English Devolution

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this White Paper will take away powers from local communities and risks making local government less responsive to the needs of local taxpayers. As my honourable friend in the other place rightly said:

“This is not bottom-up local leadership, but top-down templates for local government”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/12/24; col. 38.]


In government, we supported joint working between local councils, which included some unitary restructuring as well as district mergers, but Conservative Ministers were clear that any unitary restructuring had to be locally led and have local support. It was not a condition of devolution deals.

If I may, I would like to raise some of the most pressing concerns of my noble friends on these Benches. Unitary restructuring does not necessarily result in better value for money for local residents, and alignment of council taxes across different councils has generally been upwards. Creating an additional mayoral tier above local authorities also risks wasting any savings achieved through unitarisation.

This has been proven in Labour-run mayoral regions, where we have seen eye-watering mayoral precepts imposed on residents. Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan massively hiked their council tax precepts in London, now topping £471 per band D household in London under Sadiq Khan. Only Conservative mayors such as Boris Johnson have cut council tax precepts; Andy Street and Ben Houchen—now my noble friend Lord Houchen—charged nothing at all. Can the Minister give the House an assurance that the Government’s plans to change the structure of local government will deliver better services without imposing significantly higher council tax on local residents?

We expect Labour to invite proposals from councils for local government restructuring. The first wave of this restructuring would then result in county council elections in May 2025 in those chosen areas being cancelled. Does the Minister agree that no council should be bullied or blackmailed into local government restructuring?

The Government’s true attitude to devolution is clear from their approach to housing delivery. Their introduction of the concept of grey-belt land explicitly removes the green-belt requirement to safeguard the countryside from encroachment. When their assisting in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land is considered alongside the imposition of mandatory housing targets, it is increasingly clear that the Government intend to concrete over as much of the countryside as they can, while cutting building targets in cities.

Despite these changes to the planning rules and the Government’s intention to deliver 1.5 million homes, the Government have cut new housing needs targets in areas where new homes are needed—minus 11% in London, minus 38% in Birmingham and minus 55% in Coventry—while increasing the targets in areas where the housing need is clearly less acute: it is 106% in the New Forest, 199% in North Yorkshire and 487% in Westmorland and Furness. These mandatory targets are just one example of the Government’s centralisation of control over local authorities and reduction of the power of local leaders, who know their communities’ needs best. Can the Minister tell this House why a Labour Government have cut housing targets in Labour-run London, Birmingham and Coventry while imposing higher housing needs assessments on the Conservative-run councils in the New Forest and North Yorkshire, as well as in the Liberal Democrat-controlled Westmorland and Furness?

This announcement could have been so much more. It could have been a chance to rethink from scratch the duties, responsibilities and funding of local government, and to ensure that its form follows its function. Before I sit down, I have a few final questions. Can the Minister reassure this House that local authorities will be fully consulted and given time to consider the Government’s plans fully before making any decisions about their future? Can she confirm whether local authorities will have genuine choice on restructuring? Most importantly, will local residents themselves be consulted directly before any decisions on restructuring are taken forward?

In order to ensure electoral equality across the country, will His Majesty’s Government also look at the representation per capita in London and in some of the other metropolitan councils? That is really important to ensure that every person in this country gets equal representation.

Finally, I understand that local councils have been asked to submit their expressions of interest by 10 January. Can the Minister confirm that councils will then have more time—the time that they need—to consider their further steps?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I note that the Statement says:

“We will deliver a new constitutional settlement for England”.


That is a very ambitious claim. What we have in the White Paper is a great disappointment by comparison. There is a deep confusion between what is “local” and what is “regional”, which are used interchangeably and loosely throughout the White Paper. We are promised “regional Mayors” who will, we are told, also be “vital local leaders”. They will take part in the Council of the Nations and Regions alongside Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Ministers; they will also sit on a separate Mayoral Council with the Deputy Prime Minister. There is no link with Parliament here, I note, nor any link to Gordon Brown’s proposal to reform the Lords as a second Chamber to give us a role in representing the nations and regions in UK-wide debates. This looks to the Liberal Democrats like a plan designed in the Treasury both to save money, by shrinking local democratic institutions, and to convert elected mayors into agents of central government, spending funds that they hope to obtain by negotiations with the Treasury—the integrated settlements—without taking into account the importance of embedding democratic government in local and regional networks.

Chapter 4.1 of the White Paper begins:

“England is made up of thousands of communities—towns, cities and villages”.


It then proposes to squeeze those thousands of local communities into somewhere between 30 and 40 combined authorities, with fewer than 100 unitary authorities beneath them, each containing between 500,000 and 1 million people. That is not a unitary system; it is a new two-tier system in which strategic decisions will be taken by the upper mayoral tier—in effect, by one elected person. Local democracy rests on the relationship between voters in their communities and the councillors who represent them. It is the bedrock of democratic politics and of political parties, which draw their campaigners, their members and, often, their recruits into national politics from these local activities. But here is a proposal to cut further the number of elections and elected councillors and to remove them to a much greater distance from those they try to represent, with 15,000 voters or more in each ward.

England’s voters tell pollsters that they deeply mistrust Westminster politics and trust their local representatives more. This measure risks deepening public mistrust of democracy further and weakening political parties; it asks voters to identify with one elected mayor overseeing some millions of people and quite possibly elected on little over a quarter of the votes cast. I remind the Minister that, in July’s election, five parties won more than 10% of the national vote in England. First past the post risks producing some remarkably unrepresentative mayors elected on perhaps 27% or 28% of the vote.

We will need to strengthen the really local tier—the town and parish councils—to compensate for this shift of power upward. I could not find any discussion of parish and town councils in the White Paper. Did I miss some passing references? No other democratic state in Europe, North America or Australasia has such a thin framework of local and regional government. England will remain the most highly centralised state in the democratic world.

Chapter 4 declares:

“There is clearly an appetite for reorganisation in parts of England”.


We are given no evidence of such an appetite among the public. We have had multiple reorganisations in the past 50 years. Now we are going to have another one, which will cost additional money—as all reorganisations do—and disrupt services during the transition. Has the Treasury budgeted for the costs of transition? It then goes on to propose that there should be new rules on remote attendance and proxy voting for councillors at meetings. This is not surprising, given the size of some of our new councils. In the new North Yorkshire Council, it takes some councillors 90 minutes or more to drive to council meetings, so remote attendance and proxy voting are necessary. That is not local government or local democracy, however.

Lastly, in chapter 5 we are told:

“Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities will be held to account for the outcomes associated with their Integrated Settlement”


by “reporting to central government”. That is mayors acting as agents of central government, not responding to local and regional issues. The Government seem to want to rush through this reorganisation without waiting for local consultation or the agreement of other parties. This is not the best way to deliver a long-lasting constitutional settlement for England at a time when trust in our local democracy is lower than it has been for a very long time.

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who attended the drop-in session on the White Paper yesterday.

The English devolution White Paper sets out what I will not apologise for being an ambitious new framework for English devolution, moving power out of Westminster and back to those who know their areas best as part of our plan for change. We want to see all of England access this devolved power by forming strategic authorities that can make the key decisions to drive economic growth, with a clear preference for mayors. We will do this with areas and will launch a devolution priority programme for those that want to be on the fast track to mayoral devolution. We will legislate for a ministerial directive for areas that are not able to agree, so that no part of England misses out on that programme.

We have created a new devolution framework to be put into statute through the English devolution Bill, which will give areas a range of new powers across planning, infrastructure, transport, skills, business and energy, with consistent voting arrangements to allow effective decision-making.

We will also clearly set out the criteria by which all mayoral strategic authorities will be able to access further powers, including integrated settlements, to allow greater flexibility of funding by becoming established mayoral strategic authorities. This framework will grow over time, including through suggestions from strategic authorities to be discussed at the Mayoral Council.

We recognise that devolving power requires us to fix the foundations of local government so that we can empower communities at all levels. We will give communities a new community right to buy for valued community assets.

As councils are the foundation of our state, we will fix their foundations through fairer funding and multiyear financial settlements to give councils the certainty they need. We will also end the destructive “Whitehall knows best” mindset that micromanages their decisions and replace it with the principle of constitutional autonomy and partnership—so devolution by default.

It is important that councils are the right size and shape to serve the people they represent, with simpler structures that people can understand. That is why we will facilitate a bold programme of local government reorganisation for two-tier areas and for smaller, failing, unitary councils. We will invite proposals for reorganisation from all these areas and phase delivery—a point made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord—taking into account where reorganisation can unlock devolution, where areas are keen to move quickly, or where it can help address wider failings. We will work closely with areas to deliver an ambitious first wave of reorganisation in Parliament.

Before I answer the specific questions, I would like to say that I am not going to take any lessons from the party opposite about the management of councils. When we came into power, many councils were going bust and issuing Section 114 notices, with a growing queue behind them of councils struggling with their finances. The lack of fiscal discipline in the audit regime left a backlog of 1,000 audits and £100 million that the previous Government could not account for. How has that helped democracy and local accountability? There was also a deepening crisis in adult social care. Parents were having to take their own councils to court to get the special needs provision their children were entitled to. There was a homelessness emergency that has seen the utter scandal of 150,000 children living in temporary accommodation, and councils having to use up to 40% of their net revenue budget to fund it. I am taking no lessons about the stewardship of public finances or efficiency of local service delivery.

I turn to the specific questions. It is not taking away local powers to give a range of new powers from Westminster to local areas so that decisions can be taken locally. I have already outlined what some of those areas will be. Making sure that decisions on health, transport, skills, workforce and so on can be taken at a local level is an increase in local powers, not a reduction.

The noble Baroness asked about the mayoral tier and whether that would waste money. Of course, she spoke about Labour-run mayoral precepts. I suppose if your principle is to deliver worse services with more cost, we could look at the previous Government’s management of funding. In a Statement later today, I will make a number of announcements about local government funding, making sure that local government is funded properly to deliver the services it is charged with delivering.

The noble Baroness also said that no councils should be bullied or blackmailed into doing this. This programme has been driven by local government; the demands have come from local government ever since we started the devolution programme. It is local councils that will work together with partners in their areas to pull together the programmes. This is a locally driven programme.

The noble Baroness made some points about the green belt and the grey belt. I am afraid that the assumption she made is just wrong. There is a specific proposal to protect those areas of green belt that are nationally protected areas or have sites of special scientific interest. There is a specific proposal about brownfield first. A sequential approach to the use of land is set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

The noble Baroness raised the new calculation on housing targets. When the previous Government withdrew the requirement for mandatory housing targets, we immediately saw a reduction in supply. We have made a new calculation based on affordability and housing need. Everywhere needs to contribute to the delivery of housing. It is really important that that happens. The new assessments are fairer from that point of view.

The noble Baroness asked about time to consider the proposals. The letter that went out—the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, has asked some questions about this letter too—clearly set out the programme. Councils and areas that want to go faster can submit proposals, but there will be more time, for those who feel they need it, to take the time they need.

On consultation with residents, it will be a legal requirement to have a consultation and the department will undertake that consultation through MHCLG resources.

Turning to the noble Lord’s questions, I am not apologising for the ambition of this plan. I think it is an ambitious plan. It is certainly not a plan from the Treasury; it has come from local government. But it is true to say that it is the problems in local government funding that mean we have to consider more efficient and effective ways of delivering service.

I understand the noble Lord’s points about local representation. When surveyed, only 23% of people felt they could have any influence over decision-making in their local areas. That is not good enough. We need to improve that rate. Whatever the system is now, it is not giving people a feeling that they can influence decisions in their area.

When you look at some of the activity of our mayors, they can use their mandate for change to make difficult decisions and drive growth in their areas, as Oliver Coppard has done in taking the Supertram back into public ownership in South Yorkshire. Mayors provide coherent leadership for their place. We have seen this already, with mayors such as Tracy Brabin leading trade missions to drive growth in their region. We want every part of England to take its place on the Council of the Nations and Regions and to have strong, effective partnerships with councils and other partners to deliver the missions we have set out to transform the country.

There is some wording about town and parish councils in the White Paper. If the noble Lord wants to contribute more on that topic, we would be pleased to hear that. I have been talking to the National Association of Local Councils and its officers about how we use them in this new system, and how the parish and town councils respond. There will be a vital role for them. There will be a vital role for front-line councillors as conveners of their neighbourhood areas in order to drive this programme forward. Mayors will certainly not be agents of central government. I know some of them quite well and it is a long stretch to describe them as such. They work very hard for their local areas and deliver really well.

I thank noble Lords for their comments today. As the former Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies, said about devolution to another of the United Kingdom’s countries, devolution is

“a process, not an event”.

We have a way to go yet. This devolution offer is the floor, not the ceiling, of the Government’s ambition. We want to continue to deepen devolution across England, developing policy with regions, including through the Mayoral Council. The White Paper is very explicit about engaging with the sector, seeking proposals from areas for devolution and local government reorganisation in their area, and engaging with mayors and councils on policies for the English devolution Bill, which we intend to lay in this Session. We welcome your Lordships’ input on how, but the aim is clear: a devolution revolution that helps us rebuild the country, deliver growth and change the politics of our country.

Housebuilding: Regional Mayors

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

That subject is very close to my heart. We have already set up a leaders’ council, which meets again next week. That is our way of communicating, on housing, development and many other issues, with leaders in parts of the country that are not currently covered by mayoral combined authorities. Further progress on the devolution agenda will be announced in the English devolution White Paper, which will also be published before the Christmas Recess.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in West Yorkshire housing has historically been a matter for local councils within the conurbation, rather than for the metropolitan mayor. Most social housing associations are based at the Bradford, Leeds or Wakefield level. Are the Government proposing to transfer responsibility for housing up from those councils to metropolitan mayors?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The full details will be published in the English devolution White Paper, but the intention is that mayors will have some strategic powers over major infrastructure in their areas and land use planning for housing. Noble Lords will see the details in the English devolution White Paper, which will be out shortly.

Council Tax

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the citizens of London had a chance to express their view in the recent election for the Mayor of London, and they did so resoundingly.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, are the Government turning their backs on the idea of tax reform for local government or as a whole? Of course it is time consuming, but tax reform is fundamentally important. We have an extremely complicated and unjust tax system. I declare an interest, as I have lived between Yorkshire and London for the last 40 years and, more years than not, I have paid higher council tax on a house in Bradford than in London. That is absurd and it is one of the things that tax reform ought to cope with.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can only reiterate my earlier statement: there are no current plans to reform council tax.

Representation of the People (Variation of Election Expenses and Exclusions) Regulations 2024

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer the strongest possible Green Party support to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. This is indeed a great cause for regret, although I follow the noble Lord in saying that I entirely accept and agree with the security clarification that, unfortunately, is clearly necessary; I have absolutely no problems with that.

On social media, you know you are catching the zeitgeist, and that people are recognising what you are saying, when it gets repeated back to you. A couple of phrases that I use often on social media are increasingly repeated back to me. One is:

“#democracy - it would be a good idea”.


The other is:

“We get the politics that the few pay for”.


The second is simply and undoubtedly a statement of fact. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, set out such figures as £10 million, but even a donation of £1 million or—in the context of the elections we are talking about —£100,000 are potentially election changing. As the noble Lord said, this is happening at the last minute. The only way that this money will come in is through a few rich people.

We have to ask this question, and I would love the Minister to answer it: why does she think people give a donation of £10 million or £1 million or £100,000? Surely they do not give it for nothing. What do they get in return?

I should perhaps make a declaration of non-interest here since, as far as Green Party election spending is concerned, this is all entirely irrelevant. We were never going to spend up to the old limits, so this does not matter to us at all except that we will face a deluge of paper and social media posts, which will attempt to flood out our modest attempts to reach and speak to the electorate. That is the practical reality.

The noble Baroness, Lady Vere, likes to ask where people will say the money should come from. I very much accept the figure from 2011 of a maximum donation of £10,000. I could set it lower, but that will do for starters. I will say what is often considered the unsayable: we need state funding of political parties and election campaigning. Instead of the few paying for the politics we get, that would mean we get the politics that everyone has chosen.

That is effectively how the Green Party funds things, how we are funding these elections and how we will fund the coming general election: by crowdfunding—people putting in their £10 or £20 and making the choice to support a local candidate. But we have a cost of living crisis. The people who would have put in £20 can now put in only perhaps £10 or £5. Yet the millionaires and billionaires are getting richer, so their donations get bigger and bigger.

I have one final point to make. The security element of this really made me think of things that can get in the way and stop candidates running, and this deserves to be raised in this context and every electoral context. I refer to the access to elected office fund for disabled people, which was closed in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. We can discuss the continuation of the pandemic, but I do not think we are in an emergency situation any longer. The Government have failed to reinstate this fund despite its inclusion in the Disability Action Plan. There was an open letter written to the Government in the November by a whole coalition of disability groups calling for this small, modest measure to find a little bit of money to enable disabled people to compete on a level playing field in elections. So my question to the Minister is: will the Government reinstate the access to elected office fund? It is probably too late for these elections—not too late for billionaires, but for disabled people to start to run —but we could at least do it for the next set of elections, which will be the general election.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I add to what my noble friend Lord Rennard said just a few brief comments. First, on the timing, I note that when the committee considered this, the Minister in the Commons said:

“I will be perfectly frank … we could have delayed this until after the elections in May”.—[Official Report, Commons, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 5/3/24; col. 6]


The Government should at least have asked themselves: how does this looks to a cynical public? Why rush it in just after it has been announced that they have received some huge donations? It looks like last-minute changing of the rules in favour of the Government.

I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat. I recall the Electoral Commission commenting some years ago that we had a much larger number of donors to our party than the Conservative Party but, of course, a much smaller total of what had been given, because our donations tend to come, at best, in £5,000 or £10,000 chunks, rather than in chunks of £1 million or £2 million or more. It looks bad.

Secondly, as my noble friend has said, the Committee on Standards in Public Life report has been on the table for some time now. It is clear that the political parties ought to be coming to a consensus on what to do about that and what to set as a limit. I am sorry that the Government have not moved in that direction. I very much hope that, immediately after the next election, whatever Government come in will move on that.

Thirdly, we have a severe problem with public confidence in our democratic politics and it is a shame that the Government are not addressing this. The sense that money counts in political campaigns is part of the worry. The whiff of corruption that comes with donors being seen to be close to the Prime Minister, with big donations coming from companies that have made their money out of public contracts given by the Government—all of those things add to disillusionment with our politics, which is fundamentally corrosive of our democratic system.

I add that we now have a right-wing television station that made a loss last year of £31 million but, in spite of making a loss, is paying over £1 million to Conservative and right-wing politicians. The £340,000 increase that my noble friend mentioned is almost exactly the sum that Jacob Rees-Mogg is receiving for the few hours a week that he puts in as a television presenter. That is all corrosive of public confidence in public life, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life is correct to say so.

This SI, coming now, adds to the sense that money is what counts in British politics. We look across the Atlantic and see what has happened in American politics as big money has taken over. We do not want that to happen here, and I deeply regret that this Government are moving in that direction.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this statutory instrument. I offer my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for his eloquent speech and detailed analysis before the House today.

The Minister will be glad to know that these Benches support the implementation of Regulation 4 of the instrument. It would be wrong for expenses incurred to protect candidates, their families and supporters to be seen as part of the cost of campaigning, and it would set a dangerous precedent if candidates requiring extra security had to forgo elements of their campaign simply to feel safe. I say that as a Member of your Lordships’ House who has unfortunately faced death threats to me and my family in recent months. I totally understand the need for parliamentarians to exercise all security measures in order to do their job and serve.

This instrument stops an obvious injustice in our electoral expense law, but our response to candidates feeling unsafe cannot simply be to tell them to open their pockets and hire security. The Government must make sure that adequate resources are in place to ensure that candidates feel secure without needing to spend their own money.

I turn to another significant part of the instrument relating to the increase to election expenses in Greater London Authority elections and local authority mayoral elections. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, dissected the issue using percentages and statistics to a profound effect. The point that election expenses have remained the same since the introduction of mayoral elections in the year 2000 has rightly been made loud and clear by noble Lords. Sadly, that figure has failed to be updated in line with inflation. It was used during the last mayoral election, 21 years after it was introduced. I understand that a significant increase is expected, given that the limit has been untouched for 24 years.

I hope that the Minister recognises why we need to ask questions about why we are raising the limit by over 80% less than two months out from the elections. The real reason why we are seeing this rise in the proposed figures is the compound failure by successive Tory Chancellors to get inflation under control. The reality is that we have seen a huge rise in inflation under this Government.

We do not intend to oppose this instrument outright, but I hope the Minister agrees that this rise does not reflect the reality that people are seeing in their day-to-day expenses. I hope she also agrees with me that future Governments should not wait until six weeks before an election to carry out an increase that is 24 years late.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, made an interesting point about election spending across the Atlantic. In 2018, after the midterm elections, I visited Capitol Hill and spoke to a Congressman. As I was congratulating him on winning his election, he said, “Well, I can’t take too many congratulations because I have to start fundraising for my next election”. This increase in the region of £19 million to £36 million is bringing money into our politics like never before. That means a lot of people are spending time fundraising when they should be serving their communities.

I hope the Minister reflects on those points and tells us when the periodic review will be for the next uplift in expenses. Will we have to wait another 24 years for a decision, or will we get told six weeks before the next set of mayoral elections? I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

It is, but we already have the Elections Act, which looked at donations and the rules behind them. That part of election law is already being dealt with.

Fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process; we cannot get away from that. I am sorry, but the Government do not agree with the noble Baroness opposite that we should have political parties funded by government. That is not a policy of this Government, and I am not sure that it is a policy of the parties opposite.

Within our current system, while there are no caps on donations received, there are limits on what can be spent in order to maintain the level playing field—and the level playing field is the same now as it was in 2000. All reportable donations over the relevant thresholds will continue, as always, to be published online. This allows anyone to see who funds a political party and ensures that a transparent and accountable system is in place for those donations, so nothing has changed in that way.

It is important that people have the opportunity to know about their political parties’ policies. We cannot get away from the fact that that takes money. All we are doing is to ensure that the money agreed in 2000 has the same spending power this year as it had then.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, brought up an issue relating to disabled people. I am sorry that I do not have an answer to that, but I will make sure I get one tomorrow. It is an important issue and I thank her for bringing that up.

I think that I have answered the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. This is about necessity within democracy; there has to be money to communicate one’s policies.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

The Minister has used the phrase “level playing field” several times. Does she think that there ought to be something about a financial level playing field in political campaigns if we are to regain the trust of the public? If one party is able to raise such large sums—much larger than the others—then the playing field is tipped heavily in one direction.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

At different times, different parties have raised large sums of money from different places over many years. I look at the party opposite, which has been funded by the unions over the years; I believe that I have seen quite large donations given to the Liberal Democrats too. On party donors, I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who asked why anybody would want to give money. Some people feel very strongly and passionately about the policies of some parties—I am not talking about just ours—and that is how politics works. The level playing field is the fact that no party can spend more on one candidate in any election than the other party.

Asking why we have waited so long, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, did, is a reasonable question. As intended by Parliament, it is for the Government of the day to review the limits and update them when they consider that to be necessary. The fact that we had low inflation for so many years probably meant that there was no real necessity to change them as quickly as perhaps we should have done. But, as we have heard, inflation has increased in recent years and the Government decided that uprating these sums was now necessary to ensure that we get that communication out to our electorate.

I think that I have answered everything, unless anybody has something that they want to repeat. I will look at Hansard to make sure, but I think the only thing that I need to respond on is the disabled allowance question.

These regulations are essential to ensure that campaigners can continue to communicate their views to voters and, importantly, that candidates and other campaigners can feel confident in procuring the security they need at any UK elections. I hope noble Lords will join me in supporting this instrument.

Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her questions. I will commit to replying in writing on how many of those groups the department has engaged with. The Minister, my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, is responsible for that engagement with those faith groups so I will ensure that we collate the information and write to the noble Baroness.

If anybody uses inappropriate language it should be condemned and called out immediately. I personally would feel comfortable doing that. However, I will confirm that anybody who is an elected representative will not be on the list.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will make two points. First, I think there was an overlap between some of the work that the Intelligence and Security Committee has been doing about foreign interference in British politics and the dangers this is trying to address. We all know that internal politics in Pakistan spills over into British cities, with Tehreek and others. There are close links between some of our communities and political parties in Pakistan; we need to watch that. I have done all my politics in West Yorkshire, and I am certainly concerned at the extent to which the growth of Hindu nationalism within India may also spill over into British communities. We certainly need to be very concerned about that; we have seen one or two instances already.

I am even more concerned about the extent to which the rise of extremely well-funded anti-democratic right-wing groups within the United States might spill over into this country, with money from those right-wing organisations trying to influence British politics. We have just seen a former leader of the Conservative Party attending a very right-wing conference in Washington, standing with people whose loyalty to democratic principles is extremely doubtful, and not being sent into suspension by the Conservative Party. That worries me considerably, and we all need to think about it. On a cross-party basis, we need to think about how we conduct our democratic debate.

That leads to my second point, which is that if one looks at opinion surveys, one sees that we face a public in Britain who are now more disillusioned with our parliamentary democracy than we have seen in our lifetimes. That breeds extremism, particularly among those who are unskilled or unemployed, or who have done badly in school. That is not entirely new; in the first election I fought, in Huddersfield in 1970, I had a National Front candidate against me, and it made for a very nasty campaign on occasions. We are well aware that unless we as democratic politicians make sure that we mind our language as we compete with each other in the forthcoming election, and do something to improve the quality of our democracy and encourage greater participation in it—membership of all political parties has gone down over the last 20 years—we will leave the bed out of which extremism grows there for it to grow. That is a problem which, before and after the election, all of us in all parties need to address.

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I acknowledge the noble Lord’s comments and recognise many of them. For me, there is no boundary as to where this goes. If somebody is practising extremism that matches the definition—that it is founded in “violence, hatred or intolerance” and poses that threat to our “rights or freedoms”, or our liberal democratic positions that uphold them—they need to be called out. It does not matter whether they are far left or far right, or another other colour or description you would give in between. DLUHC has worked with the Home Office and other government departments, including arm’s-length bodies, agencies and practitioners confronting extremism in our country, as part of this review, so anybody who has had any role in doing this has come together to try to get this definition across the line and to now support the strategy, which will be made public in the next few weeks.

Everyone has a right to freedom of expression. Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that we will always protect in this country, but obviously there are limitations to that if it does damage to others. The definition does not single out single subjects as inherently extremist, but calls for that careful assessment of evidence in relation to any individual organisation or group. In each case, the question is whether they are taking action to advance or promote that ideology with the “violence, hatred or intolerance” in mind. It is very specific, but it is likely to cover a broad swathe from all different parts of the spectrum. I reassure the noble Lord that the expert group will look at this in detail, and will apply the same metrics across the board.

Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are talking about the quality of our democracy and the central role of the Electoral Commission in maintaining that quality. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, for that fascinating and important speech. If I may, I will start by adding a little to it. On Sunday the Telegraph published an op-ed by Mark Littlewood in which in effect he claimed to be the main instigator and motivator for a new group within the Conservative Party, the Popular Conservatives, which is being launched today. The Institute for Economic Affairs is a well-funded think tank which does not publish its funding. We know that some of its funding comes from right-wing foundations within the United States, and other parts of its funding come from American companies. Think tanks are trying to influence directly the way parties and politics operate. Just before Christmas, we had a statutory instrument which was dependent very heavily on a TaxPayers’ Alliance report as the basis for the evidence which the Government had. I regularly read Policy Exchange announcements which tell us how closely particular Bills have followed its recommendations. None of those publishes its funding.

The question of funding and politics, and increasingly foreign funding and politics, needs to be extended. This Government, in their remaining months, or the next Government need to take that on. If the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, will allow me, I will turn to another part of John Pullinger’s letter today, in which he says that the issue of foreign interference extends across the system and that the Electoral Commission is committed to ensuring that political funding is transparent and to preventing foreign money from entering UK politics. He says that the Electoral Commission has recommended strengthening the law to prevent foreign funding from being unlawfully used in UK political campaigns, but that the UK Government have told it that they do not intend to act on its recommendations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that the Electoral Commission is not sufficiently accountable, because it does not really answer to the Executive. The Electoral Commission is accountable to Parliament and, in our democratic country, Parliament is separate from the Executive, and we all share across the parties an interest in our elections being seen to be fair. Every Conservative considering a proposal such as this should think actively, “What would we say if we were in opposition and there were a Government of a different colour issuing suggestions, proposals and instructions to the Electoral Commission?” I think that, rightly, in opposition Conservatives would be strongly opposed to that. This is an unnecessary statement. The 2022 Act says:

“The Secretary of State may”—


I emphasise “may”—

“designate a statement for the purposes of this section”.

Only if the Secretary of State does so must the Electoral Commission then have regard and follow up and report every 12 months, as it goes on to say. The levelling-up committee of the House of Commons said very clearly that no statement was necessary at this time. I have some sympathy with the Minister on this, as she has inherited something which comes from the Johnson Government, who were furious with the Electoral Commission for its critical comments on election spending in the 2019 election, and as revenge wanted to impose limits on the Electoral Commission or even, as my noble friend mentioned, to abolish it. We now have, we hoped and thought, a different quality in our Conservative Government, but this is a hangover from where we were before.

The statement goes on to say that the commission remains “operationally” independent. That is a weasel word—it should be independent, not independent within limits. The statement seeks to procure greater accountability to Parliament, and you do not ensure greater accountability to Parliament by having the Government give it instructions. Paragraph 4 says:

“We place citizens’ participation at the heart of our democracy”.


However, it then goes on to make no reference to closing the gap between our adult population of citizens and those who are on the electoral register, estimated to be 8 million citizens who are not registered to vote. Paragraph 5 talks about voter ID and makes no concessions on wider acceptable IDs for younger people. Paragraph 9 talks about combating the threat of foreign interference but says nothing about tighter checks on the ultimate origins of large donations from overseas.

The level of public distrust in government in Britain is higher than it has ever been in my lifetime. It is also higher than in any comparable democracy except for the United States. I read in the Times that there is concern among strategists that

“public trust in politics has fallen so dramatically that many people may not bother to vote at all”

in the next election. That ought to concern all of us. We should therefore send a clear signal that we regret that the Government are attempting to compromise the independence of the Electoral Commission, the independence of which is central to the quality of our democracy.

Intergovernmental Relations Within the United Kingdom

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in winding up his speech, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said that what we needed was constitutional stability. We have not had it for the last five years. We have had intense constitutional instability, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, keeps reminding us in his latest book. Effective government will not survive unless we have some quite serious constitutional change within the next five to 10 years. I look to the next Government to be a great deal less cautious about attacking some of these major issues of our constitutional weaknesses and engaging in constitutional change on a cross-party, consultative basis to make sure that we try to get some of this right.

We need constitutional, doctrinal and cultural change. The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty was honed by AV Dicey as part of his campaign opposing Irish home rule. He said that the Imperial Parliament was always right and there could be only one centre of power, thus Irish home rule and devolution were impossible and had to be got over. Post Brexit, we heard the doctrine of indivisible parliamentary sovereignty being put out very strongly. This doctrine includes the idea that local government is simply an agent of central government—Michael Gove clearly believes this completely—and that local and regional democracy are not an important part of our democratic life.

We need cultural change because, as a number of noble Lords have said, we need parity of esteem and to take seriously those working at a lower level. Multi-level government is something we have to learn, and which is foreign to a great deal of the way in which British and Imperial government has operated in the last 150 years. I would remind the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, that one of the advantages of being within the multi-level government system of the European Union was that our universities, many of which had been really quite parochial, learned about foreign partnerships. We moved towards a degree of convergence across Europe in the structure of degrees because we were part of that broader complex. We have to learn a different approach to politics.

I thought it would be helpful if I spoke as a Yorkshireman, and as someone who has been involved all my life with politics in Yorkshire, about the problem of England and of English regions. I was walking back from Millbank just before this debate with a Yorkshire Conservative MP. He was talking about our common approach in asking for a Yorkshire regional entity, and saying how Gove and others had pushed us back on it. It was very much an all-party approach—from local council leaders, MPs and others in Yorkshire. It was pushed back, so we now have a North Yorkshire Council which has had imposed upon it as a condition of the regional deal a North Yorkshire elected mayor, for which there are already five candidates. On the first past the post system, it is quite possible that the new mayor will be elected with no more than about a third of the vote. Of course, the mayor will not just represent North Yorkshire; he or she will represent York, which was kept out of North Yorkshire because it was either under Liberal Democrat or Labour control and therefore not to be included in Conservative North Yorkshire.

Yorkshire is a mess. There is no ward representative on the new North Yorkshire Council who takes more than two hours to drive from his or her home to county council meetings. I remind noble Lords that Yorkshire is the largest county in England, with a population equivalent to that of Scotland. It has no voice to speak for it in London.

The problem of England—it is also a problem of the devolution settlement that we already have because England is so dominant in it and English Ministers so often forget about the relevance of the other devolved authorities—has to be faced. I hope that, whatever new Government we have, we will at last grasp the need for a coherent approach to regional and local government within England.

Incidentally, that will also begin to resolve the problem of the overconcentration of civil servants in London. I can remember when the West Riding authority had a substantial education department, because it ran its own education. Education is now controlled very clearly from London. I can remember when there was a regional centre of government in Leeds. If you pull these things back, civil servants will spend more of their careers—at the very least some of them—working outside of London. That is a much better way of ensuring that we have a thriving democracy.

I welcome the Dunlop review, which was entirely right to say that what we need is one senior Cabinet Minister responsible for intergovernmental relations. I remember the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which, in effect, did some of this. I am not persuaded that we still need, in a Cabinet of 33—that is already too large to be an effective decision-making body—three separate Secretaries of State for devolved powers.

Incidentally, we have not talked about the British-Irish Council in all this. It was originally part of the way in which we dealt with the devolved Administrations, the Government of Ireland and the Crown dependencies, which we always forget about. It seems to me that, in some way or other, we need to grapple in the next Parliament with the question of what exactly the role and responsibilities of the Crown dependencies are. As we have recently learned, a number of Members of this House keep their financial interests there for tax-efficient reasons. As such, the question of the Crown dependencies’ relationship with the UK is one that a committee of this House might like to examine.

Where do we go from here? It seems to me that the task of the next Government is to grapple with this issue, partly because levelling up has clearly not succeeded. I feel resentment from the people I meet in Yorkshire about the failure of levelling up, as well as about the promises made by Boris Johnson and others. The thought that we would have begun to have improved infrastructure and greater finance for local authority action has been disappointed.

We would be much better off if we had the formal arguments that we see in Germany about fiscal federalism, which means dividing up the regional impact of the national budget. We would then begin to talk about it, rather than saying, “Oh well, there’s the Barnett formula, which is automatic”, then forgetting about the regions of England. Considering that part of fiscal federalism would be provision for a second Chamber in which there would be regional representation, it could be part of the way in which we might make the weaknesses of our system of government rather less awful than they have been. In a sense, we are half way towards a federal system. We need to go a little further in that respect. I would welcome an open discussion about the regional distribution of public spending, rather than the empty promises that Boris Johnson made, which have led to so much disillusion in the north, the south-west and elsewhere.

We certainly need to restore local democracy in England. It has been dreadfully weakened. As we all know, a number of local councils are likely to go bankrupt in the next year or two. That matters. We know from public opinion polls that public trust in local democracy is higher than public trust in national democracy. Incidentally, we also know that public trust in Westminster politics has fallen below 10%—the lowest it has yet hit. This ought to worry all of us in both Houses very considerably.

We need to strengthen intergovernmental machinery, as a number of noble Lords have said. We need regular ministerial attendance and to develop, as the Lords Constitution Committee said, a modern form of shared government which is fully understood at all levels of government. There are indeed many other areas of constitutional reform which a new Government should take in, but that perhaps will wait for a future debate.

Representation of the People (Overseas Electors etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have just one very quick point. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, talked about the fact that I had asked about reviews; when we consider the potential for election fraud, that is really important. The Elections Act was brought in, according to the Government, because they were concerned about shutting the door on fraud. My concern is that this will open the door to more than they will stop.

I will just pick up some of the things the Minister said in her introduction. If there is no national insurance number, there needs to be documentary evidence provided. That will be provided by the applicant. Checks against the electoral register at the moment go only up to 15 years. The Minister said that will be retained for longer in future, but how do we know how accurate it is now? How will we measure that? What analysis will the Government do as this goes forward to check on the potential level of electoral fraud, and how is it going to be reviewed and analysed in future? We need to make sure that the people on the register are those who need to be on the register—especially if that can then lead to donations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches are in favour of extending the franchise further, but as part of a wider reconsideration of inclusion on and exclusion from the register. I remind the House that we have an estimated 8 million British citizens living in this country who are not on the register—about which something ought also to be done. We are concerned about how this is implemented and some of its unintended consequences. I remind the House that there are 3.5 million British overseas citizens. That is, by my calculation, roughly 5,500 per constituency, if they all registered. If we assume that no more than 50% register, that is still well over 2,000 per constituency. I am sure the Minister will have been briefed that overseas registration in constituencies is not uniform but highly variable. Some London constituencies already have approaching 2,000 overseas electors, whereas a number of constituencies in Wales have fewer than 20. That is to be expected. Next time we redraw the tightened boundaries of our constituencies, do we take into account the number of overseas voters who are registered in various constituencies? If we do, some London constituencies will get quite a bit smaller because the numbers of overseas voters will take them way over the quota.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Well, as under the current system, all overseas applicants need to prove their identity and their verifiable connection to a UK address. A broad range of offences and penalties applies to persons seeking to register. If the applicant is not registering in compliance with those rules, an electoral registration officer who suspects fraud, for whatever reason, will ask them for further information and will not register the individual if they are not satisfied. So, there may be different routes to enforcement, but the key point here is whether people would be able to get on to the register using inaccurate or fraudulent data. That is what we have put protections in place to prevent. Registration officers are experienced in assessing evidence and, as I have said, as now, when they suspect fraud, they will have the power to ask for further information.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, also asked about the process for using—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Has the Minister ever visited an electoral registration officer’s office? Does she realise how small the numbers of staff are? The idea that they can take on all these checks, even outside the short election campaign when they are always extremely busy, does seems a little optimistic.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will come on to the question of resources and implementation later in my response but, as I said at the start of my speech, the expansion of the franchise does not change the principle of the franchise. People who have been abroad for up to 15 years are able to vote and these measures are expanding that further.

I was going to add more on the process of using attestations to demonstrate the connection to the UK address, as this was asked about by several noble Lords. It is important to make this work, so that an eligible applicant has every opportunity to demonstrate their eligibility. We anticipate that an electoral registration officer will be able to verify most applicants’ connection to their qualifying address using register checks or DWP historic address matching. Where this is not possible, applicants will be able to provide documentary evidence or, failing that, an attestation. This is in alignment with the processes for verifying identity. We have considered feedback from stakeholders on the different types of documentary evidence that an overseas applicant may have available to them and enabled electoral registration officers to consider a wide range of documentary evidence, providing that it contains the applicant’s name and qualifying address. This is a hierarchy of processes that applicants must go through. Attestation can only be used if those other processes have not been able to establish the information needed.

The attestation process is a long-established process for voter registration and, as I said before, used only where other methods of verification have been exhausted. Attestors are subject to certain requirements and must provide information that demonstrates that they meet those requirements. They must declare that all information in an attestation is true and acknowledge that it is an offence to provide false information to an electoral registration officer. The Government believe that these instruments strike a balance between the accessibility and integrity of the attestation process by introducing new limits on the number of individuals an attestor can attest for within an electoral year. The Electoral Commission provides guidance for EROs on verifying attestations and has the power to reject those attestations.

General Elections: Party-political Spending

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I believe that the rules regarding third-party campaigning organisations will also be uprated as part of this work.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, there are a number of proposals for limiting the size of donations. Have the Government taken any issue with that? I have looked at the reports on donations for the first six months of this year, and the three largest donations to the Conservative Party were two individual donations of £5 million and one of £2 million. One was from a British-Egyptian national who was a Minister in a previous Egyptian Government and whose interests appear to be based primarily in Dubai. Another was from someone listed with Companies House as an Indian national— I assume therefore resident in London—whose interests are primarily in Thailand and Indonesia. Is it not time that the Government became much stricter on the size as well as the origins of individual donations?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to limit the size of donations made. We have procedures in place to ensure that there is transparency over those donations and, as we are discussing today, spending limits for candidates and parties in elections. That is how we govern the use of money in our political system.

Levelling Up: Project Delivery

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, after announcing round 2 of the levelling-up funding, we recognised how many high-quality bids we had from councils that we were not able to meet during that round. That is why we took a different approach in round 3, looked at those existing bids and were able to make the allocations that were announced earlier this week. All in all, over 200 places have benefited from funding from the levelling-up funds. We recognise that there is a cost involved in bidding in these processes. That is why we provided those local authorities that were assessed as most in need in rounds 1 and 2 with additional funding to support the development of the bids in the first place.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have talked a lot about the need to reduce bureaucracy and to cut the size of the Civil Service. Yet this entire scheme is extremely bureaucratic and takes a great deal of Civil Service time for the competitive allocation of very small funds, and a great deal of local government time in preparing for competitive bids, some of which are unsuccessful. Has not the design been unfortunate? Would it not be better for the Government to do something about devolving spending decisions to local government in a much more thorough way?