Local Authority Boundaries (Referendums) Bill
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Minister for Levelling Up Communities (Kemi Badenoch)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) on securing a place in the ballot for this private Member’s Bill on introducing referendums into the process of local government boundary reviews. He, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) have both raised, very passionately, a number of serious issues around the service that they are receiving from Bradford Council. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for his contribution.
The Government remain committed to their policy that local government reorganisation, whether it involves boundary or unitary changes, should be locally led. I commit to working with my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Keighley as requested on the various issues that they have raised.
The Bill makes provision for certain processes to be followed where boundary changes are being sought, particularly where the boundary change would result in an area being taken out of an existing local government area and the creation of a wholly new area with a wholly new council.
Philip Davies
I absolutely understand why the Government would not wish to interfere in bringing forward a top-down reorganisation of local authorities; that would be inappropriate, and I understand why they would be reluctant to do that. Does the Minister accept though that the beauty of my hon. Friend’s Bill is that, in the Government’s stated position of changes being locally led, nothing indicates something more locally led than a local referendum, where all the people have a chance to vote to say where they want to be represented? Does she agree that this Bill fulfils that Government policy of locally led changes?
Kemi Badenoch
Absolutely; it does meet that locally led test, but that is not the only test that we would be applying.
The processes that Parliament has established for changing a local government boundary are centred on the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, so that is another step that would be required. We all know that a boundary change can be effected only if it is recommended by that commission. The issue at the moment, which is why we cannot accept this Bill in the way that it has been drafted, is that it would cut across those processes.
The long title of the Bill is:
“A Bill to make provision to enable parliamentary constituency areas to form new unitary local authority areas if agreed by referendum; to make provision for such referendums; and for connected purposes.”
The Bill would be very sweeping indeed. We would be concerned about 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 must be a consideration. We also need to make sure that the boundaries can be established only where there is a safeguard against anything that might lose the confidence of the local democracy. That is definitely not the case here, but a referendum could be promoted by some politicians of a particular party and lead to the creation of councils primarily on a party political basis. As the Bill is drafted, there is no prevention mechanism to stop something like that from happening.
Philip Davies
I appreciate that time is running out, so may I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for agreeing to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley to discuss how we might bring forward a Bill that satisfies our requirements and those of the Government? That will be very helpful and I am grateful to the Minister for indicating that she is prepared to do that.
Kemi Badenoch
I thank my hon. Friend. He and I will be able to work together on this issue with our hon. Friend the Member for Keighley—