Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Pack Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing this important topic to our attention and putting it on the agenda today. We have heard many powerful and moving contributions from all parts of the Room, which reflects how this is a genuine cross-party issue that should concern us all.

The Local Government Association survey of councillors, although not UK-wide, provides a helpful benchmark. It is shocking that just under 70% of councillors who took part in the last set of elections reported receiving abuse or intimidation. As we have heard from several speakers, not only is it a shocking figure in totality but it tends to affect particular portions of our society, which hugely hinders what should be a common desire for us all to have democratically elected politicians who represent all corners of society. Shockingly, according to the LGA survey, more than one in five councillors have had to report one or more issues to the police. To bring that number to life: that would be the equivalent of 174 Peers among us in the House of Lords having to report something to the police. That is a shocking number.

It is fair to say that, so far, we have not always seen a brilliant set of responses to these problems. Operation Ford has a rather mixed reputation among those who have sadly had recourse to it. Indeed, in the LGA survey, under half of councillors who have reported an issue to the police say that their response has helped either greatly or even just moderately. But there is also a need for action from the Government, including on the legislative front. We have already heard today that there is a wide mix of solutions available out there to pick from. That includes, for example, from the Speaker’s Conference; although it focuses predominantly on MPs, it obviously has wider applicability. There is also the Government’s own previous consultation on a new standards framework for English local government, for example. The LGA itself has made recommendations, and we have heard other proposals such as those put forward by the Jo Cox Foundation.

I worry that this issue will once again be caught up in that perpetual pirouette of prevarication that we sometimes have in Whitehall. We have promises of action, consultations, recommendations and promises of legislation, but then an absence from a King’s Speech, a ministerial reshuffle, an election and maybe even a change of Prime Minister. Round and round we go in that cycle, while the misery for councillors continues and the action fails to happen. I know the Minister has a strong commitment on these issues, and I hope we will hear from her a clear timetable for the action the Government will take so that we do not simply go round and round yet again.