Localism Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

My other amendment is amendment 15, which relates to elected mayors. I fully support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) which proposes that such elections should be run on the first-past-the-post basis. I ought to declare a slight interest, in that my father is the elected mayor of Doncaster. He was elected under the system described by my hon. Friend, and he would not have been elected under first past the post, because he came second in the first ballot. Some might argue that my views are rather altruistic, in that I do not support a system that has benefited my dad; instead, I want to do what I think is genuinely the right thing for the country. Others might argue that my father being elected under the alternative or supplementary vote system could well be the best possible argument for first past the post. I would not like to comment on that; I will leave it to others to make that decision.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I want to press on, because the Government have allocated a shameful amount of time for this debate and other people want to speak.

I support first past the post, even though my father would have been disadvantaged by it. My amendment 15 proposes that there should be a two-thirds reduction in the number of councillors in local authority areas that have an elected mayor. There are already far too many local councillors; Bradford has 90, for example. The US Senate has only 100 people in it, for goodness’ sake. Why do we need 90 councillors in Bradford? If we are to have an elected mayor as well, why on earth should we have an additional layer of bureaucracy, more expense and more levels of local politicians? If we are going to have an elected mayor, for goodness’ sake let us reduce the number of local councillors at the same time and save the council tax payer some money. I hope that the Government will accept my rather modest amendments, but if they do not, I will certainly be interested to hear their reasons.