Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Grocott
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, basically this is a decision about whether mayors should be compulsory or whether there should be a degree of local input about whether or not mayors should be directly elected. The history of public acceptance of the concept is pretty hopeless from the perspective of those who favour directly elected mayors, which I do not.
Neither my dear old Labour Party nor the Conservative Party have covered themselves in glory on this issue. I briefly remind the House that the concept of directly elected mayors came from the last Labour Government. As far as I am concerned, as a very long-standing member of the Labour Party, it came out of a clear blue sky—or a clear red sky. I had never been to any meeting of the Labour Party at any level where there had been a clamour for directly elected mayors, nor had I, in 50-plus years of canvassing—I do not know whether anyone can challenge me on this—ever knocked on a door to be told, “I’d vote for your party if you gave us directly elected mayors”. I think it is a product of a think tank; it is certainly not a product that has at any stage involved consulting the public.
The last Labour Government at least allowed local areas to have referendums before they embarked on a system of directly elected mayors. The results, certainly from my perspective, were pretty conclusive. There were 40 mayoral referendums under the Labour Government’s legislation: 13 local areas said yes and 27 said no. That was a fairly clear demonstration nationwide that this was not a universally popular proposition.
When the Conservative-led Government came into power in 2010, they had seen the Labour Government’s experience of a lack of wild enthusiasm, but for some reason the Conservative leadership thought that it was a great idea, as had the Labour leadership, so they did not allow the public to initiate referendums for directly elected mayors but simply said, “No. You, the 10 cities, shall have a referendum whether you want one or not”. That was the basis on which they legislated. As we all know, and as my noble friend Lord McKenzie already said, the public were consulted in 10 referendums and in nine cases—my maths makes that in 90% of the cases—they said, “No thanks very much, we don’t want directly elected mayors”. Only 10%, or one city, said that it did, and I understand that that city is now not too keen on the concept, having seen it in operation.
So we have gone from a stage of local, initiated referendums under Labour, which did not work very well from the perspective of those who want this system, to compulsory referendums under the Conservatives, which if anything went even less satisfactorily. Now what do we have? We have a system that does not involve the public at any stage whatever and is simply an imposition from national government on the kind of local authority structure, or rather the management structure, that you will have whether you want it or not. If I could draw a graph to illustrate this, it would be pretty clear. The political class, which we talk about these days, of which I suppose we are members here one way or another, thinks this is a good idea, or at least the leadership does. Whenever the public are consulted they say, “No, we don’t, thank you very much”, so what does the political class do? It says, “Well, you’ll have it, sunshine, whether you want it or not”, which is the position that we are at with this legislation.
I simply appeal to the Government—it is a non-partisan appeal to the extent that I freely admit that in part my Government were to blame for all this—that if local authorities are being told, “You must have this hugely significant figure in your area, which will dramatically change how local government works there”, surely at least there must be a degree of flexibility in considering whether the people in the area want it. Surely that is the most modest of propositions. However, as things stand, whatever the Minister says when she replies—and I am sure she will say, “It is possible in certain circumstances”—in practice we know that this is about compulsory directly elected mayors, and I do not like that idea one little bit on democratic grounds, let alone on administrative grounds. I hope that the House will consider these two amendments very seriously.
Lord Deben (Con)
I hope that the Minister will not accept what has just been said. We are looking at the history of local government, which I have been involved in for a very long time—since I first sat on the Inner London Education Authority in my twenties, so I know a little about how it operates. I say to my noble friend that we need something entirely new in local government if we are to recover the kind of verve and real local contribution that local government ought to make.
I agree with the noble Lord opposite that both sides can be blamed for a lot on this. Local government pretended that it could replace the Opposition and therefore could have nuclear-free zones, foreign policies and the like. This was countered by a reaction from a Conservative Government who took away local government’s power to raise money through the business rate and the like. Both sides have a lot to answer for as regards the way in which we had that countervailing situation, and it took a long time for people to recover their respect and support for local government.
However, we have recovered our respect for a system that lacks vitality and deserves a great deal more opportunity. Our great cities should have the same kind of powers and the same sort of verve that you find in many continental cities. I do not see that we can do that under the present structure. What is more, all the amendments that come from the Opposition are about the perpetuation of the very systems that have helped to pull down local government and do not give it the sharpness that is necessary if local communities are to be properly represented.
I found the comment about the effect of mayors a bit odd. All I can say is that after a very long period of appalling local government in Bristol, in which all three parties were involved, the elected mayor of Bristol has made a dramatic improvement. He has no history of being a supporter of my party, so I speak entirely independently and objectively on that. Bristol is now extremely lucky in its representation and in the way the mayor can speak for that great city. It had years of destructive labour authorities, followed by the most peculiar system whereby each of the parties took control one by one and none covered itself in glory.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Grocott
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I hope that the Government will in fact do exactly the opposite. That last speech explains why I am so much in favour of what is being proposed. One of the problems with Britain is that we mistake neatness for civilisation. We constantly think that if we get everything in the same sort of box we can then defend it. I want to compliment the Government on producing something that is designed to meet the needs of particular places and which will, in fact, be different from one place to another. There is an idea that it will cause confusion—but confusion for whom, and between what? It will not concern people in one place that, if they stood outside these shores, there would be a difference between their position and some other people’s position. Inside, there need be no confusion whatever. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that this is a good answer for a particular place. The Government may have the answer wrong but one cannot argue that the reason they have got it wrong is that it is different from the answer somewhere else. I believe very strongly that it is sensible to do what we are doing.
On the issue of the deputy mayor, the idea that you elect a mayor and then have a situation that makes it difficult for him to have a deputy mayor with whom he or she works is rather odd. I would much prefer to have the system that is being proposed, and if it is argued that we have not done this before, thank God, because we have not been very successful with what we have done before—so let us not be too pusillanimous about doing something new.
We should look at any of the successful cities in the rest of Europe—it is about time that we learnt from the rest of Europe instead of constantly telling them that they should listen to us. The British seem to have a very interesting one-way system: we know it all and tell them, and if they happen to have something that is more successful we complain about it. I want to learn from the rest of Europe because I think there is a great deal to learn. One thing is the way they organise cities. The urban success of most of the countries of Europe compared with us is very notable. Part of that is because we have been foolish enough to remove the local powers of finance and the rest. I accept that; I fought against it and lost, but that is one of those things.
Another part of it is that we have lost the historic position of quite distinguished individuals becoming, in a real sense, representative of their cities. It is suggested that they did that without all these powers; the noble Lord opposite made that point. But we live in a different world. I think that they did it by having those powers, whatever the law said. It is remarkable: if you look at some of the powers that these individuals used, they were very much closer to what is being presented now.
I hope that we will give this a fair wind because we need to give real expression to the feeling of place that, I am happy to see, is growing in our great cities. There has been a gap and I want that gap filled. The way to do that is to let people feel that this is their place. Let us do it differently, so that it fits each of them. Let us not be afraid of real experiment. In particular, let us not muck it all up by insisting that the elected mayor has somebody that they do not want as deputy mayor because that happens to fit some particular view of how you should run a democracy.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I hope that I am not misrepresenting the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I think that he said the British have an obsession with constitutional neatness, or words to that effect. That is rather odd coming from a Member of this House. The one thing that this House does not have is constitutional neatness; none the less it works pretty well most of the time. Certainly most of our dealings on constitutional matters show exactly the opposite, if that is an accurate reflection of what he said; we certainly are not obsessed with constitutional neatness. For example, we have accepted for a long time that the government of Scotland is different from other parts of the United Kingdom; this long predates the strong movement that exists at present for independence. But that is not the main point that I wanted to make.
I have great sympathy with these amendments, but only because they are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, if I can put it like that. They all derive from a kind of fear or anxiety of this potential authoritarian figure without qualification or checks and balances that we are creating in the form of a directly elected mayor. As I have said several times, I infinitely prefer parliamentary systems to directly elected, presidential systems. These amendments express a recognition of what I have always feared about such systems: you elect someone and they can pretty well act in an untrammelled way for the next four, five or six years, or however long it happens to be. These amendments are designed to say, “Let’s be a bit worried about this now. Let’s write in a number of qualifications that ensure that the mayor is not in a position to do that”.
To that extent, I support amendments along the lines being proposed. But—and it is a colossal but—we must recognise that the system we have at present, both in Parliament in the House of Commons and in local authorities up and down the length of the United Kingdom, is one in which the Executive are subject to genuine, democratic checks and balances in the form of a council, or a House of Commons, that checks the Prime Minister or the leader of the local authority to make sure that they do not get too big for their boots, if I can put it in those terms. That is the joy of that kind of system. If, for some reason or another or for some ideological principle, we decide that it works well in the United States and we ought to do it here—or whatever the motivating factors are behind the obsession that all three parties seem to have with directly elected mayors—we certainly need to make sure that a directly elected mayor is subject to some kind of ongoing scrutiny, and checks and balances on the powers that he or she decides to exercise. So I support the drift of the amendments.