Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have sown confusion and imposed unnecessary costs upon the taxpayer by cancelling local elections, only to reinstate them weeks later and then seek to distance themselves from the consequences. What was presented as a firm and settled judgment has unravelled in short order, leaving uncertainty in its wake. That matters, because it is not an isolated U-turn or rethink or change of position; it joins a growing catalogue of reversals, each compounding doubt and carrying a financial price.

Stability in public administration is the foundation upon which local authorities plan, candidates prepare and citizens place their trust. Against that background, it is important to recall how we arrived here. The original decision to cancel these elections was taken by the Secretary of State. He defended it repeatedly in the other place, and the Minister defended it consistently in your Lordships’ House. In the press, the Secretary of State went so far as to describe the elections as “pointless”. Yet what was so confidentially asserted has now been undone.

Two issues now arise. The first is constitutional. Does the Minister accept that there should be strict limits upon the power to delay or disapply elections outside the most exceptional circumstances, such as war or public emergency? If she does, then, in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, will she urge her colleagues to reflect upon the sentiment of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and those in my name, which would limit the power of the Secretary of State to cancel elections by secondary legislation and constrain the power to alter the timings of local polls? It is notable that members of the governing party voted down those safeguards in the Commons.

The second issue is practical and goes to the heart of delivery. Local government is already navigating a demanding programme of reorganisation. Councils are restructuring governance, staffing, finance and service delivery. To remove and then abruptly restore elections in the midst of that process has inevitably diverted senior officers and members from their primary duty, which is the delivery of services to their residents. In other words, reorganisation requires focus, discipline and clarity. Instead, councils have been drawn into administrative uncertainty, legal contingency planning and accelerated preparations at short notice. That is not without consequences. It absorbs scarce managerial capacity and risks delay to the very reforms that the Government profess to champion. If community empowerment is truly the objective, one might expect the Government to strengthen local capacity rather than burden it with unavoidable disruption.

It is precisely because there are constitutional and practical consequences that your Lordships’ House is entitled to transparency on the costs of all this. Can the Minister therefore inform the House of the full costs of this regrettable sequence of events? What have been the expended legal fees on wasted preparation and the emergency arrangements that are now required to conduct elections at short notice? What support is being provided to local authorities required to shoulder these additional burdens? There is talk of £63 million, but is this on top of the already agreed election costs? Has an assessment been made of the impact upon council capacity and service delivery, and if so, will it be published?

The same need for clarity applies to the Government’s approach to election pilots. What is their present status? How many councils that initially indicated they possessed the capacity to participate later informed the department that they did not any longer have that capacity?

Taken together, these questions point to a wider uncertainty. Where does this leave the Government’s much-heralded program of reorganisation? Confidence in reform depends upon steadiness of hand and clarity of purpose. If Ministers will not answer fully and restore transparency, then we feel that serious reflection is required at the highest level. I would suggest that that is not at Secretary of State level, as he has been the person responsible for this unnecessary mess.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, here we are again with a topic we have discussed and debated in different forms several times. I will do my best not to simply repeat the points made previously, particularly as it seems like each time we return to this topic, it is messier and more expensive. Although the outcome in the end is welcome—that all elections will be going ahead in May, as should originally have been the case—I think we can all agree that the route by which we have got here is a highly undesirable one. Therefore, having read the Statement that we are considering this evening very carefully, and having read Hansard for the debate on Monday in the House of Commons about the Statement, I have three particular questions for the Minister.

First, in that debate on Monday, the Secretary of State was asked whether, in the light of the latest legal advice and the Government’s current understanding of the legal situation, the Government believed that the cancellation of elections last May was legal. The Secretary of State was asked that direct question and chose not to answer it. We can all speculate why, but I hope that the Minister will be able to clear that matter up by giving us a direct answer on that.

Secondly, having looked at the reasons the Secretary of State gave in the Statement for cancelling elections, I think that they do not sit easily with what he wrote in the article published in the Times newspaper ahead of the consultation closing on potential cancellations. The Statement that we are considering this evening says that the cancellation of elections,

“should only ever happen in exceptional circumstances”.

That is a sentiment with which I suspect we all agree. But in the article in the Times newspaper, the Secretary of State said:

“They want pointless elections, Labour wants to fix potholes”.


The existence of potholes in need of repair is absolutely not an exceptional circumstance. It is a frustrating daily reality. It is really hard to see how one can reconcile the Secretary of State’s comments about wanting to fix potholes with the claim that these are exceptional circumstances.

Moreover, the Statement we are considering goes on at some length about how the Government were listening and consulting. Again, however, looking back at the article in the Times newspaper, published before the closure of the consultation over elections for this May, we see that it kicks off right from the very first sentence with a very clear steer that the Secretary of State thought that cancelling elections was a good idea. It goes on to make that point repeatedly in the succeeding sentences and paragraphs. So, given that that article, published before the close of the consultation, could be seen both to have prejudged the outcome of the consultation and to have given different reasons for cancelling elections than those considered in the consultation—all of which potentially would result in some legal issues about the validity of the decision—I wonder whether the Minister could again clarify matters by letting us know if the Secretary of State’s comments, both in that Times newspaper article and elsewhere, were a factor in the change in legal advice being given to the Government about the legality of the cancellation of elections.

Thirdly, turning to perhaps a more positive aspect, I absolutely welcome the comment in the Statement that the Government are willing to think again—particularly in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I am sorry: the phrase is that the Government are “reflecting carefully”, which I hope means “thinking again” as well, about the amendments that have been tabled, such as by myself and by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the powers and the circumstances in which elections might be cancelled in the future. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be able to tell us whether those reflections will be carried out involving a degree of cross-party discussion. Will they be carried out in time so that, if the outcome of those reflections by the Government is to decide that changes to the law are appropriate, we can do that on Report of that Bill?

Donations to Political Parties

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, likewise, I should acknowledge the exceptionally impressive timing of this debate, coming just after the Government have published the Representation of the People Bill. It is fair to say, from all we know of the Bill so far—I have not had time to read it yet by any means in full—there is a welcome direction of travel on many issues in terms of trying to improve the transparency around donations to political parties. I fear, however, that it does not go far enough. Obviously, some of those issues are to do with foreign money and potential foreign government interference. Hopefully, the Rycroft review will, in due course, set out ways in which we can go further on that.

I therefore want to concentrate on a slightly different issue in my brief comments. They draw on the research that I published with Chris Butler last year on donations that are made directly to candidates and rightly declared on the candidates’ election expense forms when they submit them, which is all above board, legal and how the law is intended to operate. However, those donations then, in effect, disappear from view because donations made directly to candidates at the moment do not then appear on the Electoral Commission’s register of donations. So, if you are, for example, an inquisitive journalist or somebody doing the due diligence process and you look at the obvious public records, the donations do not appear there at all.

This is not a trivial amount of money. Chris Butler and I estimated that, for the 2019 general election, £3.4 million of donations came into our political system, potentially influencing people, but did not then appear in the Electoral Commission’s records. Moreover, although those election expense forms are kept locally by the relevant returning officers, they are not published and are destroyed after a period. Although the Electoral Commission gathers such forms in, it does not publish them. Indeed, as Chris and I discovered, the Electoral Commission is not terribly keen on releasing copies of that information. When it did release some information to us, much of it was redacted.

With that redacted information, we did our best to compare, for those elected as MPs, whether the donations then appeared on the MPs’ register of interests. We found that around one in 10 of the donations made did not appear on the register. One should caveat that—there may be innocent explanations—but it adds to the general picture that there is a problem, which I hope the Government will be keen to address, about the volume of money that flows in as direct donations to candidates that is not properly caught by our current transparency regimes.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

I look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Committee in this debate on these amendments and others covering alternative voting systems, the scrutiny of election cancelations, and candidates providing electors with a means of contacting them—which I will address when winding up. I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendments 211 and 212 in this group, which are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.

On the return to this vexed question of election postponements and cancellations, as we have covered that several times already on various previous occasions—I am sure we will again in future—I will take a slightly different tack this time and focus partly on the future. I also hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that the Minister feels that these amendments are actually helpful.

Thinking about the future first, there are very clear, sad and worrying lessons from countries all around the world about how quickly democracies can become fragmented and undermined. The responsible reaction we all should have to that is to be determined to embed democratic norms as deeply and firmly as we can. That does not guarantee their future protection but it will certainly make life more likely to be successful, whether for our future selves or our successors, if we have to defend democracy. I hope we all agree on the clear principle of embedding the idea that democracy should not just be an easy thing to postpone or cancel.

However, at the moment, unfortunately, it is just a little bit too easy for elections to be postponed or cancelled. The two amendments in my name set out a very clear route, as indeed do other amendments in this group, by which we could more firmly protect our democracy against future strains.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly pointed out, there are several different approaches that one could potentially take to this. I certainly acknowledge the merit of the approach taken in some of the other amendments regarding both ensuring that the 2007 and 2011 Acts referred to in them are properly catered for and, indeed, the interesting idea of the one-year limit that is present in one of those amendments.

My concern, though, with those alternative approaches —I will certainly listen carefully and with interest to noble Lords who contribute to the rest of this debate—is that those alternative approaches rest, in the end, on the willingness of Parliament to vote down secondary legislation. In the end, that is the prime safeguard in them. It is obviously a matter for another day or occasion to debate the merits of the deeply held, principled position that I know many in both the Labour and Conservative groups here take—I do not share it but I appreciate it—that the main opposition party in the House of Lords should not vote for a fatal amendment to a statutory instrument.

The problem is, whatever one thinks are the rights or wrongs of that principle, that that essentially means that any safeguard that is based on the idea that the Government have to put a statutory instrument or secondary legislation in some form to Parliament is of very little use. In the end, when push comes to shove, whatever the principal opposition party is in the Lords, it will say, “As a matter of principle, we aren’t going to vote it down”. It is a safeguard that, when needed, will not keep us very safe.

I said that I was going to be optimistic and try to persuade the Minister that these amendments are a helpful measure. I say that because I am absolutely sure that, in good faith, the Government never set out to say that some councillors who are elected for a four-year term of office should stay in office—as it will turn out under their plans—for seven years. I am sure that was not the original intention, but it is unfortunately the position that we have stumbled into through a sequence of events. That is a very significant and, outside of wartime, unprecedented extension to the term of office of councillors. We have ended up in this unprecedented and frankly unsatisfactory position because some of those councillors who have had their four-year term extended to seven years are in power, running councils, and they are being given three extra years in power without the public getting a say on that.

As I said, I appreciate that that is the result of a sequence of circumstances, and in that sense it seems that the Government have stumbled into a series of events. Whether through the mechanisms set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, or through mine, the advantage of making it a little harder for the Government to cancel elections in the future is that it would protect Governments from stumbling into a similar sequence of events again. So I hope we will hear some movement from the Minister in due course on this issue.

But of course, like any good Liberal Democrat, I cannot resist the opportunity to talk a little about the merits of different voting systems, so I will refer briefly to Amendment 213, although the ticking clock protects noble Lords from a William Gladstone-type speech about the relative merits of different voting systems, tempting though that may be. Although it is obviously no surprise, I am sure, for the Minister to hear me say that I certainly prefer the supplementary vote to first past the post, it is a real shame that the Government do not intend at the moment to go a step further and introduce the alternative vote. The big weakness of the supplementary vote is that you have to correctly second-guess the two parties that will be in the final round so that you can cast your second preference vote in a way that will be counted.

I will briefly make reference to the research by the Make Votes Matter coalition that was carried out a couple of years ago and which encompassed 217 different elections conducted by the supplementary vote in the UK. It found that only 46% of the second preferences that people expressed actually ended up being counted in the final run-off round. Over half of all second preferences correctly filled in on the ballot paper none the less got discarded because they were for candidates who did not make it into the second round. That is quite a flaw in the supplementary vote. It is a system essentially designed for a world in which it is pretty clear who the two main parties, or the two main candidates, in an election will be. However good or bad it may be, we are certainly not in a situation where that is the norm in our politics any more, so I very much hope the Minister will consider the merits of the alternative vote.

On Amendment 214, I simply observe that, in Scotland, the single transferable vote is used for council elections and is pretty popular with not only many members of the Labour Party but indeed many members of the Conservative Party there. If it works well in Scotland, as it does, perhaps we should be able to have it in England as well.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will not talk about different voting systems; I cannot think of anything more boring—I am so sorry. Actually, lots of things are more boring. I could not agree less with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the value of first past the post. It is a thoroughly discredited system and its time is over. What we see again and again is that we have a completely unrepresentative Government, as we do at the moment: they have a huge majority on a small proportion of the vote, and the Conservatives should be thinking more about how they can get back into power—obviously, I do not particularly want that.

Under first past the post, councillors elected often bear little resemblance to how people actually vote. Large numbers of residents can turn out, cast their ballots in good faith and still see their views go completely unrepresented. That leaves too many people feeling that local government is something done to them rather them with them, and proportional representation offers a way out of that. My noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle’s Amendment 215, and Amendment 214 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would allow a shift towards a voting system that would reflect the diversity of political opinion in our communities and reward candidates who can build broad support, rather than those who simply scrape through on a minority of the vote. It would open the door to councils that would look more like the places they serve, politically and socially, and that really matters, especially at a time when councils are becoming larger, more remote and more powerful.

As the noble Lord said earlier, in Scotland local government elections have used the single transferable vote for nearly two decades. In Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, STV is well understood and widely trusted. In Wales, councils are now able to choose it for themselves. Of course, we have proportional representation in London for the London Assembly.

I have been elected under PR and under first past the post. Quite honestly, it did not feel very different, but a completely different view could be spoken and presented much more forcefully when we had more people elected under proportional representation. Voters in those countries manage perfectly well with a system that allows them to rank candidates in order of preference. The result is representation built on consent and co-operation rather than tribalism. This will be much more important as we move towards much larger councils and combined authorities. If power is to be devolved upwards, representation must be strengthened downwards.

--- Later in debate ---

To conclude, I am extremely grateful to the National Association of Local Councils, which is very supportive of Amendment 218 which seeks to ensure that local authorities can hold council meetings in an online or hybrid format under the circumstances I have set out. It believes the Bill should be amended to make provision for remote meetings and to make reforms to standards regimes to make this possible. With those few words, I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 219 and 220. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has indicated, they attempt to achieve something very similar to Amendment 218 but go a bit more broadly. All three of the amendments in this group get at the idea that it is reasonable—in some carefully defined and carefully protected circumstances—for councillors to be able to participate in council business even though they are not able to be physically present.

One of the reasons for putting forward these two amendments is, frankly, a bit of embarrassment. Both Houses of Parliament, in their own way, allow some degree of remote or proxy participation. Although every noble Lord is undoubtedly very special, are noble Lords and Members of the other place really so special that, while it is okay for us to be able to do that, oh my goodness, we must not let councillors do it? Frankly, it is a little embarrassing that, although we understand that these powers need to be carefully protected and defined, we say that this is okay for ourselves, yet, so far, we do not allow councillors the same thing.

This is also a matter of pragmatism. Through the experience of the House of Lords, through the experience of the other place, through the experience of councils in lockdown and through the experience of councils in the UK but outside of England, we have a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience of how measures such as those set out in the amendments in this group work. The answer is that they have worked well. They have worked successfully. They are good ways of dealing with, for example, some of the challenges of geography and weather that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned earlier. They are good ways of dealing with some of the challenges around increasing participation in politics and the diversity of our elected representatives.

These are not just my views. The Government helpfully carried out a thorough consultation last year, asking for views on remote attendance and proxy voting in local authorities. Just as I did in the case of my earlier amendment on cattle grids, I will quote approvingly from the Government’s words—with more success, I hope, than I had on that amendment.

In the consultation, question 2 asked:

“Do you agree with the broad principle of granting local authorities powers to allow remote attendance at formal meetings?”


A resounding 86% said “yes” in response to that. Similarly, question 8 in that consultation asked:

“Do you think legislative change to allow councillors to attend local authority meetings remotely should or should not be considered for the following reasons?”


Reason number one was:

“Councils would be more resilient in the event of local or national emergencies”;


91% agreed with that. This was another option given:

“It would likely increase the diversity of people willing and able to stand for election in their local area”;


79% of people agreed with that.

The government consultation rightly concluded that, in the Government’s own words:

“The government is of the view that in-person authority meetings remain vital for local democracy”—


I agree—

“but that hybrid and remote attendance, and proxy voting, will enable local authorities in England to develop more modern, accessible and flexible working practices”.

The Government went on to say:

“We have carefully considered arguments for and against remote attendance and proxy voting, and we plan to legislate to support permanent provision in relation to both policies, when parliamentary time allows”.


Having raised this at Second Reading and listened carefully to what the Minister said in response, the puzzle for me is that we have in front of us a piece of legislation that would enable exactly those conclusions from the Government’s consultation to be implemented. The Government say that they need parliamentary time to do this; well, the parliamentary time is immediately in front of us.

The Government like talking about how they are taking action on many issues at pace. Here is the opportunity to act at a swift pace on the results of that consultation from last year. I very much hope that, when we hear the Minister’s response, even if we do not get my most optimistic outcome—a straightforward, “We agree to these amendments”—we will at least get to unpick this mystery a little. Why, when the consultation and the Government’s own conclusions were so clearly in favour, and other arguments so clearly stack up in favour, are the Government not taking the opportunity of the Bill in front of us to proceed at pace and implement what they themselves have said they wish to do?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, like many others, I had a leading position as a councillor during Covid. The Minister and I corresponded on many calls. Remote working worked well during Covid, but there were some famous failures. Some councillors fell asleep live on YouTube—not in my council, I hasten to add. Others went to the toilet, got undressed or got out of the shower. Children bumbled in. There was that famous meeting where a woman had no authority but managed to cut the other chap out; I cannot remember her name, but we all know the one. So, yes, it can work, and there are safeguards.

I completely disagree with proxy voting, so I have no truck with Amendment 219. However, I am broadly sympathetic with Amendments 218 and 220, which are trying to ask how we can participate remotely, although I find it difficult to support them as they are currently constructed.

This is complicated. There are different types of meeting, and each has different consequences. There is the full council meeting, in which everyone gets together. It is important that everyone gets together to cast their vote as a council rather than as a set of individuals sitting at home—in their underpants, let us say. There are executive meetings and cabinet meetings. They are really important, and people want to see them; there are rights of attendance, and people will want to lobby. There are scrutiny meetings, but that is not an executive function. Then there are policy-formation committees, which are not for decision-making but are part of scrutiny. So we have the distinction between what are and are not decision-making committees. Then there are quasi-judicial meetings, such as those on planning or licensing; in-person attendance is really important for those. None of this fine-grained texture is in the amendments but, if they are to progress, it should be.

Local government is becoming more complicated. There is certainly a need to travel more, particularly in the larger authorities such as North Yorkshire. The answer to that is not to have something quite as big as North Yorkshire, but we are where we are. There are going to be more combined meetings under these combined county authorities. There are also more trading companies involved in local authorities now. They are at arm’s length from the council—they may be owned by the council but they are not of the council—and we have to take them into consideration, too. There are significantly more partnerships, some of which are joint committees of more than one council. We would have to work out, if two councils came together and one had the freedom to do online meetings and the other did not, how that would mesh in joint committees, of which we are seeing a lot more. We have development corporations as well. There is a lot of public money there, so will they be meeting in private or in public?

We have to sort out some of the ground rules. It is not quite as simple as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh said. I am interested in taking this forward, but it will need a lot more work before Report before any of it could really be considered a realistic proposal, rather than just a good idea for probing.

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Pack Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we are considering today a Statement of real constitutional significance. It concerns the decision to cancel scheduled local elections, and in doing so, raises fundamental questions about where responsibility lies, how accountability is exercised, and how seriously we take the rights of the citizen to choose who governs them.

The Secretary of State has made no secret of his views. He has spoken of a system he regards as wasteful, of the need for greater focus and capacity, and of elections which he has described, in his own words, as “pointless”. If that reflects a settled judgment, noble Lords in this House are entitled to ask why it has not been stated with equal clarity here, and why Ministers have appeared reluctant to accept openly the consequences of that position.

At the centre of this lies a more troubling question. Are elections now to be treated as an optional feature of local democracy, to be set aside when they become inconvenient or administratively awkward? Elections are not a discretionary exercise. They are the means by which consent is renewed and authority sustained. They are an integral part of our democracy.

That leads, inevitably, to the issue of responsibility. By asking councils to make the request, Ministers avoid coming to the Dispatch Box to say plainly that they have chosen to deny more than 3.7 million people their vote. Is this not, in effect, a means of shifting a difficult and politically uncomfortable decision away from those who have in fact taken it?

This sits uneasily alongside the broader story of reorganisation itself. A year on from its announcement, there remains little clarity about boundaries, structures or timetables—by timetables, I mean for the whole project across the country. Councils are being asked to manage disruption and cost while certainty moves ever further out of reach. When it will happen seems still unknown by the Government, or, if it is not unknown, it is unannounced.

From our consideration of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, we know that this legislation centralises powers, risks increasing costs for working people and leaves communities with a diminished voice.

Elections have been postponed before, but never on this scale and never in this manner. In the past, elections have always been postponed in a planned way, with plenty of time for councils to organise themselves and, particularly, plenty of time for them to talk to their communities who are affected and give them a voice and some clarity.

Democracy is not strengthened by avoidance nor protected by the quiet displacement of responsibility. If Ministers believe that elections should not take place, they should say so plainly, take responsibility for that choice and defend it openly. Surely the Government have learned from their mistakes at last year’s elections.

The Electoral Commission has been clear that scheduled elections should proceed as planned and that capacity constraints are not a legitimate justification for delay. I ask the Minister: why was the independent guardian of our electoral system not consulted before a Labour Government took the decision to cancel local elections, and what does that say about how lightly this decision was made?

Finally, will the same thing happen again next year?

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are presenting this latest round of election cancellations as an unexceptional administrative move that is justified by precedent, but I think that is fundamentally wrong. Cancelling elections should be a matter of last resort, triggered by global war or a domestic catastrophe. We should take pride in our commitment to democracy. We should have a pride that crosses party boundaries and enthuses Ministers about the value and preciousness of democracy. Instead, unfortunately, the Government seem to be treating elections as an administrative inconvenience, something to be brushed aside rather than cherished.

I could get all fire and brimstone and dust off grand quotes from Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln or Fawcett, but, really, I am just disappointed by how lightly the Government seem to be treating this matter. Exhibit A is the comments of the Secretary of State, who said that fixing potholes was more important than running scheduled elections—no regrets, no apologies and no reluctance about cancelling but, instead, that poverty of low expectations, as if fixing potholes and running polling days are just too much and just not possible.

The Government claim that there is precedent for all that they are doing, but I have listened and read very carefully what has been said: all the peacetime examples that have been cited extended the time in office of councillors only by up to an extra year. But rather than one or two extra years, the Government’s plans will mean that many councillors, elected for a four-year term of office, will end up being in power for a full seven years—three years on top, in a completely unprecedented way.

This is not what the Government said they were going to do. The Minister said last March, when we were debating a previous round of election cancellations:

“We have no plans to postpone district council elections in 2026”. —[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1516.]


Likewise, the Minister also said that it was a

“postponement for 12 months only”.—[Official Report, 24/3/25; col. 1514.]

We are, of course, now in a rather different situation. That U-turn has not been justified by precedent, and certainly not by the need to fight the scourge of potholes; it is a U-turn, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, that flies directly in the face of the Electoral Commission’s very specific advice that

“we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”.

It also strikes me as being an unwisely short-term perspective to cultivate a culture in which elections are so often cancelled and in which terms of office that are meant to be four years get extended up to seven. Is that really a wise legacy to leave for a future Government of who knows what political complexion?

As the Government seem set on this course, let me ask three specific questions of the Minister. First, will the Government reimburse councils for the cost of preparing for elections that are now being cancelled? Secondly, given how much the Government have talked up the benefits of their plans to introduce elected mayors, which are part of the wider picture of election delays, will the Government publish estimates of the cost to economic growth of those delays in bringing in the elected mayors? Thirdly, given the importance of protecting our democracy—even in the face of potholes—will the Government commit to giving the Electoral Commission proper independence and removing the Government’s power to give it instructions over policy and strategy? That would show a real commitment to protecting and valuing democracy.

Local Elections: Cancellation

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

We are undertaking a once-in-a-generation reorganisation of local government. We have now received proposals on this issue from all areas and from councils across the political spectrum. It is only right that we listen to councils when they express concerns about their capacity. Local leaders know their areas best and are best placed to judge their own capacity.

On the noble Baroness’s question about the timescale, if she is referring to the timescale for the reorganisation, we have been very clear with local authorities about when we wanted their proposals in. The priority areas are moving ahead at pace now, and we are going out to consultation on the other areas in February. We will be come back to them before the Summer Recess to let them know of the Secretary of State’s decisions.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, it is disappointing that the Government appear set on disregarding the Electoral Commission’s views, which were that

“we do not think that capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long planned elections”.

However, as that seems to be the course that we are set on, can the Minister confirm that county councillors in places such as Sussex will have their term of office extended only by one year, and that the Government will not end up extending their term of office by two years until the new councils are due to come in? An extension of two years would mean that councillors elected for four years would end up serving a term of seven years. Can the Minister unequivocally rule out any possibility that councillors will end up serving seven-year terms?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

On the noble Lord’s point about the Electoral Commission, we wrote to the Electoral Commission to notify it, and last week I met the commission to discuss the matter. On elections to county councils, our intention is to hold elections for the shadow authorities in 2027.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, like my colleagues on these Benches, I am a strong supporter of devolution. I was therefore sadly disappointed to see in this Bill the number of areas where power is still to be with Whitehall and not local government, where opportunities for genuine devolution are missed, and where it risks adding to, rather than reducing, the legal complexity faced by local government. I will give brief examples of each and, in doing so, I hope to suggest some areas in which amendments may, in due course, help improve the Bill.

I start with the most fundamental of provisions: people’s right to elect those who govern them. We all recognise that in some exceptional circumstances it can be necessary to delay democracy. For example, I doubt few, if any, in this House would think it was a mistake to delay the general election during the Second World War. However, such delays should be the rare exceptions, at moments of major crisis when safety is at risk. Yet the Bill as it stands will continue the power of a central government, including any future Government of who knows what level of commitment to democracy, to cancel simply by order of the Minister elections that have been previously scheduled. That is far too low a bar. The postponing of democracy should require the full permission of Parliament, through primary legislation. I hope the Minister will say more about why the Government view local democracy as not being worthy of the protection that would come from requiring primary legislation to interfere with it.

I will give two examples of where powers could and should be devolved but are being kept within Whitehall’s grip. Here in this House, we let Members participate remotely. It is a carefully limited right but one that is used and works, whether or not we happen to agree with those remotely-contributed views. Personally, I would make the rules more permissive, but, even as they stand, they are more permissive than those Parliament allows local councils in England. If we think it is okay for us to decide these matters for ourselves, even though there is not the safeguard of elections for people to kick us out if we get it wrong, why should we withhold that right from democratic councils? Indeed, we have seen remote participation used successfully in local government around the UK, both during Covid and since, outside of England. To give credit where it is due, earlier this year the Government made positive noises about introducing new rights for remote participation in English local government, with the proviso of needing to find parliamentary time in due course. Well, here we are in Parliament and we have local government legislation in front of us, and a good chunk of time allocated. I hope the Minister can tell us more about why this opportunity to get on and act, and get this sorted, is not being taken.

Another example of how the Bill still holds so much power tightly at the centre is cattle-grids. For those of us who are collectors of examples of unusual centralisation, the grip of Whitehall on permission to install a new cattle-grid is, in its own way, a famous one. My hopes rose when I saw cattle-grids mentioned in the White Paper. However, looking through the Bill, I see that the decentralisation of those powers does not seem to have made it into the legislation. Indeed, the whole bundle of decentralisation mentioned alongside cattle-grids in the White Paper seems to have been watered down significantly. I hope this is not due to any change of mind by the Government, or to a sudden fear that, if the controlling, centralised hand of the Secretary of State is relaxed, we will have a sudden outbreak of mad cattle-grid disease sweeping the country. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister as to what has happened to those final two sentences in the section of the White Paper on local government taking back control.

On the third area I mentioned—the risks of adding to, rather than reducing, the legal burden on local government and the complexity in the Bill, as touched on earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—my point is that so much of the legislation passed by Parliament ends up never being commenced. We do all the work to legislate but the law then sits there, with different pieces buried in different places within it, never getting commenced. I appreciate that, for understandable and practical reasons, the commencement provisions in this Bill are not simple, stretching over three full pages. However, the way the commencement of different parts is left open, particularly in Clause 92(7), runs the risk of repeating what has happened to so much previous local government legislation, in that it never gets commenced. I hope the Minister will share where the Government’s thinking is on having a clear cut-off date, so that if parts of this legislation are not otherwise commenced sooner, there is a backstop that catches the remaining items and ensures that the Bill does not become just another addition to that huge sludge of bits and pieces of local government legislation that are passed but never enacted and hang around in limbo.

I hope that, as the Bill progresses, we will see from the Government more willingness to enact genuine devolution. I particularly look forward to hearing from the Minister the Government’s thinking on the right threshold for cancelling elections, why elected councillors should not have the same rights that we hold for ourselves in allowing remote participation in their proceedings, whether the Government are still committed to devolving power over cattle-grids, and what they will do to ensure that, whatever Parliament passes, it really does at some point come into force. If we can get those issues right, the Bill will be very much the better for it.

Election Law

Lord Pack Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Pack]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to commence work on the consolidation of election law.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, we recognise that electoral law is complex and I am grateful to the noble Lord for his persistence in pushing that point. However, consolidation would take longer than the time available in this Parliament. We have set out our strategy for elections, which represents a way to make real progress, setting out actions that we will take to simplify, protect and promote our democracy. As detailed in our manifesto, we already have an ambitious agenda to improve our elections, including expanding the franchise and strengthening the rules around donations. We are focusing on delivering that agenda.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the clarity of the Minister’s Answer and the clear commitment to the principle of consolidating election law. I take the point that it is a time-consuming measure, but is that not why it is all the more important that the Government make a start on it now, rather than putting it off?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I do understand the impatience that the noble Lord pushes. We did a recent review of electoral registration conduct to improve resilience, reduce risk and support administrators and voters alike. We are now taking the key priorities from that review and enacting them to make sure that our election system is as good as it can be without creating a long delay before we do anything.

Political Parties and Elections Act 2009

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Pack]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to commence the provisions in section 9 of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government committed in their manifesto to protect our democracy by strengthening the rules around donations. We are currently considering a series of policy interventions, such as enhanced checks by recipients of donations and tighter controls on donors, including more restrictions around company donations. This will help enhance the protections of our system against potential risks. We plan to set out further details in our strategy for elections, which we expect to publish this summer.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, it is 16 years since Parliament passed the simple but powerful safeguard in Section 9, in response to a financial scandal over the origin of donations. Implementation does not require any time for primary legislation, nor for the Treasury to be asked for any money, but it would make our political finances that bit more transparent, ethical and trustworthy. So, what is the reason for the Minister not to go back to the department this afternoon and simply say to colleagues, “I’ve got a commencement clause. I think we should sort this”?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I know the noble Lord has done a lot of research in this area, and we welcome that research. But, as I said in my previous Answer, we are committed to strengthening the rules around donations, improving our democracy and protecting our democracy from foreign interference. That will all be laid out in the summer and I am sure that, when it is, the noble Lord will be able to have a look, reflect and feed back into the whole process.