Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Main Page: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)City of Birmingham (Scheme of Elections) Order 2015
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That this House takes note of the City of Birmingham (Scheme of Elections) Order 2015. (SI 2015/43)
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad to debate the City of Birmingham (Scheme of Elections) Order 2015 and glad to see that we have such a full House still for this important debate.
This order imposes on our second city a new scheme of elections that commence in 2017. It also changes Birmingham’s current practice of retirement by thirds and moves to all-out elections. Noble Lords need to be aware that last week the Government laid a new order that actually amends the order we are debating this evening by changing the date of the first all-out elections from 2017 to 2018. That order has not been through the scrutiny committee and other scrutiny processes and, no doubt, there will be a report to your Lordships’ House, I believe after the next meeting of the scrutiny committee next Tuesday.
I want to raise some issues about the change to all-out elections but I want to set out the context. I have lived in Birmingham for nearly 40 years. It is a wonderful city—very vibrant and friendly—but it faces a number of real challenges at the moment. Its economy has underperformed compared with London, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield over many years now. Parts of Birmingham are among the most deprived in the country. In fact, we have more poor children in Birmingham than in any other part of the country and many of our adults are locked in a spiral where they have low skills and cannot take advantage of some of the new jobs that are being created in the city.
Birmingham has a great history, great strengths and potentially a great future but a lot of that depends on the city council and the quality of leadership it provides. At the moment, it is fair to say that it is being held back by a number of very significant problems. Its children’s services have been rated inadequate or worse for a number of years now. The Trojan horse incident raised a lot of serious issues about the education service in general and about the city council’s engagement and understanding of its local communities. Its financial position, following the equal pay debacle, can be described at best only as horrendous.
The city council is subject to a number of interventions. My noble friend Lord Warner is a commissioner appointed by the Secretary of State for Education looking particularly into children’s services. Sir Mike Tomlinson has been appointed in the wake of the Trojan horse issue and Sir Bob Kerslake, the former Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, has undertaken an independent review of the governance and organisational capabilities of the city council. That is what I want to focus on. Let me say at once that I believe Sir Bob has undertaken an enormous task. I am very grateful to him for it. His report is well written and many of its conclusions are absolutely right. However, there are some issues I want to raise, particularly in relation to this order.
Where I think Sir Bob is absolutely right is that he says, essentially, that for Birmingham to achieve its full potential and deal with some of the problems I have mentioned, the city council has to rethink its role and the way it does its business. In a telling phrase in the report Sir Bob says it has to end the,
“not invented here, silo-based and council knows best culture”.
Leadership of the council has changed hands between the three political parties over the past few years. I was a member of the city council a long time ago, but I recognise that criticism. Of all the changes Birmingham needs to make, that is probably the one that I would focus on.
Sir Bob goes on to talk about the governance of the city council. In particular, he says that the council needs to clarify roles, responsibilities, behaviours and ways of working expected in relation to the leader, the cabinet, councillors, chief executive and officers. I agree with that too. I agree that the city council should draw up a robust plan on managing the financial challenges it faces. I certainly agree that it needs to establish a new model of devolution and partnership with key stakeholders. As a former chairman of an NHS foundation trust in Birmingham, I am struck by the inability of the city council to forge strong relationships with other key players in the sector. That is an issue that goes across leadership between two different administrations. I certainly support the recommendation that there should be a combined authority—what I would call greater Birmingham—covering Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Solihull, rather in the way that Manchester has been developed, in order to deal with some of those cross-local authority strategic issues.
I want to have a debate, because it is important that this is debated, on the proposal about the scheme of elections and the move to all-out elections. Sir Bob says:
“Birmingham City Council is an outlier on the size of the council and the size of its wards. It has 15 of the 20 wards with the largest population in the country”.
Because Birmingham is forecast to have a big growth in population over the coming years, those wards are likely to become even bigger. There are already 120 councillors but, speaking as a councillor in a three-member ward representing 22,000 electors, it is a very tough challenge for 120 councillors to represent effectively a population of 1 million. We are going up to 1,150,000, yet Sir Bob’s proposals are to reduce the number of councillors. For ward councillors, that is going to be a major challenge.
Sir Bob also says that we should move away from the traditional, current election by thirds to all-out elections. If you read the report, he clearly favours reducing the number of councillors and moving to single-member wards, rather than multimember wards, at the same time. I know opinions differ about the merits, or not, of all-out elections and elections by thirds. Essentially, it depends upon what you are used to. I spent time as a councillor in Oxford and I have lived in Leeds and Birmingham, so for me the natural order of things is election by thirds. Equally, I am sure that the Minister thinks all-out elections are the right thing to do because that is what he has experienced. It is a 50:50 argument. I know Sir Albert Bore, the leader of Birmingham City Council, favours the move to all-out elections because he thinks they will provide greater certainty of political control over a four-year period, allow confident medium-term financial and strategic planning for that four-year period and that the majority group will have a clear mandate for the whole of the period. Well, that is fair enough—I am not going to argue about that. I like the old tradition of election by thirds; it makes sure that the electorate have an opportunity to have a say on an annual basis. None the less, I very much accept what Albert has said. However, I worry about reducing the number of councillors. Even more worrying, for me, is the fact that the city council will be subjected to a boundary review. The chairman of the Local Government Boundary Commission has already been in the city and has issued a challenge to local councillors to say that, if they do not like the reduction in numbers, they must put up a convincing case against it.
The problem that I have is that, in the original Kerslake report, he identifies that this great city of Birmingham is facing mega-challenges in its leadership and partnership approach as well as in how it operates, the services it provides and the skills of its people. Yet we know that the moment the commission starts to do its work, in a situation in which it is proposed to reduce the number of councillors, the focus of most councillors’ attention will not be on these core issues of leading Birmingham out of the very difficult situation that it is in. It will be about responding to the boundary commission review and worrying about the new wards, and selection will then take place. Councillors’ focus will be on those really rather secondary issues rather than on the core issue of tackling the problems that Sir Bob addresses.
The reason I am raising the issue tonight is to ask the Minister to give this some consideration. After all, another order is coming down the line. The last thing that we need in Birmingham is the distraction of a wholesale boundary review, which will get rid of three-member wards—so it will be a mega-change. We need to focus on improving the services in the city of Birmingham. I beg to move.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I support the order. I was born and raised in Birmingham, and my first and last jobs in manufacturing were in the city. I am old enough and my memory is still good enough to say that I can still recall my mother’s Birmingham co-op number. I served in the Commons as the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr, where I went to school and had my paper round, for 27 years. Although I no longer pay council tax in the city, I have just arrived at your Lordships' House from chairing the Neighbourhood Partnership Board at Castle Vale in the city. So I am now an outsider, but I have insider roots, insight and, indeed, support. However, my memory is also good enough to remember how the city was considered by others as a leader over five decades, over a variety of issues—an exemplar.
At the time when the noble Lord, Lord Nash, made the Statement in this House last year on 22 July, I did not get the confirmation—it was buried in the paragraphs—that the Kerslake review would not have any no-go areas. As such, in July, I put in my long-held views to Sir Bob about the governance of the city being split into separate boroughs. I copied my views to the city leadership at the same time—I have always been quite open on this point, which I raised in the 1980s and the 1990s. The city is too big. London does not suffer for being split into 32 boroughs, and Birmingham would not suffer for being split into two, three or four boroughs.
Sir Bob, who is soon to join your Lordships' House, has explained to me why his team went for what is in the order, and I accept that. I am not going to go over that tonight; it is not the time. His review makes it crystal clear that, if the city council fails to improve, questions of size will continue to be asked. Improvement is urgently required. As my noble friend just said, there are currently two government-imposed commissioners working in the city due to it failing—I do not like saying that, but that is the reality—in education and in children’s social services. The city has massive potential to return to being an exemplar for strong, good local government, as it was in the past and I want it to do so.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for tabling the Motion. It is important that, in the—albeit brief—debate that we have just had, your Lordships’ House reviewed and discussed the important issue of the Kerslake report. I join other noble Lords in recognising the sterling work done by Sir Bob Kerslake in the review of Birmingham, and look forward to welcoming him to your Lordships’ House. He and his team have clearly shown that Birmingham—both the city and the council—are some way from fulfilling their full potential, and indeed their past potential, which noble Lords talked about. The challenges they face are deep-rooted and there are serious problems that they need to face up to, such as an underperforming economy, poor local services in certain respects and no credible plans to address the council’s very significant budget difficulties. That England’s second city faces such challenges is something that should concern us all. I am therefore extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I was seeking to meet him in advance of this debate and perhaps speak to him on Sunday. However, being a father of three and it being Mothering Sunday, I was under strict orders not to look at the phone in the key hours of the day. I apologise that we were unable to talk earlier.
I recognise and share many of the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has expressed. Indeed, I found myself in total agreement with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. In particular, I listened with great attention to his description of the Labour Party conference. Not having attended one myself, I bow to his view of how the plenary, and indeed the fringe, sessions proceed. Nevertheless, I thank all noble Lords, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and Her Majesty’s Opposition, for their support for this order. It is important that we come together in ensuring that the great city of Birmingham realises its full potential.
We believe that the change to the election cycle in the city of Birmingham is critical to securing the fundamental reforms that the city needs. The current pattern of elections by thirds has not helped Birmingham’s ability to take strategic decisions. There is, as we all recognise, an inability to focus on the longer-term problems that are holding the council back, including transforming services. When we are children, we are often told not to do things by halves—or by thirds, in this case—so perhaps a move to whole-council elections will give the council the impetus that it needs. It will give a four-year stable mandate and facilitate the strategic decision-making that we all desire. It will enable the council more effectively to take those longer-term decisions and forge a strategic and long-term vision for the future and the city as a whole.
The approach of moving councils where reform is imperative to holding whole-council elections is not unprecedented. The previous Labour Government did this in the case of Stoke-on-Trent and we have done this for Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, where the first full-council elections will take place in May this year. More generally, the Government are on public record as recognising the benefits of whole-council elections every four years. In our White Paper response to my noble friend Lord Heseltine’s report on promoting economic growth, No Stone Unturned: In Pursuit of Growth, we said that,
“the Government welcomes the adoption anywhere of four-yearly whole council elections”,
while recognising that this was generally a matter for local choice.
The noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Hunt, raised the issue of the order being made so quickly. I recognise that, following the publication of Sir Bob’s report, matters have moved swiftly and continue to do so. I take this opportunity to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for not alerting him earlier to the further order, which we laid on Friday, which will shift the date for the first whole-council elections from May 2017, as recommended by Sir Bob Kerslake, to May 2018. I shall explain both why we are moving so quickly and why we have changed the start date.
First, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, recognises, the situation in Birmingham is serious. Indeed, all noble Lords who took part in the debate made that point. Fundamental reform is essential and needs to be driven forward as quickly as possible. We quickly established the Birmingham independent improvement panel, led by Sir John Crabtree, a highly respected figure in the city whose lifelong commitment to the well-being of Birmingham is known to all. The panel’s role is to provide challenge and advice to the council as it follows its improvement journey in response to the Kerslake report. The council quickly set to work to draw up an action plan to implement the Kerslake recommendations made to it and is now seeking to finalise this, working closely with the improvement panel.
Along with recommending a change to whole-council elections, the Kerslake report recommended that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England undertake an electoral review. The aim of this review, when linked with a move to whole-council elections, is to move the council away from having three-member wards and to enable there to be a smaller council. Such a council, with many single-member wards, will be better able both to represent local people and more effectively to take the tough decisions needed to address the challenges that Birmingham faces. The boundary commission has already started its work. Before it can get to grips with its review, it needs certainty about the pattern of elections that the council will hold, hence the urgent need for any order changing the pattern of elections to be made as soon as practicable.
That is what we did. We made the order on 21 January; we laid it before Parliament on the 22 January; and it came into force on 16 February. It implemented fully the Kerslake recommendations, including the start date recommended by the report. We knew that this report had been prepared following many meetings with residents, business leaders, community and faith leaders, the voluntary and community sector, local politicians, council officers, front-line staff, and representatives of other public services. The review heard the views of more than 350 people and received 80 submissions of written evidence.
However, with the order having been made, some suggested that 2018 would be a better year in which to hold the first whole-council elections. This is because Birmingham, like the other West Midlands authorities, would then continue to have no local elections in 2017, 2021 and so on. It would also avoid councillors being elected for just a one-year term, which would be the case for those elected in 2016 if the first whole-council elections were in May 2017. Our sole aim is to do what is best for Birmingham. We have been persuaded that a 2018 start date is on balance better than the 2017 start date, even though it means that a renewed council with a clear four-year mandate will not be in place until one year later.
I assure noble Lords that I fully take on board the points that have been made during this debate. In particular, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, talked about the importance of training for officers and councillors. That is a very important point to reflect on, because, too often, people put themselves forward for office without perhaps fully understanding the nature of their role and its importance in decision-making.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, drew an important distinction between the roles of elected members and officers. Training and the renewal of such training are important not just in Birmingham but around the country.
I am confident that these orders provide a firm foundation for the many changes that are needed in Birmingham—challenges that I know the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, knows only too well. There is an overwhelming consensus that the council cannot carry on any longer as it is. The issues are deeply rooted and will not change overnight, but a start needs to be made now. This order is part of the start and I commend it to the House.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lord McKenzie. I will not speak for any length of time; I want to make four brief points.
First, I endorse what my noble friend Lord Rooker said. Going back to Victorian days and over many decades, Birmingham led the way as a strong exponent of what local government could be. The sanitation improvements, the housing improvements and the Chamberlain improvements showed what a vigorous, confident city could do to improve the lot of its citizens, and it is clear that that is what we want to get back to.
Secondly, my noble friend is also right that, at some point, we have to face up to the “greater Birmingham” issue. The relationship between Birmingham and the other boroughs in the West Midlands is not what it should be. We cannot take advantage of what we see as a great pendulum swing back to local government and autonomy unless that relationship is sorted out. I agree with my noble friend on his point about Birmingham and the boroughs. In the end, that will be resolved only if Birmingham gives confidence to the other boroughs that a partnership can truly be created.
Thirdly, the roles between councillors and officers are crucial. All I will say is that I hope that the panel that has now been established to help and challenge the city council will focus on governance, relationships and culture. That seems to be where a huge amount of work needs to be done.
Finally, I listened with care to the Minister’s argument and, of course, I support the order. However, I worry that for three years the council will be inwardly focused on boundary commission reviews, new wards, selection and then election. I hope that the noble Lord’s department, in its relationship with the city council and the panel, will do everything it can to ensure that the eyes of the leadership and all those involved with the city council are focused as much as possible on the job in hand: improving service to the people of Birmingham rather than, as I fear, worrying about the boundary review. I was not encouraged by the intervention of the chairman of the Local Government Boundary Commission for England over the past few days. It seemed that he tried to embark on a sort of city-wide debate in terms of boundaries and wards. That is the last thing we need to worry about at the moment. The job in hand is improving Birmingham’s services. Having said that, I beg to move my Motion.