English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

It was my understanding that we had moved on to winding speeches.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I did not realise that we had moved on to winding speeches. I wholeheartedly endorse what the Minister said about the late Lord Beecham and add my condolences.

With the leave of the House, I would like to comment briefly on Amendment 187, tabled by my noble friends Lady Scott and Lord Jamieson. I support the intentions of their amendments, which seek to restrict the power of the Secretary of State to direct mergers of single tiers of local government to cases where all the local authorities concerned have given their consent. I strongly agree with that. Of their amendments, I prefer the two which are more far-reaching, Amendments 188 and 194, because the provision for local authorities to merge exists already. Clause 57 and Schedule 26 are there only to implement the power of the Secretary of State to enforce such mergers, without the consent of the authorities involved.

The addition proposed by Schedule 26 of the Bill to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 concerns a

“district or county council for an area for which there is currently a single tier of local government”.

I understand that a county council can be a single tier, but I cannot understand how a district council can be a single tier. I would observe that the Bill is concerned with mergers of principal authorities. Can the Minister tell your Lordships if it also provides for the dismemberment or breakdown of principal authorities into smaller units, such as is happening under the current local government reorganisation? This is seeing many counties being divided up into smaller unitary authorities, which will certainly result in a massive increase in costs, which will have to be borne by hard-pressed council tax payers.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in the strongest possible support of the amendments tabled by my noble friends on the Front Bench. I would like to make two introductory remarks.

First, I was the leader of a council for 20 years and had a ringside seat for LGR in my own area and as part of my chairmanship of the District Councils’ Network. I saw at first hand that, far from saving money, LGR has precipitated the bankruptcy of Somerset and in Yorkshire created a so-called local council spanning the whole width of England at that point, bar 9 miles, encompassing Skipton, Selby and Scarborough.

Secondly, I note that a lot has changed since we were in Committee. The Government have published their LGR proposals for Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Hampshire. The lofty ideals of strategic leadership, better value for money and economies of scale, together with the published criteria, which the public took at face value and responded to, have been dashed on the rocks of partisan gerrymandering. I do not know why I am surprised that the party that sought to rig the local government elections would seek to pervert the process as it has, but we can see what has happened here. The Labour authorities that connived with the Government to cancel the election on the flimsiest grounds—so weak the Government would not take their chances in the court—have been rewarded with small unitary councils designed to fail. The goalposts have been moved. That is why Amendments 189 and 191 in particular are so important. They would stop the abuse of process whereby the public, who play by one set of rules, are stymied by Ministers playing by another.

Let us compare what Ministers advertised in the current round of LGR against what has been delivered. It was said that LGR proposals should, in all but the most extenuating circumstances, respect and be based on existing councils as building blocks—themselves grounded in the historic county boroughs, Poor Law unions and ecclesiastical hundreds. There were good reasons for this. The Government are in a hurry, and easy building blocks make aggregation simpler, better value and quicker.

While there always might have been extenuating circumstances, perhaps to bring the awkward extremities of a national park within the ambit of a single unitary, we have been served by a gerrymander, where cities have been given the choicest parts of their neighbours, ignoring travel to work areas, breaking communities of interest and making the process more expensive, longer and disruptive at precisely the moment councils are meant to be delivering growth, not shuffling the deck chairs.

In the case of Norfolk, we see the announcement of a conversion of seven districts into three unitaries. It will not just merge seven into three, which will be hard enough as it is; in this proposal, which breaks up the existing councils as building blocks, we will see 14 disaggregations and weldings together in a cut and shut job that would shame Arthur Daley. Of course, the consequences of all that are only just becoming clearer: breaking long-term contracts for refuse collection, orphaning leisure centres and disrupting the local plan. There are unknowable permutations around allocating staff, who will need to think which of the 14 functional parts of our county, each of which delivers 136 council activities, they will need to stitch together contractually, financially and legally, and in terms of software and staffing, in just a few months without even being clear about the parishing in the former county boroughs. It is designed to fail.

People were told to propose new councils based around a population of at least half a million. We were told that was the economic optimum that combines scale with efficiency. I know we cannot be precious. Counties are not exactly in 500,000 increments. I would not have been surprised to see a 10% or 15% variation around that 500,000 figure—in other words, perhaps anywhere between 425,000 and 575,000. But we have been served a set of councils, many of which will see a population beginning with a “2” by as late as 2040— Condemned by design and scale to that special council death zone with populations similar to the existing unitary cohort that is in trouble in are places such as Swindon, Slough and Stoke. If that is what the Government had in mind, they should have been up front and open at the outset. It would have stopped the nods and winks to the counties that are clearly doomed but whose consent was required to endorse the mayoral elections.

The Government have acted dishonestly in their dealing on this. They have said one thing and done another. They have abused their position and spoken with forked tongue. They told us it would strengthen democracy. I led South Norfolk Council for nearly 20 years. Norwich is to be inflated like a balloon, but not by so much that Labour’s client vote will be diluted. A few wealthy parishes will be peeled off here and there to pay off the city’s historic debts without regard to the rump authority left behind. Labour’s unthinking approach has been that the rest of the countryside can go hang.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, different voting systems have different advantages and disadvantages. As the Minister knows, first past the post is simple and allows the winner to be representative of all those who voted for them and of those who did not. It reduces the chance of minority-led, unstable Administrations. It is interesting that the Liberal Democrats did better at the previous general election under first past the post than they would have done under a proportional system.

The Bill seeks to change first past the post in mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections to the supplementary vote system. The noble Lord, Lord Pack, argues that in a multiparty contest, the alternative vote system is fairer, but I think there are stronger arguments for retaining the system overwhelmingly preferred by the public, as shown in the 2011 referendum. I do not think there is much evidence that views have changed dramatically on this question since then. Besides, the alternative vote system is not used for any elections in the United Kingdom, as the Minister pointed out in Committee.

I think it is undesirable to have many different electoral systems for different elections, so I support my noble friends in their Amendments 218 and 242 to retain first past the post. As my noble friend Lady Scott said in Committee, moving to a supplementary vote system would add complexity, increase the chances of confusion and risk more ballots being rejected. Besides, I am a bit puzzled about the application of these amendments to PCC elections because I thought the Government were going to abolish PCC elections and replace elected commissioners with those appointed by mayors, at least in mayoral strategic authorities. Can the Minister explain when she expects the last elected police and crime commissioner to leave office?