Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) Regulations 2012

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, over the years I have served on three councils, all very different, and I certainly came to prefer what we all in local government call the old committee system. I do not think that I have changed my mind on that. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, I welcome even more encouragement and allowance for people to have the committee system. The last council I served on was abolished by her and her party; we were a small council able to operate the committee system. Indeed, I played a part in this House when small councils were allowed to carry on the committee system under earlier legislation, so I welcome that part of the regulations.

I also welcome the fact that local authorities will be able to choose how they give information to people. That said, I have a worry. I know that all the people in this Room have been involved in these matters over a number of years; we all know the ins and outs; we know how some of these things work. However, as fewer and fewer people have voted in local elections, it seems that fewer and fewer people understand the system. I worry that we will have referendums—maybe not with very good turnouts, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said—because people are not very engaged with these issues at the moment. Therefore, although I welcome the fact that local authorities will be able to do their own thing, I hope that they will up their game in trying to make sure that, if these things are happening, people are at least involved and the decisions are proper decisions of local people.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, I have never been a great fan of elected mayors. However, at least we are asking local people—it will be their decision. My big worry is that turnout will be low because people are not engaged.

I have a question about process. Part of these regulations allows local authorities to hold elections for police commissioners at the same time. Obviously, trying not to have too many elections at the same time is a good thing. I would not have thought that electing a mayor at the same time as a police commissioner was particularly a good thing, but I am not sure whether that is what is happening. If I understand things correctly, the first elections for police commissioners will be this autumn, which is not when we normally have local elections—you might have some by-elections; then I could understand that happening. Because I have not followed things very clearly, I am not clear whether the police commissioners have a fixed term or whether that can be changed at some point so that your mayor could be elected at the same time as councillors. It may be my fault for not having followed the legislation, but I would be grateful for some clarification on that.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak until the later debate on the individual orders, but as this has become almost a mini Second Reading debate on the merits of mayors, I feel I must chip in because, like my noble friend Lady Farrington, it is rare for me to find myself disagreeing with my noble friend Lord Rooker, but I do so strongly on this issue. If his wishes could come true, I might be persuaded to change my mind at some stage. I think his two hopes were that there would be a large majority in the referendum, when it came up, for whatever decision it was going to reach, and that we would be spared a kind of beauty contest between celebrities. I think that the evidence so far is that he is likely to be disappointed on both fronts. I did not bring my notes with me, but perhaps the Minister may be able to remind us. In the referendums that have been held so far on directly elected mayors, if I were to describe the turnouts as abysmal, I would probably be exaggerating on the high side. They were very low, even in London where there was lots of publicity. There is no evidence that I am aware of—perhaps the Minister has some—that this bout of referendums would be any different from the previous ones in terms of turnout.

The risk of it being not at all about the city but largely a beauty contest has been proved beyond any reasonable debate by what we see happening in London at the moment. I do not know much about it, except it is between two celebrities called Boris and Ken, it seems to go on inordinately and it is basically a tale of two egos that does not tell us a great deal about how local government should be administered.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

Would my noble friend care to speculate about whether it is two beauties or a beauty and a beast?

[Lord Grocott]

I find it very difficult to make careful distinctions on that front. Uniquely in a business—politics—where ego occasionally intrudes, those two manage it far more effectively than most of the rest of us. I do not intend to say anything more at the moment because the opportunity will come in the orders establishing the mayoral referendums in the various cities. However, I would like the Minister to remind us, if not immediately, what the turnout has been in previous referendums.

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, I declare an interest as leader of Wigan council and chairman of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the new Greater Manchester Combined Authority. I was going to wait until later, but I would like to respond to some of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Rooker. It is in the background papers. He is mistaken to compare what is being offered here with what is going on in London. The London mayor is mayor of a whole conurbation. There are 32 London boroughs. What is on offer here is a mayor for a single local authority. In the conurbation of west Yorkshire, we are offering three cities. I am sure that Kirklees and so on must feel a bit out of it if they are not to be in the system. In the West Midlands, there are two, so they are not conurbation-wide. There are no additional powers coming to these individuals compared with those that the leader and cabinet model can exercise. The importance of the mayor of London, whoever it is, in terms of transport, police and so on, will not be there in any of the cities. In fact, as my noble friend Lady Farrington reminded us, in my area, we will have an elected police commissioner who will take responsibility for those areas. In transport, I can assure whoever is the new leader or mayor of Manchester that they will have no more influence over what goes on in transport for Manchester than any of the nine authorities. They will be one of 10. That is it.

The other thing that my noble friend Lord Rooker seems to think will happen is that getting a mayor for Birmingham might create some cohesion between the other local authorities in the West Midlands. That does not happen. He is right that Manchester works better than many other conurbations—I take some credit—but that is because we have worked at it for a long time and each authority has understood that if you want to gain collectively you have to give up some power as a local authority.

Will someone coming in as the elected mayor of Birmingham say straight away, “I’ll be elected mayor of Birmingham but I want to give up things to the West Midlands council so that we can work better together with Coventry, Wolverhampton and the other authorities”? That will probably not happen. We do not know whether it comes down to personalities in Birmingham because, of course, you do not have any successful football managers in Birmingham so clearly the chance of one of those standing does not apply, whereas it does in Manchester. The current law allows each of these authorities to choose to have an elected mayor if they want to. None has chosen to do so. However, if we were offering something like the London model, there could be a real debate.