Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is 53 years ago to the month that I was elected to my local authority in Torfaen. I fought four elections and I can honestly say that I had no abuse during the whole time I was a local councillor. There was a time I can recall knocking on the door and a factory worker was woken up because he had been on shift overnight. On another occasion, a German resident asked me why there was not a Conservative candidate. I was obviously the Labour candidate and I said that it was not my job to put up a Conservative. But that was it. Fast forward all those years later to a few weeks ago, at the elections that we have had, in our case in Wales for the Senedd, and for councils in England, and the world has changed.

I thought I would have been used to abuse, having served as Northern Ireland Secretary, but it came as a terrible shock a couple of weeks ago when I heard the stories of people who had knocked on the doors in the weeks before the election. There were stories of terrible, personal abuse on the doorstep and of online abuse on social media and the internet—neither of which was present 53 years ago. Politics has become so polarised that it is reduced to soundbites and, therefore, people do not read newspapers any more. I have never seen this vulgarity and ugliness in politics in my political life. We have to do something about it.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Forbes for raising this issue today and I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister what solutions the Government have on this issue, particularly with regard to the Representation of the People Bill but also other measures, which need to be replicated in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Abuse does not stop at the border. I look forward to what she has to say, but I repeat what many of your Lordships have said: democracy itself is imperilled if we cannot find candidates to stand as a consequence of the level of abuse that they now have to put up with. It is a cheapening of politics and it is extremely sad.