils disappeared. There will have to be government approval for a massive change on that scale.