Local Government: Electoral Quotas

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I have met a huge number of local government representatives and MPs in the last couple of months. They are all determined to ensure that this process goes through smoothly without impacting on “business as usual” for local government. They are all very committed to doing that and have been very positive in their response to it. They see the benefits of the new arrangements in making local government more efficient and effective for the people whom they serve—which is what everyone in local government is looking for.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I bring the House’s attention to my interests in the register: primarily, that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Before I ask my question—I am probably not supposed to say this—the response that my noble friend on the ministerial side gave to my noble friend on the opposition side seems to be at odds with the answer that my noble friend on the government side gave me few weeks ago when we discussed small unitaries, because the White Paper does refer to them. It appeared that London and other small unitaries, which is most of the councils in the country, were in scope for this conversation, but it now appears that they are out of scope. I am quite happy for her to write to me to clear that up.

One thing that restricts the ability to make new councils that look sensible is the rule that says we cannot break through existing district boundaries to create a new council—that seems at odds with creating sensible boundaries—as does not being able to have two police and crime commissioners. Can my noble friend the Minister on the other side—because she is—please give me an answer as to whether those two things will be in scope?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

On the noble Lord’s first question, we have a priority programme and have already set out who is in scope for that, and we have a local government reorganisation going on. Any other considerations will come later in the programme.

It is possible to consider boundary changes as part of this process; we are discussing that with the local authorities. They will come forward on 21 March to set out their proposals. If they involve boundary changes, we will engage the Local Government Boundary Commission to take care of those.