Draft Cumbria (Electoral Changes) Order 2012
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Clark of Windermere
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, I shall not detain the House for more than a couple of minutes; I just want to participate in this debate that my noble friend has initiated. I agree very much with him about the strength of community in the county—not only in Cumbria, though, but in other countries as well— while starting from the opposite end: I am not in favour of a unitary authority covering such a vast area as Cumbria. However, I am in favour of a two-tier system of local government. Because of that, I am concerned about this recommendation from the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, which seeks to address only the issue of the county electoral boundaries, not the local ones. We all know that one of the problems of democracy at the moment is the identification of individuals with their council. This just adds another area of confusion where there are different boundaries for the two-tier system of government.
I submit that these proposals were made too late for the election beginning next May; they were laid on 31 July this year. There has been practically no publicity whatever in the county of Cumbria. I doubt whether 1% of the electorate know anything about them, and they are going to get quite a shock when the election comes next May.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, this is a living Chamber and I believe that procedure evolves all the time among your Lordships. I therefore find myself in a rather strange position—because the Local Government Boundary Commission for England, set up under the 2009 Act, is independent of the Government—of having drawn the short straw in responding both to my noble friend’s Motion of Regret and to the comments made by my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Judd and Lord Clark. A quadrumvirate of people I respected more would be extremely difficult to find, but it is important for your Lordships to understand the context in which these changes have been put forward by the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.
The commission was set up with the specific and sole remit to review electoral arrangements of councils against statutory criteria of electoral equality, giving fair weight to the votes of all electors in a council area; community identity and interests; and effective and convenient local government. It carries out its functions by relying on a mixture of analysis and judgment.