My Lords, I am very encouraged by this debate. One always tends to worry as the years go by that one’s views have become rather fixed and stagnant. My opposition to directly elected mayors is of long standing and my earlier depression was reinforced by the fact that, as I understand it, at the moment all three political parties’ leaderships are committed in one way or another to directly elected mayors. It is always a slightly worrying state of affairs when all three party leaderships seem to be in agreement, but most contributions from the Back Benches that I have heard in both the debates we have had today on the Bill have expressed reservations about directly elected mayors. I suddenly feel that the pendulum may be swinging. It certainly did a long time ago as far as the electorate were concerned—we know that. The electorate say no, no, no, no and an occasional yes when they are asked about directly elected mayors. Is it just wishful thinking or is parliamentary opinion, at least in this House, changing on the issue? If it is, then I think it is for very good and sound reasons.
I do not want to be in any way disparaging about people who support the idea of directly elected mayors. One or two are sitting close to me at the moment. I acknowledge that this phrase that we all use and are all committed to—“democratic accountability”—can take many forms. In truth, it takes two forms more than most others. That is to say, it can be achieved via what we would broadly refer to as a presidential system, or through a parliamentary system. Both have forms of democratic accountability.
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In this country—I am not saying that it is true for every country, but I think that I know this country pretty well—the parliamentary system is the one that I prefer. It has stood the test of time. Although local government is obviously very different from central government, none the less historically it has been a variant of the parliamentary system that has obtained in local government—that is to say, that the executive comes out of the legislature. I know that it is rather grandiose to say that a local authority is a legislature in the same sense as Parliament, but that is from where the executive springs. I much prefer that form of democratic accountability, certainly in comparison with the idea of direct election of the executive.
I do not think that anyone here is going to argue that the Prime Minister should be elected, so we can at least say no to that idea. But some would say that in some circumstances we should have directly elected leadership of local government. Direct election is great when the vote takes place, but the problem arises
between one vote for the president/mayor and the next vote for the president/mayor, which can be four, five or six years later. In fact, it is not even laid down in the Bill, unless I have misread it; the Bill does not actually dictate the interval between mayoral elections. So the electorate get consulted, but that is the only occasion when they do, whereas with any kind of parliamentary system including local government—it is a long time since I was a councillor, but my word it worked—the executive is accountable day in and day out, in a sense. It is accountable to the elected councillors and the elected councillors are, in turn, all individually responsible to their own electorates. That seems a much richer form of accountability than a one-off every four, five or six years, or whatever the interval is determined to be.
I am moving from a position of saying, “Well, let each area decide for itself”. I have been convinced by my own speech, actually, that maybe there should be a system whereby central government says, “No, we’ve decided that the parliamentary system is the right one for us, so we are certainly not going to tell anyone at a local level that they must have a system different from the one that we have. We think ours is democratically accountable”. I am moving rapidly away from the position of the permissive possibility of maybe some areas having directly elected mayors and others not, to saying that central government should probably say, “We think it’s a pretty good system—we think it’s the one you should have in your areas, where your executives are answerable to the council”. That is the democracy that works centrally and, in my experience, the one that works locally. Give me a parliamentary system over a presidential system any day of the week.