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

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Smith of Leigh

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[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.

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, I declare an interest as leader of Wigan council and chairman of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the new Greater Manchester Combined Authority. I was going to wait until later, but I would like to respond to some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Rooker. It is in the background papers. He is mistaken to compare what is being offered here with what is going on in London. The London mayor is mayor of a whole conurbation. There are 32 London boroughs. What is on offer here is a mayor for a single local authority. In the conurbation of west Yorkshire, we are offering three cities. I am sure that Kirklees and so on must feel a bit out of it if they are not to be in the system. In the West Midlands, there are two, so they are not conurbation-wide. There are no additional powers coming to these individuals compared with those that the leader and cabinet model can exercise. The importance of the mayor of London, whoever it is, in terms of transport, police and so on, will not be there in any of the cities. In fact, as my noble friend Lady Farrington reminded us, in my area, we will have an elected police commissioner who will take responsibility for those areas. In transport, I can assure whoever is the new leader or mayor of Manchester that they will have no more influence over what goes on in transport for Manchester than any of the nine authorities. They will be one of 10. That is it.

The other thing that my noble friend Lord Rooker seems to think will happen is that getting a mayor for Birmingham might create some cohesion between the other local authorities in the West Midlands. That does not happen. He is right that Manchester works better than many other conurbations—I take some credit—but that is because we have worked at it for a long time and each authority has understood that if you want to gain collectively you have to give up some power as a local authority.

Will someone coming in as the elected mayor of Birmingham say straight away, “I’ll be elected mayor of Birmingham but I want to give up things to the West Midlands council so that we can work better together with Coventry, Wolverhampton and the other authorities”? That will probably not happen. We do not know whether it comes down to personalities in Birmingham because, of course, you do not have any successful football managers in Birmingham so clearly the chance of one of those standing does not apply, whereas it does in Manchester. The current law allows each of these authorities to choose to have an elected mayor if they want to. None has chosen to do so. However, if we were offering something like the London model, there could be a real debate.