Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) (Revocation) Order 2026

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly by referring to the example of Suffolk. I entirely agree with my noble friend on the Front Bench about these issues. I draw attention to the fact that I chair the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and support the Norfolk and Suffolk Development Forum, although I do not chair that. But for these purposes I am speaking simply as a Suffolk resident.

There we were in Suffolk, keen, certainly from my point of view, to progress the devolution priority programme for Norfolk and Suffolk. We were then told that the mayoral election for the Norfolk and Suffolk strategic authority was to be delayed. That decision has not been revoked. The decision to delay or to postpone the county council election in Suffolk has now been revoked, which means we will have county councillors, who I think were originally elected in 2001, serving all the way through to 2027—

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

You mean 2021. You said 2001.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Did I? Sorry—2021, serving all the way through to 2027, maybe even to 2028 in practice, and overlapping with unitary councils that are to be established with elections taking place in May 2027.

As I think I have demonstrated through my difficulty in trying to follow all this, these are unnecessarily extremely complicated processes for trying to move devolution forward and get us to the point where we are in a strategic authority with unitary councils. The lack of pace in a Government who are always telling us everything is happening at pace seems to have led to an unnecessarily complex situation, not least for the voters and residents of Suffolk. With local government reorganisation taking place at the same time, we are going to end up paying more for the processes of managing this overburdensome democratic situation. I hope that in the context of this debate, the Government will say that they will look very hard at ensuring that they compensate local authorities and support them in managing the delays that they have occasioned.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

Briefly, I make a plea to the Minister that she takes personal oversight of all those councils where the delays may have an impact on staff’s ability to step up and do the right things for the election. Clearly, they will all bust themselves to try to make sure everything is perfect, but it will be worth the Government making sure that they take a closer interest in all of those councils and finding down the back of the magic sofa in Marsham Street some of that spare change that they have that they can bring out occasionally if it is necessary. I do not think the teams running the elections will be waving a shroud, but if they genuinely need extra resource to be able to pay extra money to recruit people that they need at short notice, or shorter notice, the Government should be prepared to provide it. Like my colleagues on the Front Bench, I have some regrets about this, but not for the same reasons that they do.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, may I pick up on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, made just now on precedent? I do not think I have heard reference to precedent elsewhere, but there is no question but that there have been occasions when elections have been delayed. However, what the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was referring to here was the most amazing set of circumstances, whereby one week we were asked to consider an order for delays in elections on 30 local authorities, and those delays were at a point only weeks before one was heading towards notices for the election, nomination day and the like. Then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, indicated, two weeks later, because of an apparent legal reconsideration of circumstances, the policy was completely reversed. As far as I am aware, there is no such precedent and, tragically, we have yet to receive an apology from the Government for the confusion—and that is all it is. It is total confusion, within a period of a few weeks going from one unclear policy to another, with the net result of substantial cost.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, identified, democracy is a frail flower, and playing around with it in the way that the Government have in the last few weeks is unacceptable. It is unacceptable not just to the public at large; we have to bear in mind the burden faced by the returning officers and their staff in the local authorities. They do a truly fantastic job in difficult circumstances. It is regularly the case that, where there are not elections in one local authority, it loans its staff to a neighbouring authority which has elections. It is not easy to find polling clerks, and what is happening is that one local authority provides the facilities for another. Here we have a position whereby people who might have been loaned to another authority are suddenly called back. There are all the other associated difficulties with calling an election, cancelling an election and then restarting an election. I will not go into them in detail, but I think most of the people in this House are only too well aware of the problems that are thrown up in the face of the EROs throughout the country by the policies that have been followed over the last few weeks.

I would have hoped that, at some stage, the Government could have apologised to the local councils, and particularly to the EROs and their staff, for the problems that they have caused, but, unfortunately, they have failed to do so. However, it is appropriate that one should identify that democracy and the way it operates need to operate on a degree of certainty, which in the last few weeks or months we have not had from this Government.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for laying the regret Motion. It is a privilege to stand in for my noble friend Lord Pack, who I know is deeply disappointed that he is not able to be in his seat today. I will approach this with the same conviction my noble friend has voiced throughout this saga: that local democracy is not a plaything for departmental convenience. Although we welcome the Government’s U-turn, the how and why of this retreat remains shrouded in a fog of administrative incompetence.

--- Later in debate ---

I want to be very clear that legal advice prompted the Government to reconsider and withdraw their earlier postponement decision. I have quotes from James Cleverly, who has been a shadow Minister in the other place and continues to have a role there, talking about postponement and not disclosing legal advice. It is a long-standing convention observed by successive Governments that the existence of and substance of advice from law officers of the Crown is not disclosed outside government. The purpose of this convention is to enable the Government to obtain frank and full legal advice in confidence. The legal powers to postpone elections remain valid and there has been no finding against the Government in this instance. The focus is now on delivering legally robust and certain electoral timelines for councils. We have always said that decisions will be made on the basis of the evidence available to us and this is what has happened—

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I support very strongly the position that law officers’ advice to government should remain confidential, but is it absolutely clear that the advice on which the decision to revoke the postponement of the elections was taken was markedly different from the legal advice provided previously? To be blunt, there is a suspicion in many people’s minds, probably quite reasonably, that it was the imminence of a judicial review four days after the announcement that resulted in the change of government position, rather than a change in legal advice.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I feel that the noble Lord is pushing me to do what I have just said I cannot do, which is to disclose the legal advice—I am going to stick to that line. The decision was, as he rightly says, taken by another Minister in the department because the Secretary of State had already been involved in the decision. I think we put the guardrails in place to make sure that was done in accordance with what we would all expect to happen. We will stick to the convention of not disclosing the legal advice put before that Minister.

I wanted to talk about my noble friend’s comment about previous elections that were cancelled. There were 17 elections delayed between 2019 and 2022 by the last Government to prepare for local government reorganisation, including in Weymouth and Portland in 2018, Aylesbury, Chiltern, South Bucks and Wycombe in 2019 and Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset in 2021, so there was precedent for that. We took that into consideration when local authorities made representations to us.

I will just go into a little more detail on the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward. The decision was updated following legal advice and the Government acted promptly and responsibly in light of that advice. Where decisions are revisited following legal advice, as I have said, it is entirely appropriate for a new Minister to look at that advice and now all 30 elections will proceed as scheduled in May 2026, and a revocation order was laid in Parliament in February to give effect to that decision. We engaged rapidly with councils and issued written confirmation without delay and are supporting them with their updated plans. This was done at pace. We have always said that a decision would be made on the basis of evidence available to us at the time and that is what has happened. The Government’s ambition remains to simplify local government by ending the two-tier system and establishing new single-tier unitary councils.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, raised the issue of town and parish consultation. I understand his point, but there was never an intention to cancel town and parish elections. I understand his point about finances and will give that further consideration. On his point about statutory inclusion of things in Explanatory Memorandums, again, I will take that away. I understand the point he is making, and we need to think further about how that might work.

In conclusion, I hope I have set out the Government’s explanation of the timeline and exactly what happened in this case. I hope I have responded to the concern of the House, both in what I have said today and in the action taken to put an amendment forward to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. While recognising the concern that has been expressed around the House, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her Motion.