Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 69: 69: Clause 37, page 21, line 3, leave out ““non-metropolitan”” The noble Lord said: This is an important amendment on a substantive issue, which had quite a good going over in Committee in the House of Commons, where it became very clear that Members of Parliament were attached to different kinds of electoral systems on the basis of their own experience. Apparently, most people are in favour of the system with which they have grown up and which they knew and liked. But some people, on the basis of their experience, want to change, which reflects accurately the situation throughout the country. This group of amendments seeks to give all councils the option to choose whether to have whole-council elections every four years, elections by thirds in three of those four years or elections by halves. For a year or two, it has been policy for the Government to encourage people to move away from whole-council elections. Before then, the opposite was the case. It all depends on who is doing the thinking, the reports, the surveys or happens to be in Downing Street advising or dreaming up new ideas for the Government. I do not criticise people for doing that useful job, but it depends on the theme or fad of the moment. What gets put in legislation is accidental: it depends on where the fad of the moment coincides with another Bill in which it can be inserted. That is how it works. There are good arguments for both whole-council elections and for elections by thirds, some of which have been put forward today. At the local district level, there are very strong arguments in favour of annual elections by thirds. There are probably good arguments in favour of elections every two years, which is a good compromise because it provides an administration with two years to get on with things before having to go to the polls again. However, for many councils, every four years is too long. It may provide people with the opportunity to make strategic decisions and strategic choices, although that may be a large council view coming from Kent County Council; I do not in any way criticise that. For smaller councils and for more compact urban councils, there is a great deal to be said for the turnover of members being evolutionary rather than sudden and catastrophic. Some of these big councils do not change their political composition very often anyhow and it takes a substantial national change of political climate for that to happen. Having decided that they want to encourage councils to move to whole-council elections, though not forcing them to do so, the Government produced this Bill. As a result of pressure that was put forward in the House of Commons in favour of annual elections or alternate half-council elections, the Bill has been modified—I think it was on Report in the Commons—to allow those councils which had previously been electing by thirds or halves and then moved to whole-council to move back again. This seems illogical. If it is okay for the seven councils that elect by halves or the 11 councils that had moved to whole-council from a third to move back again, why can other people not move back? This seems an issue on which the Government should let the councils make their own decisions to move in either direction. There is no serious evidence that leadership in whole-council elections is better than leadership in election by thirds or halves. That evidence does not exist and people should be acting on what is being said about devolution. The arguments for annual elections or elections in halves are that if change is taking place, it takes place more slowly. There is greater stability. You do not have the risk that a party that has been running a council for four years—doing a good or bad job—is swept out not because of its record locally, but because it happens to be the party of the Government of the day, who are in mid-term and extremely unpopular, and people are voting for non-local reasons. Most people in local elections nowadays vote for local reasons, or far more than people think. Nevertheless, there are occasions—and some of us can remember such years in the past—when everybody of one party is swept out. It happened in 1990 when the Labour Party swept the board; it happened in 1977 when the Tories swept the board. Having annual elections is a safeguard against local decision-making and local politics being quite so subject to such an undesirable. I was a member of Lancashire County Council from 1977 to 1981. At that time Lancashire County Council, which has been Labour-controlled since 1981, consisted of 84 Conservatives, 12 Labour members—including the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, whom I first met then—and me. That was it. It was an absolute travesty. For that to last four years was not desirable for local government. I therefore believe that there ought to be local decision-making on this and that councils ought to be able to move whichever way they want. That is in the spirit of these devolutionary days and the devolutionary rhetoric that we have heard from Ministers. I beg to move.