Elected Mayors

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) on securing the debate. It is only proper that I should declare an interest in the sense that I am, and will remain for a few months longer, an elected member of North East Lincolnshire unitary council. As background information, I should say that I have served as a councillor for 25 years—and it don’t seem a day too long. I have served both in a two-tier system as a former member of Grimsby borough council and, more recently—in fact, for the past 11 years—as a representative on North East Lincolnshire council. That experience has certainly taught me that single-tier authorities are ultimately the way forward and that they should be led by elected mayors.

[John Stevenson]

Does my hon. Friend think that we should ultimately move to unitary authorities across the country and get rid of the two-tier system? That would allow elected mayor systems to develop in the various unitary authorities.

[Martin Vickers]

That is my personal preference. I accept the fact that there are geographical difficulties in large counties, in the sense that individuals find it more difficult to become local personalities when parts of the county could be 70 or 80 miles apart. For example, within Lincolnshire county council, the distance from Gainsborough in the north to Spalding in the south is about 60 or 70 miles. I can understand the difficulties, although far be it for me to suggest that Lincolnshire should be broken up into unitaries. That debate is for another day.

As politicians, we are here to articulate the concerns of our local communities. In recent years, there has been much talk of new politics. In the same way as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, “new” can mean whatever an individual chooses it to mean. However, we can transform politics by introducing more direct elections. As my hon. Friend said, there will be personality contests—he mentioned the Boris versus Ken show, which transfixed the nation—and whether we like it or not, personalities have always played a major role in politics. Leadership, in part, results from the individual personality of the person concerned.

I welcome the fact that moves are being made to introduce elected mayors into our big cities; but, like my hon. Friend, I would like to know why it is only happening in those places. In Lincolnshire—in the provincial towns of Cleethorpes, Grimsby and so on—we think that the big cities get more than their fair share as it is. We would like another advocate for our communities, and perhaps elected mayors in provincial areas, working in tandem with Members of Parliament, would be more of a thorn in the side of Governments, of whatever complexion, and we hope that that would be beneficial to local communities.

Much is made of the potential downsides of having elected mayors, such as the possibility that extremists would be elected, but why do we assume that the electorate would vote for extremists? The British people, on the whole, are moderate in their political views, and there is no real evidence that extremists would be elected. If they were, they would soon be found out and lose favour with the electorate. With regard to claims that individuals could be corrupt, I am sure that sufficient reserve powers could be included in any Bill to take care of that.

We have an opportunity to give our politics back to the people by having more direct elections. We need to break down the barriers. As both Members who have spoken in the debate acknowledged, there is an inertia in local authorities, and most councillors are particularly opposed to the concept of elected mayors because that would break down the rather cosy current arrangements. From the general public’s point of view, that is exactly what should happen; we need to break down those cosy arrangements and bring in people who truly represent their communities. We need more individuals to be elected as party candidates through open primaries, bringing more people into the electorate’s choice. We need to reduce dramatically the threshold for initiating a referendum. Councils should still have the opportunity to initiate a referendum, but we need to make it much easier for the population at large to kick-start that process.

There is a fair amount of unanimity in the debate, and I agree that the present arrangements for scrutiny within councils have not worked. That is understandable, as back-bench councillors, under the present cabinet arrangements, really have only one opportunity to speak on behalf of their constituents, so they use meetings that should be for scrutinising the executive to bring up, for example, why the bus stop in the high street has been moved. I do not blame them for that, as I have done it myself. The proposal for directly elected mayors is an opportunity to transform local government, and I hope that the Minister will offer my hon. Friend and I some encouraging words.