English Devolution and Local Government

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his offer to visit the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum. I have already been there. However, I did pick up his point about the need to enhance and promote visits to that museum; it is a very worthwhile visit.

I answered a number of questions yesterday about the electoral reviews in the areas concerned. It is very important that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England is allowed to do its job properly. The department has, of course, been talking to the commission throughout this process about the work it will need to do as a result of the changes we are making to local government. It is ready to help both with boundary reviews, where necessary, and with the boundaries for the new authorities and the boundaries within those authorities. I explained yesterday the criteria that the commission uses to do that. It has very strict criteria, and I am sure it will keep to those, as it has done during all the time it has been operating.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the White Paper seems to have a dreadful confusion between local and regional running throughout it. Does the Minister share my concern about the low level of public trust in democratic politics throughout England? I live in a city where wards average 15,000 people each, and local councillors find it very difficult to keep in touch with all the communities in their ward. The problem in our cities is that we are in danger of having a structure that is so distant from the local communities that people lose trust in and contact with democratic politics. Participation falls, and mistrust in our political system grows.

My second question is on accountability. We are told that mayors are going to be held strongly accountable, but as I read the White Paper, they are going to be accountable mainly to the Secretary of State, not to local councillors as such. That seems to me another way in which this is a false devolution and a real delegation. Can the Minister address those two questions?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

First, I share the noble Lord’s concern about mistrust in politics, but local government is the most trusted part of the political system, far more trusted than national politicians. I make that point to him. Of course it is right that the sizes of ward boundaries or divisional boundaries are appropriate for councillors to fulfil their need, but it is also important that those sizes are appropriate for the area that they represent. I am sure that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England will be taking great account of whether areas are majorly urban or rural and all the issues that it normally takes into account.

On mayoral accountability, it is not the case that the mayors will just be accountable to the Government. The White Paper sets out very clearly that there will be local public accounts committees in place and that the constituent parts of the combined authorities—the unitary authorities that sit within them—will have all the usual accountability mechanisms for those local authorities. They will have scrutiny and overview committees, they will explore the decisions of the Executive and the mayor will have a similar process at their level. So accountability will sit at the heart of the system. We will also mend the very broken audit system that has been left as a legacy from the previous Government and which has not worked for a number of years. The Government intend to address that and that is set out in the White Paper as well.