My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend for the fact that he is going to preserve the city status of Carlisle. I think that will be welcomed on all sides. I was born there 60-something years ago, and am very grateful that its city status shall be continued. I also declare an interest, first, as a Cumbrian, but secondly, as an active member of Penrith and The Border Conservative Association. I refer to that because the Penrith and The Border constituency is the one constituency that will straddle the two new authorities—I think that is correct, but no doubt others will correct me if it is not. I want to ask my noble friend about the electoral arrangements we will face in May because, as he made quite clear, we will be electing the shadow authority, which will then take over as the substantive authority in April 2023. At some time after that, as my noble friend made clear, the boundary commission will get into action and produce new boundaries for the various wards or divisions—I am not sure how we shall refer to them—in both authorities. But for the elections, we are going to have to deal with rather arbitrary selected wards or divisions in both authorities.
I do not know what the numbers on the two councils will be in future, once the boundary commission has done its work. Initially, and for the first five years of the two shadow authorities, the western division, which will be referred to as Cumberland, will use the existing county council divisions. Therefore, as I understand and remember it, there will be 42 councillors, one for each division, in that authority.
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This is relevant to me because, like all political parties, we have to go through the process of selecting candidates, and we want to get that done as soon as possible. We have started on it, because we had some idea of what the boundaries would be. It is relatively
easy in the western division, which is using the existing county council divisions. We have made progress in the northern half of Penrith and The Border, where we have identified our candidates and will soon be in a place whereby they can put themselves forward and go through the various due processes to stand in those elections.
In the eastern authority, which will be referred to as Westmorland and Furness, a different process has been adopted. The new authority will not have the 38 county councillors who originally covered that area, but some 65 councillors. There is obviously no way to get 65 out of 38; the sums do not add up. The district wards have therefore been used to create the various boundaries for the new authorities, which are laid out in the schedule to this order. As I understand, that has meant consultation between the department and the three districts involved—Eden, South Lakeland and Barrow—to produce 65 seats with one, two or three members covering each ward in that area. There were problems because some of the district council wards of those three areas had one, some had two and some had three members. The whole thing has had to be done by putting odd things together, following consultations with the local authorities. I do not believe there has been consultation more widely than that.
I ask my noble friend why this figure of 65 was picked. How was it decided to put together which wards to make either one-member or two-member seats for the authority? Could that not have been done earlier? I just mentioned the practical problem of finding candidates and going through a legitimate selection process, within every political party, to make sure that members are allowed to take part, before you put them before the election. Technically, these wards do not come into existence until the passage of this structural changes order and we have elections coming in May.
My simple question is: why this process? How did it come about? What consultations took place beyond those with the individual local authorities of Eden, South Lakeland and Barrow? Why was a similar process not followed to that used for the western half, which will be Cumberland? Will Cumberland itself now have too few councillors, as it is being reduced to 42, which is the number of the existing county council seats? I see the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, nodding. There has been a degree of confusion about this process and I would like further elucidation from my noble friend, if he can give me that in due course.