Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, basically this is a decision about whether mayors should be compulsory or whether there should be a degree of local input about whether or not mayors should be directly elected. The history of public acceptance of the concept is pretty hopeless from the perspective of those who favour directly elected mayors, which I do not.

Neither my dear old Labour Party nor the Conservative Party have covered themselves in glory on this issue. I briefly remind the House that the concept of directly elected mayors came from the last Labour Government. As far as I am concerned, as a very long-standing member of the Labour Party, it came out of a clear blue sky—or a clear red sky. I had never been to any meeting of the Labour Party at any level where there had been a clamour for directly elected mayors, nor had I, in 50-plus years of canvassing—I do not know whether anyone can challenge me on this—ever knocked on a door to be told, “I’d vote for your party if you gave us directly elected mayors”. I think it is a product of a think tank; it is certainly not a product that has at any stage involved consulting the public.

The last Labour Government at least allowed local areas to have referendums before they embarked on a system of directly elected mayors. The results, certainly from my perspective, were pretty conclusive. There were 40 mayoral referendums under the Labour Government’s legislation: 13 local areas said yes and 27 said no. That was a fairly clear demonstration nationwide that this was not a universally popular proposition.

When the Conservative-led Government came into power in 2010, they had seen the Labour Government’s experience of a lack of wild enthusiasm, but for some reason the Conservative leadership thought that it was a great idea, as had the Labour leadership, so they did not allow the public to initiate referendums for directly elected mayors but simply said, “No. You, the 10 cities, shall have a referendum whether you want one or not”. That was the basis on which they legislated. As we all know, and as my noble friend Lord McKenzie already said, the public were consulted in 10 referendums and in nine cases—my maths makes that in 90% of the cases—they said, “No thanks very much, we don’t want directly elected mayors”. Only 10%, or one city, said that it did, and I understand that that city is now not too keen on the concept, having seen it in operation.

So we have gone from a stage of local, initiated referendums under Labour, which did not work very well from the perspective of those who want this system, to compulsory referendums under the Conservatives, which if anything went even less satisfactorily. Now what do we have? We have a system that does not involve the public at any stage whatever and is simply an imposition from national government on the kind of local authority structure, or rather the management structure, that you will have whether you want it or not. If I could draw a graph to illustrate this, it would be pretty clear. The political class, which we talk about these days, of which I suppose we are members here one way or another, thinks this is a good idea, or at least the leadership does. Whenever the public are consulted they say, “No, we don’t, thank you very much”, so what does the political class do? It says, “Well, you’ll have it, sunshine, whether you want it or not”, which is the position that we are at with this legislation.

I simply appeal to the Government—it is a non-partisan appeal to the extent that I freely admit that in part my Government were to blame for all this—that if local authorities are being told, “You must have this hugely significant figure in your area, which will dramatically change how local government works there”, surely at least there must be a degree of flexibility in considering whether the people in the area want it. Surely that is the most modest of propositions. However, as things stand, whatever the Minister says when she replies—and I am sure she will say, “It is possible in certain circumstances”—in practice we know that this is about compulsory directly elected mayors, and I do not like that idea one little bit on democratic grounds, let alone on administrative grounds. I hope that the House will consider these two amendments very seriously.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I hope that the Minister will not accept what has just been said. We are looking at the history of local government, which I have been involved in for a very long time—since I first sat on the Inner London Education Authority in my twenties, so I know a little about how it operates. I say to my noble friend that we need something entirely new in local government if we are to recover the kind of verve and real local contribution that local government ought to make.

I agree with the noble Lord opposite that both sides can be blamed for a lot on this. Local government pretended that it could replace the Opposition and therefore could have nuclear-free zones, foreign policies and the like. This was countered by a reaction from a Conservative Government who took away local government’s power to raise money through the business rate and the like. Both sides have a lot to answer for as regards the way in which we had that countervailing situation, and it took a long time for people to recover their respect and support for local government.

However, we have recovered our respect for a system that lacks vitality and deserves a great deal more opportunity. Our great cities should have the same kind of powers and the same sort of verve that you find in many continental cities. I do not see that we can do that under the present structure. What is more, all the amendments that come from the Opposition are about the perpetuation of the very systems that have helped to pull down local government and do not give it the sharpness that is necessary if local communities are to be properly represented.

I found the comment about the effect of mayors a bit odd. All I can say is that after a very long period of appalling local government in Bristol, in which all three parties were involved, the elected mayor of Bristol has made a dramatic improvement. He has no history of being a supporter of my party, so I speak entirely independently and objectively on that. Bristol is now extremely lucky in its representation and in the way the mayor can speak for that great city. It had years of destructive labour authorities, followed by the most peculiar system whereby each of the parties took control one by one and none covered itself in glory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I too rise to support Amendments 3 and 4, and to echo some of the comments that have already been made. This is actually about choice. The Minister has rightly said that the Bill is not prescriptive, and yet it is highly prescriptive when it talks about mayors. We can see different forms of leadership working well in other parts of the country. We talk about international cities and Europe, but mayors in France are not directly elected; they are the top person on the list. People in other cities elect their leaders in different ways. Some call them mayors and some do not, and as I say, some of them are not directly elected.

We heard last week from colleagues who said that in their area of the country, a mayor would be entirely inappropriate. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has explained how it would be unacceptable and inappropriate in her own area. I would say that if we are in favour of no prescription, we should allow innovative forms of leadership to emerge in different parts of the country. We should not try to impose a certain form and say that people will not have powers if they do not adopt a mayor.

Perhaps I may talk briefly about the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and his rewriting of the history of the city of Bristol. I should point out at the start that the successes of Bristol have been well known for a long time. For the past 10 to 15 years it has been the most successful city outside London. It has the highest GDP per head of population of any English city except London and it is the European Green Capital, something that emerged through my own administration and has been carried on by the mayor. Certainly, there was instability of government when the Labour Party lost its majority on the city council, but that is no different from what has happened in many other places. Indeed, the city ran a successful three-party coalition for 18 months. I led that coalition, so it is no good the noble Lord shaking his head; that is indeed what happened—

[Lord Deben]

I worked with Bristol over a long period and it was one of the most difficult councils to deal with. Bristol succeeded in spite of its local government rather than because of it, and now it is succeeding because of it. That is the change.

[Baroness Janke]

Again, that is a rather selective rewriting of history. If you speak to the leaders of any of the three parties in Bristol, they will say that there have been successes by all the parties and they are united in being proud of their city. But as happens in national government, there can be differences of view and policy, and I do not believe that the very bad impression given by the noble Lord is at all just or reasonable.

The most important thing about these new measures is that we should address the powers. Much as we applaud what is happening in Manchester and other areas, if you were to speak to the mayor of Toulouse or the mayor of Hannover, one of Bristol’s twin cities, and say, “We are going to finance your area by giving you predetermined, formula-determined grants in sealed envelopes; you will have no power to raise your own capital or to raise revenue; and you will have no other powers than those that the Government give you”, they would be horrified. This is not the spirit of devolution.