City of Wakefield (Mayoral Referendum) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I cannot resist making just one general point before I get on to the specifics about my fundamental objection to the directly elected mayor system. I see it as an import from a different political culture. In essence, it is a presidential arrangement. All levels of our democracy in our country have embraced the parliamentary system whereby executive heads emerge from the elected body. I think that is infinitely preferable to the presidential system. The Minister’s examples were notably from abroad, with the exception of London, and bringing in this system whereby elected councillors have no direct say on who the city’s leader should be is—I cannot find a less pompous way of putting this—alien to our political culture, and I do not think there is too much wrong with our political culture. In my view, it has inevitably—certainly in the United States and here—led to mayors being elected who simply do not arrive via the tried-and-tested system.

I thought that the evidence put forward for extending this system in this dramatic way was pretty thin. The explanatory document claims that,

“directly elected mayors … enhance their city’s prestige and maximise the potential for local economic growth”.

Let us not go to Barcelona or anywhere else. We have had this system in Britain for a number of years. Where is the evidence that those lucky cities and towns that have directly elected mayors have seen the prestige of their areas enhanced in comparison with those that have not had the benefit of directly elected mayors and have seen economic growth? In short, has London been demonstrably much better governed, to justify all this additional expense, than has, let us say, Newcastle, Manchester or Birmingham? If there is any evidence, I would love to see it, but I am not aware of it.

I move to the specifics of the orders that we are now looking at. One has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lady Farrington. I am afraid this is more of a rhetorical question than one I expect the Minister to be able to answer because it is unanswerable. How on earth can you have an order that states:

“The authority must, on 3rd May 2012, hold a referendum”—

I would add, in brackets, “whether you want to or not”—with the Government’s alleged commitment to localism? Why the compulsion? Why not leave it to the local authority to make up its own mind? I do not know the answer to that one. I do not think it will do to suggest, as the Minister did, that somehow this is an opportunity for local people to decide and that the Government are neutral, at least to the extent that the local people can make their own decisions, because is it just an accident that the only places where local citizens will be able to decide on their governance are places where they do not have an elected mayor at the moment? What about all those local authorities that have an elected mayor? Why not ask them whether, on the basis of the past 10 years, it is a good way of spending public money? I am delighted to be able to report that, as the Committee will know, in the one area where people have been given that choice, namely the splendid city of Stoke-on-Trent with the outstanding Stoke City Football Club, the public were asked, “Do you want to continue with your elected mayoral system?” The answer was a pretty resounding, “No, we don’t, thank you very much”.

[Lord Rooker]

We need to hear the full story on Stoke-on-Trent. The structure between the mayor and the council was not replicated anywhere else in the country; it was unique. The Stoke system was almost designed to fail and indeed did fail, but it is not the same system as for the other elected mayors.

[Lord Grocott]

As my noble friend has argued for a referendum, I simply say to him: let the people in these other cities decide whether they want to continue with their mayoral system. They have had long enough to test it out, and he may be right that it is only in Stoke that they would say, “No, thank you very much”. If we are to have referendums in places that do not have mayors—I would rather we did not have any at all—then let us have them in places where they do.

I have a couple of questions about the cost. The only statistic that I have is from House of Commons Hansard of 20 December, where the Government said that,

“the cost of referendums for elected mayors will be £2.5 million”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/11; 1187W.],

That is an average of about a quarter of a million pounds per referendum. Frankly, I am not very interested in who pays for it; all I know is that we will. I suppose it would be very unfair to put it all on the local authority, but the blunt truth is that those of us who do not live in any of these cities—I am one of them—will be paying for them to have a referendum, which I certainly do not want. We will find soon enough whether the public want that. Can the Minister confirm whether those figures are accurate?

I also note that paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:

“A Regulatory Impact Assessment has not been prepared for these instruments as they have no impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies and the cost of conducting the referendums across the 11 cities is less than £5 million”.

I do not know how these impact assessments are worked out these days, but that may be the cost of the referendum. Of course, if the referendum results in a yes, then the cost of implementing this system in 11 cities will be massively in excess of £5 million. In effect, through these orders we are setting a train in motion that will cost an awful lot of money. I would like the Minister to tell us who will pay for the reorganisation costs in the event of there being a yes result of a referendum. I would also like to know the estimate that the Government are making before we go on this journey about the cost for each of the local authorities because most of them can ill afford any unnecessary expenditure at the moment.

I would also like to ask the Minister about the responsibility for implementing the new system. The order is loose enough, as it stands at the moment. Article 4, under the title,

“Action to be taken after referendum”,

states:

“If the result of the referendum held by virtue of this Order is to approve a change to a mayor and cabinet executive, the authority must implement that change”.

It goes on to say that if a local authority does not do that, the Secretary of State will. Following the question asked by my noble friend Lord Beecham earlier, if there is a decision to make the change, I would like to know the timescale within which the implementation of that change must take place whether it is done by the local authority or by the Secretary of State?

I very much regret that these orders have come forward. I know this was an idea dreamt up by some policy expert in some recess of the previous Labour Administration. I did my best to stop it happening then, but without success, and this is my second attempt. I do it with more confidence now as I know—I will check the figures because they are around somewhere—that there was no evidence of any great enthusiasm for this system when local areas had the chance of holding referendums under the legislation that the previous Government brought in. There were very low turnouts, by and large. Some were lower than normal for local government elections. I know of no great evidence that these places have been a riotous success. Mercifully, where I live in the West Midlands, we do not have a directly elected mayor but, like the rest of us, I spend lots of time in London, and I am massively unimpressed with the directly elected mayoral system. I do not find it a wonderfully impressive and exciting operation, and I do not know why we should proceed with this without the evidence to justify it. I am, to put it mildly, unhappy with these orders.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

For a very long time, my noble friend represented a constituency that was essentially in the centre of Birmingham, apart from the period that he was talking about: when it was adjacent to Sutton Coldfield, which by that time had itself become part of Birmingham. He might feel differently about his lack of objection to cross-county boundaries if he was trying, for example, to represent part of the city of Birmingham and a bit of Worcestershire or part of the city of Birmingham and a bit of Staffordshire or Warwickshire. I think he would find that an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. That really is one of the main reasons why, for all the rough justice involved in some of the judgments that Boundary Commissions have had to make in the past, trying to abide by local authority boundaries is a common-sense thing to do, both for the MP and more importantly for the people whom that MP represents.

[Lord Rooker]

I fully accept that, and that was made clear in one of my previous speeches: that the local authority might be reluctant, if some issue comes up that transcends the boundaries, to get their MPs up to speed and briefed to lobby and kick in doors in Whitehall to put their case. At the same time they are thinking, “Hang on, that MP represents part of the area that we are a bit negative about, and complaining about”. So there could be an issue here—whether it is a new air field or another infrastructure issue—that crosses boundaries; I fully accept that. On the other hand, I accept there should not be a massive disparity between sizes of constituencies. The point is that there is no easy answer to this. This Bill provides an easy answer because of its rigidity, but because of that it is unfair.

The issue of the 10 per cent is important, but the other point is that, if the Bill is allowed to go through without any sort of compromise, the only discussion of these issues is actually here. Those discussions will not be held in public inquiries because the citizens of this country are being denied the right to go to a public inquiry to make the points, some of which I have alluded to and some which others have. That is the problem; if only there could at least be that safety valve so that some of these issues could be vented at a constrained public inquiry. I am not in favour of sending people from London around the country because that becomes open-ended. There could be a public inquiry on any constituency changes in a maximum of 15 working days—three weeks; I guarantee that that could be done. You put the constraints in place, limit the political parties so it cannot be abused, bring in genuine citizens and other bodies, including business and the church, and you could do it, but you have to have that safety valve, otherwise the pent-up difficulties that will arise at the next election will be on the heads of the Liberal Democrats.

I do not live in Birmingham; I live in a shire area and I am not proposing that we cross the Shropshire border boundaries because I would be in a spot of bother there. I have found it remarkable that, in the past six months, watching stuff go through my door in Ludlow from the Lib Dems, I have yet to see a single leaflet that hints that they are in coalition with the Tories in central government. It is disingenuous and unbelievable. As it hots up towards the election and the boundary issue comes up, these things will come back. I would rather that that did not happen, by the way. I would rather we get this right. I do not seek any advantage in this; I think there is a good case, as the Leader said this afternoon. I heard the word “concession”, and I make no bones about that; there are concessions to be made. Let us get it out into the open so that we know where we are—the sooner the better, because I want progress on this. I repeat, having proposed the amendment that would in effect have given flexibility on the date for the referendum, that there is no problem with the referendum being held on 5 May. My amendment would not have stopped that; all it would have done was give the Government a backstop if things went wrong. Little did I know when I said that back in late November or early December that we would still be in Committee at the end of January.

We do need to make progress, and we need that safety valve so that the only debate on constituency changes, splitting wards and crossing boundaries is not held in the unelected part of our Parliament. That is barmy when you think about it. All we are asking is that the people get the opportunity, when the changes are proposed for their area, at least to come forward and say, “I agree”, “I disagree”, “We have been trying to do this for years”, or “Thank heaven we are getting some changes”—at least to have the chance to say so themselves and for it not just to be left here.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am not able to support my noble friend Lady Hayter’s amendment simply because my approach throughout, as on other constitutional issues, is that the House of Commons is the House of Commons, it consists of single-Member constituencies and every Member of Parliament elected to sit in the House of Commons is there with the same rights and the same duties and with the same authority which derives from their election on the basis of first past the post. To the extent that the amendment detracts from that, it is not one that I can support. However, my noble friend has done the House a very good service in that she has reminded the Government, who do not seem to be in the mood to listen, that time and again, in responding to amendments, the Government have walked up one of two blind alleys.

One blind alley is their absolute commitment to a referendum next May, which is presenting them with difficulty after difficulty; not silly difficulties, not trivial difficulties, but very substantial difficulties indeed. If they decided now not to reverse the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker that was carried, they would save themselves an awful lot of problems. It is not my job to be a consultant to the Government and should they think of asking me I am afraid the answer would be no, but they made a huge mistake by putting themselves in that time lock.

The second blind alley is best illustrated by my noble friend's amendment. The Government are committed to this being a legislative referendum, not an indicative referendum. If this were an indicative referendum where the results were sensibly considered and analysed by Parliament and the Government after the figures had come in, there would be absolutely no need for my noble friend's amendment even to be considered. Precisely those types of arguments would come up in the post-referendum debate that should be held about the significance of the public’s decision. Clearly, it would be a matter of concern to almost anyone if strong votes against changing the voting system from the electors of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were trumped by a strong vote in favour from the electorate in England. Whatever were the numbers when you added them all up, I should have thought that that would be a matter of real concern and something that any prudent Government would want to take into account in deciding what to do next.

Am I the only one who so dislikes Clause 8(1)? That this is not an indicative referendum is encapsulated in this one line:

“The Minister must make an order bringing into force”.

Why bother the Minister? Why not press a button? There is no decision to make. The Minister presumably just stamps whatever referendum result comes for him or her to consider. He should not draw much of a salary for that part of his activities when he is told by an Act of Parliament what he must decide to do. I appreciate why my noble friend has tabled the amendment, but it is not one that I can support.

I say to those of us who were here sleepless the other night that it is not my intention to press my Amendment 44B on a 50 per cent threshold, but as thresholds have been mentioned I want to make one point very briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who has been assiduous in attendance here is not with us today, but he made a point that was worthy of consideration in opposing a 50 per cent threshold. He simply asked the House whether it would not be very unjust if, with a turnout threshold, 49 per cent of the electorate voted in favour of a constitutional change. That would mean that 98 per cent of those who voted were in favour of constitutional change. I wish a bookie would let me have a bet on that not happening. The noble Lord was proposing that 49 per cent might vote yes, and if no one voted no—or 0.5 per cent voted no—that would not carry.

Of course the answer to that has already been given in an exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and the Leader of the House. If we had an outcome threshold and the outcome was 25 per cent, surely even the most fervent supporter of changing the electoral system could not object to such a threshold. All we would be asking is for one in four of the public to be in favour of change. That would also deal with the point about abstentions. Deliberate abstentions would not matter provided that the 25 per cent of the electorate who we keep being told are enthusiastic for change turned up and voted. The decision would carry.

Obviously we will need to come back to the threshold argument on Report, but I would be very happy with that. That might be a first for me, but I am a moderniser. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and I could have a discussion about whether the sensible thing to do would be to table an amendment for an outcome threshold of 25 per cent. That would solve his sleepless nights worrying about what would happen if there were 49 per cent of the electorate voting for a change in the voting system which could not carry because of a turnout threshold. We would both be happy and my aim in life is to make people happy.

[Lord Rooker]

There is a snag there. One of the reasons why I did not move Amendment 43A is that there is a legal contractual arrangement between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats not to do that. Even before they introduced the Bill, they had a contractual arrangement that they would not consider that kind of threshold. So we are stuffed before we start. If that is not the case, we will receive advice on it, but, as far as I know, the so-called coalition agreement rules that out.

[Lord Grocott]

If my noble friend is right—and he has been right on far more things over the years than he has been wrong—we really are wasting our time on this Committee stage. It has felt like that from this side of the Chamber throughout. It is unlike pretty well any other Committee stage I can think of, when the normal response from a Minister to anything other than a completely ludicrous amendment would be to say, “Well, we don’t really like this amendment much, but there is something in it worth considering, so I am quite happy to discuss it”.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

Since the degree to which we are genuine is being tested at the moment, the House will simply have to accept my absolute, total, 100 per cent, categorical—I cannot think of any other adjectives—assurance that when I tabled this amendment, I did so, believe it or not, because I thought that it would be a better referendum if the results were declared by constituency, which is never normally a problem in general elections. It came as a surprise to me that the Electoral Commission thought that there would be all sorts of administrative problems in doing so, particularly—I am repeating myself now, I know—because time and again local elections and parliamentary constituency elections have been held on the same day.

I hope that the Minister’s notes do not say that this is just another silly amendment from the Opposition and that it should be knocked down. I hope that he recognises that there are people who have lived and worked in areas of this country, many of them for generations, who are used to the system under which they are operating and who wish to cast their vote—though not enough of them, I believe, as I fear that the turnout will not be very high. Still, there is a good possibility, although perhaps this is wishful thinking, that the majority will decide that they think the system under which they have been operating is quite good, and they should be allowed to express their own views within their own individual constituencies. That is all that my amendment is trying to do. I beg to move.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not really see the significance of my noble friend’s amendment when I was reading through the Bill, and I missed this.

I am thinking back. I know that we are going to be told that the 1975 referendum was not declared by constituency. If I remember rightly, one of the arguments used at the time was, “It would be very uncertain if MPs who had campaigned on one issue about the EU found that their constituents had gone against them”. I recall it being a bit mixed up. I was part of the no campaign, in that sense—I certainly voted no, anyway. In this case, though, the issue is very personal to the MPs concerned because it is about their voting system.

Take the districts. I used to represent part of Birmingham. The whole of the city gets lumped together, no one gets embarrassed about which way a particular constituency has gone and everything is in the melting pot. It is easier to count when all the constituencies have been lumped together, but where does that leave the Members of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elected on that day? They will be out campaigning. The results will be declared in their constituencies for AV or not. So, you will be covering it up for some so as not to cause embarrassment, but not for others.

I am unaware of a constituency called “the Isles of Scilly”. If I remember right, the Isles of Scilly are part of a constituency on the mainland. That is my understanding. Why on earth are they singled out in this way? On Northern Ireland, I hope that we will not have the argument about there being an east and a west and a green and an orange. We do not want any arguments about which constituency went which way. We do not want any arguments about lumping it all together. You cannot use all these arguments to defend this set of voting declarations. Whichever you use for one is contradicted by the other.

It cannot be being done for the administrative convenience for the Electoral Commission. It is not doing the counting. The counting officers are doing the counting—a well-oiled machine, highly sophisticated in counting votes in this country based on wards and constituencies. I freely admit that a little bit went wrong but not on the counts. Why deviate from that? Why deviate from the tried and tested system that we know works for counting? People know where to go. They know where their counts are. The type of people who do the counting go to the same place virtually every year and are almost on a permanent contract. Why interfere with a system that works? I have offered up some of the issues.

I would like an explanation about the City of London. Normally when there is a count for the constituency, are we referring to the City of London as the city or as the constituency of the City of London, because it is not quite the same, is it? I am not certain. I am a bit out of touch. Is it a constituency or not? I am not certain why the Inner and the Middle Temples should be treated differently. It is reasonable to have an explanation for each one of these because the answer to one has to contradict the answer to another. So I await with interest the response of the noble Lord, Lord McNally.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

He is senior management, but not top management. Perhaps he should bring back a Bill that said, “Let’s have a single electoral system for the United Kingdom”. He can attack the Labour Government if he wants; I would not agree with him on that, although I will on this issue. We have tried all these other systems. They all have serious failures. Is anyone going to challenge me on that on the systems that we have actually seen and observed? They all have serious failures. They do not end the debate. If any Scottish colleague wants to suggest to me that there are no longer any discussions in Scotland about the merits of the additional member system—

[Lord Rooker]

Here is where my noble friend and I part. The additional member system in Scotland gave, for the first time in years, Conservative representation to Conservative voters. So there is a discussion: that is, that it works. That was the problem. My noble friend was defending first past the post at very high levels during our time in government. Can he explain how, during the 13 years while the iron curtain was collapsing and democracy was starting to flourish in eastern Europe, we could not export first past the post to a single country? Add to that South Africa, eastern Europe. There was not one. We could not export the system that we had in 1997, so it is quite right that we tried other systems, because they proved to be wholly beneficial.

[Baroness Adams of Craigielea]

I have to tell the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that the additional member system does not work. We may have Conservatives representing not Conservative voters but Conservative Party policy and cherry picking issues because they do not represent any particular constituents. We have a system in which those directly elected by the local people have up to eight members following them around from the additional list, picking off issues and raising them in policies. I am sorry; it does not work.