Localism Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her assurance that parliamentary approval will be required before designating any authority to have a referendum. However, I am surprised and disappointed that it should be thought necessary for the Secretary of State to prescribe a referendum when it is evident from the absence of any requisition by a mere 5 per cent of the electorate that there is any such interest from the local community to start with. Moving on to the amendment tabled by the right reverend Prelate and supported by my noble friend, I find it surprising that it should be thought that paralysis would ensue if there was a delay of a year between the referendum and a subsequent mayoral election. It could even have been argued that it would have been better to have followed the precedent of the 1973 local government reorganisation, when a shadow authority was elected and did not actually take office for a year. That actually gave the incoming authority time, on new boundaries and all the rest of it, to assimilate the problems of the area and develop an appropriate response, changing structures and the like. To suggest that it is essential to move straight into the position where the nature of the authority changes during the year strikes me as illogical, potentially disruptive and damaging, and in fact onerous for the newly elected incumbent, should there be any newly elected incumbents to that position. He or she would be entering into office half way through the year, unable to do very much at all about the existing budget, and contending with structures that would be difficult to rearrange in a short time. Moreover, in terms of cost, surely it would be less expensive to have an election coinciding with the normal municipal election in the following year. I quite take the point made by the noble Baroness that there have been some instances of mid-year referendums, but if one is looking at the issue of cost it is, I should have thought, clearer that there would be a cost saving to have them at the same time as the local election. Indeed, that point has been made for us, conveniently, in connection with the debate over the timing of the elections for police commissioners, if indeed we are to have those.