Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the spirit of all three of these Motions and I especially commend the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Pinnock, for making their Motions fatal. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, reassure us and tell us, in effect, not to worry our pretty little heads and to stop panicking—he did not use that language, I am. It was then interesting that there was quite a lot of laughter on the Benches opposite; there is this sense of, “What is all the fuss about?” I suggest that this is not a game and it really matters for voters. There is a lot at stake here, not least the reputation of the democratic process.

For the last week or so, Government Ministers have talked about a fictional drama as though it is factual evidence, concluding that a Netflix series should inform policy on countering the radicalisation of young boys, so maybe the Government will accept my factual, if anecdotal, evidence of how the cancellation of council elections is fuelling the radicalising of young people to become cynical about democracy. I was recently giving a talk to a student group about the importance of democratic engagement to a free society, and I was taken aback by just how cynical they were. The majority said, “Democracy is a sham”—that was the popular sentiment. I was even more surprised when their evidence centred on councils, not something that the young generally chat about. One of them summed it up when he said, “They cancelled the Romanian presidential elections and banned the popular candidate from standing. Now our Government have cancelled the council elections because they are scared that austerity Labour will get a drubbing”. Whether we like it or not—and I argued against that slightly conspiratorial tone, by the way—we can see why they might draw that conclusion.

Beyond those young cynics, there is a lot of anger about this issue. Five and a half million people feel that they have had their votes cancelled and they feel cheated. It is being discussed in workplaces, in the pub, on phone-ins and on social media. People will say things like, “There are challenger parties doing well in the polls. They don’t want to see how they get on”. There is a certain volatility around politics at the moment and people want to make their views heard. People are frustrated that, for example, just when voters are facing council tax rises and horrible cuts in local council services, they do not get a chance to comment locally. In rural areas, where those on family farms are so worried about recent policies, so worried that their livelihoods are going to be destroyed, they do not get a chance to vote. We have been told that these are being postponed for only a year, but a lot can happen in a year: in less than a year, some devastating policies have been brought in by the Government that people might have a view on. That will be true as well, so I would rather that people were given a vote, even if then they had to have the election again, than just be told, “Don’t you worry, you’ll get a vote eventually”.

Local issues matter to people. If noble Lords were listening this morning to the discussions on the media about rats as large as cats and the bin strike in Birmingham, they will have heard people passionately talking about what is happening in their local area. We have to understand that people want their voices and their views to count, and many feel robbed by this decision. They do not want to be fobbed off by technical excuses about the importance of devolution and somebody at the top making a decision that will give them more democracy at some time. They are basically being told that voters’ access to the ballot box should be trumped by a policy reorganisation. Also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, suggests, it seems to make a mockery of the notion that these devolution changes will bring more accountability.

The lack of consultation mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Byford, is especially egregious. Although I have a lot to say on devolution, on these devolutionary forms and their shortcomings, now is not the time and I will not say it now, but I think it would be wrong for the Government not to at least note that people feel that this is a contemptuous disregard for voters’ aspirations to exert their rightful right to vote for or vote out politicians as they choose, as they expected to. They are disappointed and many people are actually looking at parliamentary TV, for once, to see which way we go today. Who would have thought that that would happen? But there you go.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire who is not participating in this process. I speak in support of the regret Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook. As chairman of the Local Government Association, I campaigned vigorously for greater devolution, and I am still very supportive of devolution. I also led a unitary council for 10 years and can testify to the benefits of unitary councils. However, if we are genuinely to have devolution and well-run services, it needs to be locally led, with real powers and local accountability. We cannot treat local government as little more than a delivery arm of central government, tied up in regulation, with budget controls and with central targets and funding pots.

When this country saw the biggest improvement in health, education, social support, infrastructure and so forth, it was all locally led. If you go back to the turn of the 20th century, local government was truly empowered, delivering education, health, social care, social support, infrastructure and even gas and water supplies. It was genuinely financially independent of central government. Over the last century, central government has steadily eroded the role of local government, placed more controls and reduced its financial freedoms while increasing burdens on local councils.

I am a believer that form should follow function. We should see real devolution which would enable genuine financial independence from central government, with a much greater role in economic development, community health, education and skills for getting people back to work; this would enable every area to flourish with real levelling up. This is what the Government should have started with, because locally we could have then answered the question of what would be appropriate structures to deliver this. It would also significantly reduce local argument as the prize and objective would have been clear to all.

Instead, we have top-down reorganisation. The Government have been clear that they intend to use their large majority in the other place to force through unitarisation and have mayors across the country. There is a clear message that funding will be tight, so councils will have to make significant savings, which the Government expect to be delivered by unitarisation. It is understandable that, in these circumstances, many councils have concluded that it is better to participate in order to have some control over their destiny and potentially some meagre rewards, rather than be done to by government diktat.

So I have sympathy with those councils that, due to the need to meet a government-imposed timetable, asked for a delay in their elections. But it did not need to be this way. The Government could and should have worked with local government. They should have brought forward real proposals for real devolution with a clear timetable that respected the democratic process. They should have brought forward proposals to address some of the biggest issues in local government, such as social care and SEND. They should have looked at how, by addressing the perverse incentives, the blockages in the system and creating genuine local place-based working, these could have been addressed.

You cannot look at local government reorganisation without looking at, for instance, the healthcare system and how that works. But, no, this Government are favouring imposition over co-operation, avoiding the difficult decisions and not delivering real devolution. That is why I will be supporting by noble friend Lady Scott’s Motion to Regret.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, that has been a really interesting debate. I understand and I have listened to the concerns around the Chamber. The Government have been very clear on our manifesto commitment to widen devolution to more areas. We have been clear on our vision for a simpler, more sustainable local government structure, alongside transfer of power and funding out of Westminster through a devolution process. We have been clear on our willingness to take all the appropriate steps needed to deliver this vision, working with councils to fix the foundations of local government and support communities to join the devolution revolution.