Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

The noble Lord’s intervention is most gracious; if he will forgive me, I am coming towards that end. Between 1945 and 1950, no by-elections were won by the Opposition party, yet in the LCC elections in 1949, my late noble kinsman led the Conservative Party to an absolute dead-heat—that was the first sign that there was a change in the politics of the country. I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has just said and I will fast-forward as much as I can.

I followed the referendum in Scotland with the keenest interest and I totally understand why it constitutes a large part of the argument about this change. However, there were factors in that referendum that greatly raised the temperature and enthusiasm of people. In the years since I entered your Lordships’ House, the previous Labour Government insisted on changing the arrangements for election after election on the grounds that the number of people who were voting was going down, but they never succeeded in reversing the situation as a result of the steps that they took—there was diminishing enthusiasm.

I have, myself, been subjected to some evidence. A young man, a boy, who sits in a youth parliament locally—I live in rural Wiltshire—sought to enlist me in the cause of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, not directly but on the same principle. I was happy to enter into correspondence with him and to engage in argument and discussion, but I said to him that, before the conversation went any further, he had to explain why there seemed to be no shift at all in voting patterns between the ages of 18 and 35 and, if that was so, why I should support him on voting at 16. It is on those grounds that I am opposed to this amendment being carried at this stage.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment was previously debated in Your Lordships’ House in Committee. I and my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton were delighted to add our names in support of it and we do so again today. It is of course the policy of not only the Labour Party—and now the Liberal Democrats—but of the Scottish National Party and, I believe, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru. It is also, as was referred to earlier, the policy of the Scottish Conservative Party, whose leader Ruth Davidson MSP is on record as saying that she is a fully paid-up member of the “votes at 16” club. Why would the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party support votes at 16? I suspect the answer is the experience of young people aged 16 and 17 who voted in the referendum and the 75% turnout in that group, which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to.

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[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, earlier today I spoke about the need to ensure accountability in this new layer of local government. I said that one way to increase public confidence in this structure would be to reduce the likelihood of a one-party state being created in a local area. The best way to prevent it is to introduce proportional voting through the single transferable vote for local elections, which Scotland, of course, already has.

Whenever power has been devolved in the UK in recent years, it has been accompanied by a change to a more proportional voting system. I believe, and have said several times during our debates on this Bill, that further devolution of powers will be put at risk if they are not matched by improved legitimacy, accountability and strong scrutiny and governance arrangements.

In Scotland, STV was used for all council elections in 2007 and 2012. There are no longer uncontested seats there and no council is controlled by single parties with huge majorities that do not reflect that party’s share of the vote. In England and Wales, however, there are more than 100 councils where one party commands more than two-thirds of the seats. In Scotland, there is none. Compare that situation with what the Government now propose for this new tier of local government. First past the post elections are what generates the one-party state. With a more proportional voting system, legitimacy, accountability and public confidence in the new structure would be enhanced. Given that multi-party politics is now firmly established in the UK, voters’ wishes at the ballot box need to be translated proportionately into seats at the local government level. I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 75 is not one which we on these Benches can support. I declare an interest as an elected local councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham.

Although this amendment is concerned with elections to local councils in England, I mentioned in Committee that we had a referendum in 2011 on changing the voting system for elections to the House of Commons. That was wholly rejected and I have seen nothing following on from that result, or anything that has happened subsequently, which leads me to believe that the country wants to change the voting system for any elections. I also mentioned that we have got ourselves into a bit of a mess in recent years. We have managed to heap on voters a whole plethora of voting systems and that is not a good thing to do. I accept that, where a proportional system has been chosen, it should remain. However, I would like to see us use fewer systems.

I also referred to the fact that I thought that one of the worst systems was the supplementary vote system. I have observed many counts where people have only put a cross in the second column, which means that their vote is discounted. Therefore, I would like to see a reduction in the number of systems being used, and we certainly cannot support the amendment tonight.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, this amendment is about the voting system for local government elections in England and Wales. Like Amendment 73, it would introduce a fundamental change to these. As I explained in the case of the earlier amendment, we are clear that issues such as this need to be considered in a far wider context than this Bill. Even in terms of timescale, when STV was introduced in Scotland, the review of the 32 local authorities took two years, and clearly in England that would take much longer. Notwithstanding any of the arguments for or against the amendment, as I said in the previous amendment, this is not the Bill to be talking about changes to the franchise. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, pointed out, the people of this country said no to the alternative vote in 2011—I was one of the people who campaigned against it. Again, it is not the place of an unelected House to propose changes like this. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.