Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) Regulations 2012

Debate between Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, over the years I have served on three councils, all very different, and I certainly came to prefer what we all in local government call the old committee system. I do not think that I have changed my mind on that. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, I welcome even more encouragement and allowance for people to have the committee system. The last council I served on was abolished by her and her party; we were a small council able to operate the committee system. Indeed, I played a part in this House when small councils were allowed to carry on the committee system under earlier legislation, so I welcome that part of the regulations.

I also welcome the fact that local authorities will be able to choose how they give information to people. That said, I have a worry. I know that all the people in this Room have been involved in these matters over a number of years; we all know the ins and outs; we know how some of these things work. However, as fewer and fewer people have voted in local elections, it seems that fewer and fewer people understand the system. I worry that we will have referendums—maybe not with very good turnouts, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said—because people are not very engaged with these issues at the moment. Therefore, although I welcome the fact that local authorities will be able to do their own thing, I hope that they will up their game in trying to make sure that, if these things are happening, people are at least involved and the decisions are proper decisions of local people.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, I have never been a great fan of elected mayors. However, at least we are asking local people—it will be their decision. My big worry is that turnout will be low because people are not engaged.

I have a question about process. Part of these regulations allows local authorities to hold elections for police commissioners at the same time. Obviously, trying not to have too many elections at the same time is a good thing. I would not have thought that electing a mayor at the same time as a police commissioner was particularly a good thing, but I am not sure whether that is what is happening. If I understand things correctly, the first elections for police commissioners will be this autumn, which is not when we normally have local elections—you might have some by-elections; then I could understand that happening. Because I have not followed things very clearly, I am not clear whether the police commissioners have a fixed term or whether that can be changed at some point so that your mayor could be elected at the same time as councillors. It may be my fault for not having followed the legislation, but I would be grateful for some clarification on that.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak until the later debate on the individual orders, but as this has become almost a mini Second Reading debate on the merits of mayors, I feel I must chip in because, like my noble friend Lady Farrington, it is rare for me to find myself disagreeing with my noble friend Lord Rooker, but I do so strongly on this issue. If his wishes could come true, I might be persuaded to change my mind at some stage. I think his two hopes were that there would be a large majority in the referendum, when it came up, for whatever decision it was going to reach, and that we would be spared a kind of beauty contest between celebrities. I think that the evidence so far is that he is likely to be disappointed on both fronts. I did not bring my notes with me, but perhaps the Minister may be able to remind us. In the referendums that have been held so far on directly elected mayors, if I were to describe the turnouts as abysmal, I would probably be exaggerating on the high side. They were very low, even in London where there was lots of publicity. There is no evidence that I am aware of—perhaps the Minister has some—that this bout of referendums would be any different from the previous ones in terms of turnout.

The risk of it being not at all about the city but largely a beauty contest has been proved beyond any reasonable debate by what we see happening in London at the moment. I do not know much about it, except it is between two celebrities called Boris and Ken, it seems to go on inordinately and it is basically a tale of two egos that does not tell us a great deal about how local government should be administered.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

Would my noble friend care to speculate about whether it is two beauties or a beauty and a beast?

[Lord Grocott]

I find it very difficult to make careful distinctions on that front. Uniquely in a business—politics—where ego occasionally intrudes, those two manage it far more effectively than most of the rest of us. I do not intend to say anything more at the moment because the opportunity will come in the orders establishing the mayoral referendums in the various cities. However, I would like the Minister to remind us, if not immediately, what the turnout has been in previous referendums.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, between now and the next stage of this Bill I wonder if my noble friend could ponder whether, as has been proposed, the reason that AV is going to a referendum is because it could not be got through the House of Commons. Does that mean that we must have a referendum on Lords reform if it proves impossible to get it through your Lordships’ House?

[Lord Grocott]

What a persuasive argument—I am completely convinced by that.

If the Government are going to reduce the power of the voters over their Government, they must give us a very convincing argument as to why that is desirable. Of course, I very much hope that my amendment becomes entirely surplus to requirements, because I very much hope that the Committee will decide later that we should have four-year gaps between Parliaments. I do not agree with fixed terms, but if there is to be one I hope it is four years. For the first time in my life I am operating entirely in accordance with the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto and I hope they will be voting with us on four-year Parliaments. However, if the Government unilaterally reduce the power of the electorate to have general elections and to make their decisions about Governments, I hope that they will only take this power away on the authority of the electorate in a referendum.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I have just one question. Will my noble friend give thought to the fact that in the Welsh referendum campaign, for example, results were announced constituency by constituency? I remember it well because Carmarthen’s results came in last and that was the constituency I had campaigned in. If misleading information was put out in one area of the country, would that then lead to a request that the whole thing be done again; or would it relate only to individual constituencies where such misleading information had been put out?

[Lord Grocott]

That is a very good question from my noble friend, to which I do not know the answer. No doubt, given the great resources of the part of the Civil Service that deals with this Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will be able to give an answer that satisfies my noble friend.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton and Lord Grocott

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

What, that,

“no district or borough ward shall be included in more than one constituency”?

In my book, that comes under the great heading of common sense. I recommend that to the Committee as being splendid. It is not exactly severely top-down and not nearly as top-down as what is in the Bill, where, irrespective of boundaries, the history of communities, mountain ranges or rivers—if we had any deserts, they would no doubt be subdivided into several constituencies—there is what I call a top-down solution, which aims simply at precise numerical conclusions.

There is no doubt about where I think the determinations of our boundaries should come from. It is precisely as I have described. However, an essential ingredient of it—we are not yet there in the Bill and I am certainly not going to talk about it now—is the crucial importance of local inquiries in which local people can participate. I have sat through nearly all our proceedings on the Bill and, as ever, my noble friend Lord Rooker has encapsulated why we are where we are. As he rightly said, it is the certain knowledge that we are not going to have these local inquiries that makes this Committee stage so important. This is the only point at which sensible local opinion can be expressed at a national level.

I am sure that some will correctly and energetically argue that the views of local people should be taken into account. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, will do so when we come to the debates on the county boundaries in Cornwall. Like everyone else in this House, I have been getting lots of e-mails and messages from people in Cornwall and there is almost an air of desperation in them. I was prompted to think that by the comment of my noble friend Lord Rooker— that this was essentially the local inquiry going on now, precisely because the people of Cornwall know perfectly well that, if we decide in Committee that county boundaries will be ignored, this will be their last chance to have anything sensible to say about that. To me, that is an indictment of the approach that the Government are taking, which is—I know that they will deny this and find ways of explaining it—essentially to end local community involvement within flexible rules, not within rigid rules, to determine local constituency boundaries. I plead for more flexibility.

I will not trespass too far on to other legislation, but when I thought about it I realised that this desire to make all the rough edges smooth, to apply a straitjacket to our constitution and to make it all work according to rigid rules seems to be an almost pervading view of the Government in a lot of the constitutional legislation that they are bringing forward. I do not know whether that goes right across government. In fairness, the Liberals have been quite consistent about this, but we are now saying that constituency boundaries should be very rigidly drawn and shortly we will be told the dates of all future general elections—presumably until the sun swallows up our planet. Every five years there will be a general election, come hell or high water, on a precise date. There will be no flexibility. I will not go into those arguments, but, my word, I will want to develop them when we reach the Bill about fixing the term of Parliaments.

I think that I am right in saying that the Liberal Democrats are very keen on us having a written constitution, which will lay all these things out and, of course, lead to the interpretation of the rules being adjudicated on by the courts. The beauty of a lot of our electoral and constitutional arrangements—this certainly applies to the drawing of constituency boundaries—is that they have been flexible. They apply the greatest principle that you can apply in any constitution, which is the principle of common sense. They allow for rough edges not to be smoothed out. This is particularly true in the case of the four nations that are the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. We all know that it is a slightly unusual arrangement, whereby one of the four countries totally dominates all the others numerically, but there are all sorts of accommodations, one of which we shall come to later, in respect of Wales, which is severely affected by the Bill.

I cannot write a constitutional doctrine explaining how the British constitution operates in relation to the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom, but I can say that it has worked pretty well, that people are pretty free within it and that they understand the system in which they operate. If there are a few anomalies here and there, so be it. I fear that what we are seeing in the Bill in relation to constituencies and constituency boundaries is yet another step along the road. I may be alone in this; I have been called a constitutional conservative by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who, sadly, is not here. If that means someone who believes in common sense in the operation of the constitution, then I plead guilty. My noble friend’s amendment passes the test of common sense for me. It allows flexibility locally and that is why I support it.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I noticed that the Minister did not respond to the question that I asked him and my noble friend Lord Bach about whether the flexibility regarding numbers that has already been determined by your Lordships’ House, with the decision on the Isle of Wight, will be allowed to affect the number referred to by the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, as “a nice, round figure”. It is important that we should know that when we are debating different views about the terms on which new constituency boundaries will be drawn.

I make the passing comment, in light of my experience in local government, that it is not only for MPs to be able to work with the local authorities in their area. My noble friend Lady Henig, who was on Lancashire County Council at the same time as I was, will recollect that there were many occasions when we sought to influence our Members of Parliament serving Lancashire. There could have been difficulties had the boundaries of those constituencies crossed county boundaries. On the whole, we had a good working relationship, to the point where, on one unique occasion, Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman lobbied me to find a way around the ban by her right honourable friend the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, on our giving children free school milk. That remains a unique memory for me. Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman was very concerned at that time about EU milk subsidies.

The sense of locality among political activists is important. There is a mistaken belief out there in the country that the political parties have thousands and thousands of political activists who ought to knock on their door every time there is an election. If we can do anything during the passage of the Bill to explain that it ain’t necessarily so, it would be a good thing. I remember knocking on the door of one Labour supporter in a county council election and being told, “I have been waiting 10 years for someone from the party to knock on my door”. I said, “That is because you, as a party supporter, are not out knocking on doors”. He said, “What do you mean?”. I said, “Tonight, there are about 18 people out”. This was in what was then the borough of Preston. The public will not understand the debate about the importance of place in terms of political activists, but your Lordships will, from experience.

The sense of place and of belonging is critical. In my experience, having lived in London, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire—I was born in Leicestershire—the sense of place in the major conurbations is less, particularly since the abolition of the GLC, although I found, when talking to schoolchildren there, that the sense of place of West Bromwich overrode the new title of Sandwell. The sense of place is critical in building political interest, activism and co-operation around a community, not only within the parties but between the parties. The sense of place matters and in that context, and because of my previous experience—this is a former interest—as leader of the Association of County Councils for England and Wales, I have to say that certain parts of the country, such as Wales and Lancashire, have a very strong sense of place.

My noble friend Lord Grocott made the point that this is the only opportunity to debate these issues, because the Bill deprives local communities of the opportunity to put their case. As somebody who has attended most of our proceedings on the Bill, I feel bitterly resentful that I am accused of filibustering for being here and debating this, when I would very much like to go home, because the Government have conceded that local people could do the job that we are attempting to do here. I am surprised, although I intend no discourtesy to the Minister, that the Liberal Democrats are giving up the opportunity that, in our experience, they have taken so often in the past to make a very full presentation at a public inquiry into constituency boundaries at local level. If we want an active democracy, people need to feel that they are part of the system that creates the constituencies and determines boundaries. The Bill is going in absolutely the opposite direction.

I shall sit down now, but I shall come back to this subject in other parts of the Bill. The Minister may go away and think that my speeches are not necessary, but he could stop them at any point by accepting that the people in the areas that I have referred to and lived in—Leicestershire, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Wales and London—can make their own case, because this is not the place where that ought to be done.