Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Lemos Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for initiating this important debate. Abuse of local councillors is not new; I am afraid it goes back a long time. I was a local councillor for over 25 years—I chaired various committees and was leader of the council for 19 years—so I will talk about a few personal examples. From the moment there was a change of control, there were demonstrations at the town hall. People ran a gauntlet of abuse and threats, and many council meetings were disrupted by order papers flying through the air from the public gallery, which was usually subdued only when demonstrators were removed by the police. For a long period, the police kept crash barriers at the town hall, as they were there so much.

For individual councillors, demonstrations outside their homes and threats through the letterbox were common. At that time I had small children, and I had to contend with being burned in effigy outside my home on many occasions. Of course, I was not there—I was at the town hall—so it was my young children and my wife who had to suffer it. One particular demonstration comes to mind: when it was finished and they had taken their photographs—this shows my influence—the people in the wheelchairs were all able to get up and push their wheelchairs away. Obviously, I had some effect: the power of a councillor.

I am using my own examples, but even today much of this is organised by people in mainstream political parties, so I slightly feel that we are also reaping a bit of what our own political parties have sowed in the past. Now it is so much worse with social media, because they do not even have to show a bit of courage by showing up outside your house and shouting at you; now they can just do it online under a fictitious name and you will never know who they are.

Public anger over policies is often driven by government policies coming down to councils to implement. For most people, the layers of government are totally opaque. Making hard decisions goes with the job of being a councillor—except, of course, when councils do not do that and we have poor councils as a result. We have all seen the result of those poor councils that do not make decisions. The police and judiciary must take seriously the threats, they must take action and they must penalise as necessary. It is not, and never can be, normal politics to abuse someone. This has to be treated with seriousness and there has to be a price for that kind of behaviour.

Finally, much of this will be much better with local government reform, greater fiscal freedoms and real transparent powers, which I believe would create clarity. If, at the same time, we get robust action by the law, this problem will decline. It will also decline because people will start to believe that councils are actually a little more relevant.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time limit. If speakers run over, that will simply reduce the amount of time the Minister has to respond, because this is a time-limited debate. I would be grateful if speakers could stick to three minutes.