Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I listened with great interest to the speech from my noble friend Lord Heseltine earlier because I was a councillor in the 1980s and the 1990s, when he served with great distinction in the Conservative Governments of the time. I was a councillor in the same part of the world as the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Beecham, who spoke earlier—the north-east of England—although I was not on the same authority. I also never had the chance to be council leader, as they did, because I was a Conservative in Gateshead. In fact, not only did I not have the chance to be leader, for many years I was the only Conservative out of 66 councillors.

That of course was a difficult time in local government: a time of rate capping and when the Governments of the time took considerable powers away from local government. At the time, I was a cheerleader for that. I thought that many local authorities were dominated too much by ideological, left-wing councillors and that ratepayers—ordinary men and women—needed protecting from some of those people by methods such as rate capping and the removal of those powers. I now believe that I was wrong and that it was a mistake to do that. Since then, events have proved that. So I fully support the Government’s aims now in seeking to return those powers by devolution to local authorities. I hope that they will be able to take matters further and devolve considerably more powers to local authorities. The mayor model is the right way to do that. It was in the Conservative manifesto and for that reason alone the Government should do it; Governments should stick by commitments they have made.

However, that is not the long-term answer to the problem. We have seen declining rates of participation in local government elections for many years. Most people do not bother taking part in those elections. I think the reason is that most electors have worked out that it does not really matter in most cases which councillors they have because councillors have their ability to act so constrained by national legislation and the fact that the vast majority of their finance is supplied by national government that it does not make a lot of difference whether electors participate in local government elections.

It is not in the scope of the Bill, but ultimately the only way to regenerate properly local democracy will be to reform the system of local government finance so that, once again, electors have a considerable stake in their local authorities and it actually makes a difference to what is delivered locally and, more importantly, what they must pay out of their own pocket for those services—then we would regenerate local government, and that would make a big difference.

That is not in the scope of the Bill and it is a very controversial subject. Clearly there are no easy answers to it, but ultimately that would be the way to regenerate local government. As a first step, the Government are going the right way. They are reversing the path of many Governments for a number of years in accumulating power towards the centre. It is a good first step and I wish them well in their endeavours.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said in his analysis of the problems facing local government. He is quite right that local government has been denuded of its powers over decades. He is quite right that many councils simply do not change political colour during elections. However, the solutions to those challenges provided by the noble Lord are not ones that I personally agree with, as they do not provide an adequate response.

The first challenge is that councils do not change political colour. Well, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out, neither do two-thirds of constituencies during a general election. They never change political hands. That political problem is resolved by having not a mayoral system in local government but a different electoral system. A fair voting system would provide the opportunity for people to elect differences. At the moment, under the current system, they do not have that opportunity. The second issue that—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

We have heard reference to the electoral system, which is not an uncommon reference from the Liberal Democrat Benches. There is an idea that it is only under first past the post that people are returned regularly from the constituency and we have the notion of the safe seat. I can think of no seat that is safer than being number one on a list for a party, as is the case, for example, in the proportional representation system that we have for the European Parliament. I understand that the Liberal Democrats consider this an improvement on the first past the post system but I, for one, consider it a step backwards, precisely for the reason the noble Baroness argues against safe seats under the first past the post system.

[Baroness Pinnock]

Fair voting in my description is not the list system, which I regard as just a fancy way of changing from first past the post. The proper fair-voting system enables the electors to choose, rather than putting the power in the hands of the political parties as the list system does. My idea of fair voting puts the power in the hands of the elector, but I digress.

The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, also referred to the difficulty of the loss of power by local councils and the solution being this great big single figure who would somehow make all these big, strategic decisions in a combined authority. I have to say that in West Yorkshire, where I have been a councillor for many years—over 25 years, and leader of Kirklees Council for part of that time—a mayoral model simply does not provide the solution that he is looking for. A combined authority is not going to do what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, wants, which is get decisions made quickly so that small businesses can invest. What a combined authority is primarily about is making big, strategic—and therefore, by definition, long-term—decisions for that area. We are talking about a local government function which will set out a transport infrastructure for the next 20 or 30 years. It is about setting out planning and economic regeneration schemes for the next 20 years. It is about bringing in inward investment, which takes by definition many years. It is about dealing with carbon control, which by definition takes many years. That will not be achieved by having a single, big figure because all those decisions by definition require two elements. One is public consent, because it will mean big changes to the geography of a local area. The second is big investment of public money, which by definition, in this country at least, requires big accountability. That is why I am totally opposed to a mayoral model.

The second element of this is that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, was describing a mayoral model which is simply not that described in the Bill. In the Bill the mayoral model is not this big figure who will somehow paint the future Utopia for an area. The mayor in the system as described in the Bill is the chair of a committee made up of the leaders of the constituent councils of the area. That, to me, is a very different system from that which the noble Lord describes.

My third point about the mayoral model is that if one lives, as I do, in Yorkshire, when anybody talks about the mayoral model the word “Doncaster” immediately comes to mind. I have to say that Doncaster has not had its many problems and challenges resolved by having a mayor. If fact, many would argue that having a mayor has actually made the problems worse. To suggest a mayoral model to people in Yorkshire—or my part, West Yorkshire—leads us down the path of further denigration of local government.

The fourth thing I would say about the mayoral system as it applies in West Yorkshire is that we have all had this idea—it is in the descriptor of the Bill—whereby somehow we have a single city, as we have in Manchester, and all the hinterland is drawn into it. That might work well in Manchester. In West Yorkshire, as I reminded noble Lords at Second Reading, we have not one but four cities, each of which regards itself, quite rightly, as a great city. We have Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, which is the former county town of the West Riding, and, at some distance from the rest of West Yorkshire, the great city of York. To have a single mayoral model for those great cities will not be acceptable to local people, because they know that the consequence of a mayoral model is to be ruled by Leeds. If you go to York and say, “Actually, folks, you are going to be ruled by Leeds”, they will turn to you in horror, especially if, as we are being told, there can be no proper accountability for that person.

We must accept the will of the people, which in referenda that were held in West Yorkshire was a big and resounding no. This was not because the referenda were taken over by the political machines, as the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said. Actually, we could not get people to go and vote, because they were not interested. What local people want out of this combined authority is an accountable system that will consult people locally, take up their ideas, give them some passion and enable them to get West Yorkshire going again. The heart of the industries of the north of England is in West Yorkshire; we want to make the most of it—we will not have a mayoral model imposed on us—and we want the fiscal powers from central government in order to achieve that. Currently we have a mayoral model to be imposed and no money to go with it. A better solution would be to have fiscal powers and to throw the mayoral model into the bin, where it belongs.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I am very encouraged by this debate. One always tends to worry as the years go by that one’s views have become rather fixed and stagnant. My opposition to directly elected mayors is of long standing and my earlier depression was reinforced by the fact that, as I understand it, at the moment all three political parties’ leaderships are committed in one way or another to directly elected mayors. It is always a slightly worrying state of affairs when all three party leaderships seem to be in agreement, but most contributions from the Back Benches that I have heard in both the debates we have had today on the Bill have expressed reservations about directly elected mayors. I suddenly feel that the pendulum may be swinging. It certainly did a long time ago as far as the electorate were concerned—we know that. The electorate say no, no, no, no and an occasional yes when they are asked about directly elected mayors. Is it just wishful thinking or is parliamentary opinion, at least in this House, changing on the issue? If it is, then I think it is for very good and sound reasons.

I do not want to be in any way disparaging about people who support the idea of directly elected mayors. One or two are sitting close to me at the moment. I acknowledge that this phrase that we all use and are all committed to—“democratic accountability”—can take many forms. In truth, it takes two forms more than most others. That is to say, it can be achieved via what we would broadly refer to as a presidential system, or through a parliamentary system. Both have forms of democratic accountability.