City of Wakefield (Mayoral Referendum) Order 2012

Lord Smith of Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I came to listen, but I am provoked into saying a few words because, not for the first time in my brief period in this House, I find myself almost totally in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who has deservedly acquired a reputation for speaking his mind and speaking with a lot of common sense.

I was one of the very few Conservative Members of Parliament who voted against the abolition of the GLC. An amendment of mine came quite close to defeating the Government of the day. My argument was complex, but it was basically that I thought that if we abolished the GLC we would finish up with something worse. I believe that that has proved to be an accurate prophecy. We have the mayor and of course I shall campaign for his re-election later this year as a dutiful member of his party.

I would not be detaining the Grand Committee now if these Benches were crammed, but as they are not, and as I believe that I am the only Conservative Back-Bencher in the Grand Committee Room, I want to say this to the Grand Committee, the Minister and everyone else. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, does not claim to speak for the Labour Party, and I do not claim to speak for the Conservative Party, but just as many of his colleagues in his party have grave reservations about the whole concept of the elected mayor, so do many people in the party to which I have belonged for well over half a century.

Many people feel, as does the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that it is not quite the way we do things in this country. I believe in the collegiate atmosphere of local government which, at its best, delivers a real service. As the country has demonstrated many times—the greatest example of this was Joe Chamberlain in Birmingham—that does not prevent a great leader emerging. The balances and counterbalances that are built into the committee system make for better local government. They also provide a greater challenge for individual councillors, each one of whom has the opportunity to shine. Since we moved to elected mayors and cabinet systems, one has very often found in local authorities that only a handful of people really count. I do not believe that that can be right. I do not believe that it is in the British tradition to elect one supremo to be the mayor.

I am entirely happy about the concept of a referendum. I did not used to like referendums, and I still do not like them very much, but the fact is that they are now here. Because they are here and they are here in abundance today, it makes absolutely uncontestable the case that there must be a referendum if anybody is ever so silly as to propose the abolition of the House of Lords. However, that is another story, although I felt it right to get it in because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, at least is entirely at one with me on that, and maybe others are too.

If we must spend this money, let these towns and cities have their referendums. I shall be interested in the turnout. I personally do not believe that any referendum should count unless there is a threshold. Here I have great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who went along those lines not long ago. If it is the genuine wish of local people to have an elected mayor in these cities, having had the opportunity to consider the merits and the problems, so be it. However, I hope that they will reflect very carefully and that they will realise that if they go for an elected mayor—somebody with real executive authority—they will be turning their backs on a system of local government which has served this country well over the years. That is a system which I and many others have admired and one in which the Minister has played a considerable and constructive part, as has the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who has an enviable record in these matters. They provided leadership, but it was leadership of a team. The danger with a mayor is that he dictates to a team. People should bear those things in mind.

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, I was intrigued by the Minister’s introduction in which she gave examples of some successful mayors in Spain. I do not suppose that she wants to mention those mayors who are now serving time in Spanish jails for accepting bribes for land usage, or the famous mayoral model in New Orleans when it suffered from flooding a few years ago and the mayor simply dithered and created yet more problems.

I was intrigued by the point the Minister made, with which I totally agree, about the importance of the economic role of cities. The issue that I have with the Government and some people on my side is that we are talking here about cities whose boundaries are historic. I think back to the 1972 reform of local government when most of the boundaries of these places were established, so they are historic to that extent. However, they are pretty arbitrary and do not reflect the way that people’s lives are led now.

The city and region I know best is Manchester, but the Manchester economy is not just that of the city of Manchester. The boundary of Manchester comprises a very strange long sausage shape but its economy spreads not only into the nine districts around it but also into parts of Cheshire and West Yorkshire. That is what is driving the growth that we all want to see. I was slightly perturbed by the Minister’s answer as Manchester is holding successful talks with the Government on the new deal for cities. I welcome the approach that the Government are taking to that. However, that approach appears to be conurbation-wide, not city-wide. It does not actually give things to Manchester City Council. However, we are talking about how we can, through the combined authority, do things better and achieve the joint objectives that we have on economic growth for Manchester, which clearly is part of the Government’s agenda as well.

As I say, there is some genuine debate and discussion going on and I want to place on record how much I support what the Government are doing on this matter. I have met Greg Clark on a number of occasions and he is pushing this devolution well. However, I do not want to see devolution to Manchester—not that I am jealous of Manchester—because, if we are to be successful as an economy, the devolution has to apply to a much bigger area. The economic growth that the Government want will not be achieved unless the Manchester city region does well, not simply the narrowly defined city of Manchester. I know that that is largely the case in other conurbations. I want to refer briefly to West Yorkshire, as I know that area well. West Yorkshire has not really got its act together well. It has three very large and important areas which we know are up for city roles.

My fear in a sense is that once you have become mayor of Bradford or Wakefield or Leeds, your desire is to do well for that part of the conurbation and you fail to understand that, if you want to do well for those three parts, it is the whole conurbation that needs to be successful. Clearly I was at odds with people in my party some time ago who thought that it was a panacea that would solve the problems of local government. Some very good authorities have been set up through the traditional models. I know that the Minister was very actively involved in one of them; we three were on the old Association of Metropolitan Authorities Policy Committee many years ago.

I want, as the Government do, for cities to do well for the whole of Britain, but I am not sure that this is the way in which to achieve that.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the last time when I spoke for the Opposition in this Room, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, also participated in the debate. A couple of days after that, he was taken very seriously ill. I am delighted that he is back with us and in such excellent form. I am sure that we wish him continued good health.

It is perhaps appropriate that we are discussing these orders in the Moses Room, not because I may be distantly related to the gentleman in question but because he is portrayed as coming down bearing 10 commandments. The Minister of course brings 11 commandments to 11 authorities, and they may receive a similar reception to that which the originals received. I know not—we shall see.

Since the Prime Minister’s arguably somewhat clumsy intervention the other day, referendums have become almost the issue of the day, at least in the minds of the political class. I suspect that the majority of people are rather more concerned with issues such as the faltering economy, unemployment and the fate of the NHS—and, to judge by today’s e-mails, the Welfare Reform Bill and perhaps the legal aid Bill. Many of us have been deluged with e-mails about that; I am bound to say that I have never received a single e-mail suggesting that we need referendums for elected mayors. But 11 authorities will now face compulsory referendums, not because as in Scotland there is a public demand for it but because the Government are determined to pursue this agenda.

It is interesting that the Explanatory Notes affirm that the Government believe that local authorities and the communities that they represent are best placed to reach decisions on how their local authority should operate and be governed. They say that the 2000 Act provides for local people to have a say on the governance model adopted by their local authority via a referendum. But it is one thing for people to have a say and another to require them to vote or at least hold a referendum, as the Government are now doing. Yet 5 per cent of the electorate in any of those 11 cities, or any other local authority, could at any time over the past 10 years have requisitioned a referendum—and, of course, the vast majority have not done so. A number of referendums have been held, 38 in all; 13 of them agreed that they should go ahead with the mayoral system and 25 rejected it. Some of those authorities called a referendum, as they were allowed to do; there was nothing wrong with that. That included Tower Hamlets and Leicester. In other cases there was a petition.

My noble friend Lord Grocott questioned the turnout in referendums; in only one case apart from three referendums held on the same day as the general election did the turnout exceed 40 per cent. Incidentally, one of the authorities with a referendum subsequently decided to abandon the mayoral system. The turnout in the five authorities that voted for an elected mayor ranged as follows: 16 per cent, 18 per cent, 21 per cent, 25 per cent and 27 per cent. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the concept. Yet the mayoral system was supposed to lead to a great upsurge in local democracy.

I was present when this concept was floated. It was at a meeting—I do not think that it is wrong for me now to reveal it 15 years on—of the joint policy committee of the Labour Party, a somewhat cumbersome, bureaucratic piece of machinery, which consisted of members of the then shadow Cabinet and of the national executive of the Labour Party. I was representing local government and some other unfortunate was representing the Labour MEPs. Tony Blair announced to the apparent consternation of Frank Dobson, who was the environment spokesman of the day, that we were going to have an elected Mayor of London. The only person who asked a question about that, in a somewhat sceptical vein, was me.

The discussion lasted five minutes and that then became Labour Party policy, which you may think is an interesting way to formulate policy, but there it was. The constant theme of those advocating this was that it would strengthen local democracy and lead to greater involvement. That has not been the case, as my noble friend, Lord Grocott, has rightly pointed out, either in terms of the turnout at the referendum or in terms of the turnout in mayoral elections. In London, the first two elections showed a turnout lower than the average local authority election. At the last mayoral contest, gladiatorial as it was and as it no doubt will be again, with all the coverage proffered by the Evening Standard—noble Lords will remember coming out of tube stations and seeing the placards about the latest Ken or Boris pronouncement—the turnout was around 45 per cent, marginally higher than a council election in a major authority: it did not necessarily command huge interest.

Over and above the propriety of requiring the holding of the referendum—and I think that there is a serious flaw in the Government’s approach—there is a question of what is at stake here. We are talking about the conferring on a single individual of very wide-ranging powers combined with very little accountability. It is not as if a majority of the council can overturn a decision of the mayor. On hugely important matters, from the budget, the children’s panel, and the strategic panel of the authority and over a whole range of issues, the mayor will prevail unless two-thirds of the elected members of the council overturn him. This is a little better than the Mussolini formulation for general elections in Italy in 1923, when 25 per cent of the votes were sufficient to give 75 per cent representation in the chamber; we are not quite in that league. Nevertheless, it is a formidable degree of power concentrated in a single pair of hands. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, adduced Barcelona as an example of a mayoral authority, which indeed it is, but as she put it—perhaps without quite realising the implications of what she was saying—Maragall, who was the outstanding mayor of Barcelona, was elected as head of his party’s list. In the same way, a Prime Minister—although not as it turns out the present Prime Minister—is elected as the leader of his party: his party obtains a majority, not a single individual running for office. That is quite a distinction, yet by any standards Maragall was an outstandingly successful mayor.

The Labour Party in its wisdom once sent a delegation over to Holland. They have mayors in Holland and it was thought it would be instructive for innocent and naive Labour councillors to see what was done in Holland. They had overlooked that mayors in Holland were not elected at all by anybody. They were Crown appointments at that stage. At least the Government have not gone that far yet, but there is that huge issue of power. Equally, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, there have been distinguished local government leaders, not least in the great city of Birmingham, to which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, alluded. They have had not merely Joseph Chamberlain but his brother; he was described by Lloyd George, it will be recalled, as a “good mayor of Birmingham in a bad year”, but he was a distinguished local government figure. Successive leaders of Birmingham of, certainly, two political persuasions have been well respected. We have seen similar figures leading other councils. So while the power exists for either a council or a small percentage of an electorate to call for the holding of a referendum, it seems entirely unnecessary to prescribe that such elections should take place.

Of course, the Bill will give the Government the power to impose this system of referendum on any authority. It would be interesting if the Minister would indicate the Government's thinking on these matters. Is it likely, if a number of these referendums are successful, that they will then seek to roll out the holding of referendums elsewhere?

In relation to cost, it is reassuring that Mr Pickles has been able to find yet more money secreted in the coffers of the Department for Communities and Local Government—in addition to maintaining the weekly waste collections—to fund these referendums, although most of us would prefer to have the money for more productive purposes. In addition, there will be the cost of mayoral elections, which will be at least as much and presumably a little more than the cost of holding a referendum in the first place. I apprehend that those costs will be met by the local council if the electorate choose to go down the mayoral route.

It will be gathered that the Opposition are not entirely sympathetic to the orders that are laid today and we will be moving a Regret Motion when the matter comes before the House. I understand that there will be similar proceedings in the Commons. I am confused by the timetable. I understand that we have the statutory instruments before House of Commons, but so be it. We are looking for these matters to come before the House in February.

No doubt the Government will stick to their guns. I can only hope that people in these 11 authorities, should these referendums go ahead, have the good sense to stick with the tried and tested system of local democracy and not vote to confer huge powers into too few hands.