European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Lord Porter of Spalding

Committee: 8th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

It would be better because I would like to have been an alderman, really.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, depending on whether we leave the European Union, the noble Lord might be able to transfer.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

There are some people who have already offered me a one-way ticket.

I should clear up one minor misunderstanding in the previous comments. We do meet with the DExEU team and my local government counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also meet regularly. As noble Lords will know, it is our staff who generally do most of the heavy lifting and they meet continually with representatives of DCLG, as it was, and DExEU. That is not to say that we should not have something not to replace the bureaucracy of the European Committee of the Regions but to strengthen the ability of local government to help the national Government form better policy.

Over the past 10 years national government has managed to give itself 350,000 more staff while in the same period local government has lost 840,000 staff. There are some people who would probably say that the Civil Service has a better capacity to advise the Government, but I would just like to remind them that local government has the capacity to advise them better.