Local Elections

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

But the Government could have done this right and come to Parliament with a statement today. Instead, once again we wake up to overnight briefings. Cancelling elections is always a bad idea, and there is a real suspicion that the Government are worried about being trounced in elections.

May make a local point about Lincolnshire? It is now in complete chaos, because we do not know what is going to happen. The Government have already forced an unloved office of mayor on us, our friends in North East Lincolnshire have withdrawn from the whole process, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer) wants to carve West Lindsey—my district—in half by creating a greater Lincoln, and the county council under Reform leadership has a different proposal. Nobody knows what is going on. Just put local democracy first by allowing the people of Lincolnshire to have the district council system of local Government that they love and know, and stop throwing everything up in the air and wasting so much money.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I reiterate that these are inaugural elections, and therefore we are not cancelling elections. [Interruption.] These are inaugural elections that were always subject to us laying a statutory instrument and subject to the consent of places. To the right hon. Member’s specific point, it is really important that we bring the House back to why we are going through the process of local government reorganisation. We are not doing it because it is fun, or just for the sake of it; we are doing it because of the state in which local government was left by the Conservative party—[Interruption.] Absolutely—take responsibility! We had a decade and a half of under-investment, leaving local government on its knees. The Conservatives ducked the decisions they needed to make.

Now we are gripping the mantle, and at the heart of the reorganisation process is the simple premise that we want stronger unitaries. We believe that is the way in which we can organise services to deliver for communities. The Conservative party should have got a grip and done that. It did not; it ducked that. We are now having to pick that up, so I will not have Conservative Members talking to me about the pros and cons of reorganisation. We are doing it because we understand that we need to. If they were more serious, they would have cracked on and got on with it themselves.