Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Balfe on his success in the ballot and on introducing this interesting debate about alternative means of electing local councillors. He certainly sparked off a wide variety of ideas, which I will focus on in a moment.

We welcome the debate that my noble friend has initiated on democratic representation in local government and how best to choose our leaders in local authorities. It is a long time since I served on a local council. It is 46 years since I lost my seat on the London Borough of Lambeth, to which I was elected in 1968 alongside Councillor John Major and also, much to her surprise, Councillor Lady Young, who was a paper candidate in an unwinnable ward in Clapham which my party won. I agree with what has been said about the importance of local government and take this opportunity to pay tribute to councillors of all parties who have managed with reduced levels of grant over recent years but have none the less maintained, on the whole, good-quality services and, in some cases, actually increased public satisfaction.

Our debate today has been underpinned by a desire to ensure popular engagement with this important local democratic process and to protect the transparency and integrity of our electoral system at local level—principles which all who have spoken would support. This is clear across all parties: successive Labour and Conservative Administrations have introduced directly elected mayors for some local authorities and the combined authorities taking on the most significant devolved powers, as well as directly elected police and crime commissioners.

I take the point made by a number of speakers that the current system can lead to domination by one party, with few opposition members. However, I think that that argument has less force now than when I was on the local authority because we have had the introduction of overview and scrutiny committees which can challenge the executive in a way that was not possible with the old committee structure that I was familiar with. On top of that, we have audit committees and officers of the council who have responsibilities on legality and value for money.

I also think that the notion of safe seats or safe wards has less validity now than it used to given the volatility of the electorate. At parliamentary level, we have seen my party lose Tatton and Dr Taylor win Wyre Forest, so I think that the notion of safe seats and safe wards is less valid. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who mentioned Sheffield. Within my memory, Sheffield has been run by three different parties, so it is not the case that there are parts of the country that are the monopoly of any one party.

My noble friend Lord Balfe shared his background in the Co-operative movement, which shaped his views on electoral reform. He also mentioned Wales. One consequence of devolution of course is that different parts of the UK can go their own way, and it does not follow that because Wales has gone in a particular direction, England has to follow. He also mentioned ward boundaries. As I understand his Bill, there is nothing in it that would affect ward boundaries, so the particular issue that he raised would have to be dealt with in a different way. He mentioned his support for the Greens. The Greens have shown that they can win wards—and indeed local authorities—under the existing system, so I would not accept that the existing system is a barrier to what were initially small movements.

My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned that they favoured the additional member system, if we were to go down this particular route. I think that the smaller the boundary, the more difficult it is to have additional member systems. There is already the allegation that they are “second-class citizens”. That argument has less validity if you are looking at a region or a country but, when you get down to individual wards, if you were to have additional members sitting for such a small geographical area, there would be real difficulties in persuading people of their credibility.

The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey—speaking, if I may say so, from an unusual position in the Chamber, but on a familiar theme—addressed some of the deficiencies in the Bill and made it clear that he was anti-referendums. He also made the point that some of the difficult decisions about the Bill had been subcontracted to the Secretary of State, who would have to introduce a Bill to address some of these problems. I was interested in what he said about citizens’ juries, but I think that his proposal would put a huge weight on an as yet untested system of such juries taking important decisions on local democracy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked me to answer the question of why is it fair that the DUP should have so many seats and the Greens so few. The answer is that the country had a referendum and decided that it wanted to stay with first past the post, and it is first past the post that produced the outcome that the noble Baroness referred to. In her closing remarks, she said that we should trust the people. If we are going to trust the people then I think that we have to honour the result of that particular referendum.

The noble Lord, Lord Tope, argued generously for a system that would give my party more representation in the London Borough of Sutton. I have to say that, next May, we hope to do that on our own, without the benefit of his proposed system. But, like others, he identified some deficiencies in the Bill. On the question of turnout, one can argue it both ways. I think I am right in saying that, when we moved from first past the post to the regional list system for the European Parliament, turnout fell from what it had been under first past the post—so it is not always the case that changing the system drives up turnout.

My noble friend Lord Balfe was somewhat dismissive about manifestos, but I have to remind him that my—and his—party’s manifesto commits us to,

“retain the first past the post system of voting for parliamentary elections and extend this system to police and crime commissioner and mayoral elections”.

In his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said that he wanted to reduce the number of different systems. That is exactly what my party’s election manifesto does: it proposes moving back to first past the post as the system for the elections to which I have just referred.

To return to my noble friend Lord Balfe’s speech, far from moving towards the system advocated by his Bill, subject to local referendum, there is the clear commitment in the party’s manifesto to move in the opposite direction, which means it is difficult for us to support this particular piece of legislation.

We want to ensure that the laws governing our local elections can be understood and applied with confidence. Under first past the post, electors select their preferred candidate or candidates for their ward, the system is well understood by the electorate and it is straightforward for electoral administrators to deliver election results accurately and quickly.

Opinion has been tested—I referred to this a moment ago—and appetite among the public for a move from first past the post is not evident. The referendum in 2011 on changing the system of parliamentary electoral representation from first past the post to alternative vote was 67.9% against to 32.1% for on a turnout of 42.2%. The Bill before us seeks to apply PR rather than the alternative vote, and to councils rather than Parliament. None the less, significant public support has recently been expressed for first past the post. The Government’s position is that local government is local. First past the post ensures a clear link between the councillor and their ward in a manner that systems of PR may not. Local government has a strong tradition of having as its essential component the local councillor. Between them, these councillors represent the spectrum of different political parties; a number of councillors represent no party and stand as independents. The current system of representation facilitates this.

Electoral systems used to achieve PR are often more complex than first past the post; systems such as the single transferable vote require ballots to be counted multiple times in order to allocate seats. First past the post entails a relatively simple count which usually need be conducted only once, minimising the pressure on the administrative process and the possibility of error.

Elections using first past the post produce lower numbers of rejected ballot papers compared with other systems, including PR systems. According to the Electoral Commission, the Scottish council elections using STV led to 37,492 ballot papers being rejected: as a proportion of total ballots cast, that is nearly six times higher than under first past the post in the general election. High numbers of incorrectly completed ballot papers place pressure on the administrative process at the count by requiring electoral administrators’ adjudication.

We have had a useful debate. I thank all those who have contributed. I expressed reservations about the provisions of the Bill, as have other contributors to our debate. We have clearly stated our intention not to move away from the tried and tested first-past-the-post system. We have no plans to enable the change to the voting system for elections to English local authorities that the Bill could provide for, nor indeed do the Government propose to introduce the legislation envisaged by my noble friend. I am sorry to have to close my speech with remarks that I know he will find disappointing.