My Lords, in short, my amendment is based on two separate but interlocked criticisms of the Government and their conduct. First, I argue that the Government, in their desire to see the current Mayor of the West Midlands add the role of police and crime commissioner to his already extensive portfolio, have deliberately subverted the principle that they themselves put into earlier legislation: that there should be real democratic support before such a fundamental change. In other words, proper consent for such a course was considered essential before such a transfer of power could take place. That has not happened here, as a deliberate part of the Government’s strategy.
Secondly—and here the Home Office is the main culprit—the timing of and background to this statutory instrument have been rightly criticised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. In an extremely critical report, the committee points out what can only be described as incompetence by the department. The headline of a release put out by the committee to accompany its 15th report put it like this: “Elections potentially undermined by poor process, says Lords Committee”. The release said that:
“The Committee expressed concern that both Orders have been laid before Parliament close to the intended date of the next election (2 May 2024), less than the minimum six months in advance that is regarded as good practice”.
These two points combined will, I hope, persuade the House to say that this behaviour all round should be deprecated.
I will give a little more detail. In exactly 50 days, on 2 May, there will definitely be an election for the Mayor of the West Midlands. The present incumbent is a Conservative. On the same day, and with the same electorate, covering exactly the same area of Britain, there may be an election for the stand-alone role of the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands. The present police and crime commissioner, elected some years ago, is Labour.
I put it like that because, yesterday, the Administrative Court heard a judicial review brought by the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands against the Home Office. At the end of the day, the judge reserved judgment until 18 or 20 March. I am not going to say any more about that court case, which has nothing to do with us—we are Parliament, and it is the judge who will make up his mind—but that is why the matter is not resolved legally yet, and I am here to argue that what has happened in the past means that we should regret this statutory instrument.
The mayoral election will be on 2 May but the election period, as far as electoral administrators are concerned, runs not from 2 May but from 21 March—literally eight days’ time. I am advised that electoral administrators in the West Midlands just do not know where they stand, and one can imagine their frustration.
It is obviously beyond argument that all this arises from a deal cooked up some time ago between the Government and the mayor. The mayor wants to be the police and crime commissioner and the Government want it too. Up until the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, he could have had that role if the local authorities that make up the combined authority, and the other local authorities in the West Midlands region, had given their consent. That is what happened in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire, and that is what is going to happen in South Yorkshire. In these areas the combined authorities were in favour, as in fact were the police and crime commissioners, but that was not so in the West Midlands. The combined local authorities, on every occasion that they have been asked, have been opposed. So the mayor gets the Government to change the law, in a very short clause in a very large Bill—now Section 62 of the levelling-up Act.
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Forget the general, region-wide consent that was part of the devolution deal when the West Midlands came under the auspices of a mayor; part of that deal was that there should be broad democratic support. Now all that is required is the consent of the mayor—yes, really, the only person who has to consent is the person who wants the job. That is not consent in any real sense; it is the precise opposite—it is Newspeak language. It is not that broad democratic support that the Government once believed in—it is very nice work if you can get it. Many politicians, of the sort that we soundly and gravely criticise in this House, day in and day out, from other countries, would stand up and applaud this achievement; it is what happens in countries where democracy counts for little: it should not be happening here.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard— I am very glad to see him in his place—said on 23 October, when I do not think he was fair on himself:
“I know very little about the politics and governance practices of the West Midlands, but when I lived in America I was privileged to watch at close hand the governance practices of the Deep South and of Mayor Willie Brown’s San Francisco and Mayor Daley’s Chicago. As I listened in both the previous debate and this afternoon to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, explaining what looks to me like a rather unusual practice developing in the West Midlands, I was strongly reminded of the practices of state governments in the Deep South of the United States. I do not think that is a road we should go down”.—[Official Report, 23/10/23; cols. 416-17.]
Why has it taken so long to bring this statutory instrument before Parliament? After all, as the Government Minister said during ping-pong on 23 October:
“Commencement at Royal Assent enables the Government to adhere as closely as they can to the Gould principle of electoral management, whereby any changes to elections should aim to be made with at least six months’ notice”.—[Official Report, 23/10/23; col. 418.]
This section of the new Act came into being immediately on Royal Assent, and the Home Secretary agreed to the mayor’s proposals and publicly said that the statutory instrument would be provided very soon. However, that statutory instrument never emerged: why? Simply because the Government failed to read its own Act of Parliament, which received Royal Assent less than six weeks after it had been passed. They had not noticed that there was a section that made it clear there needed to be a consultation before Section 62 could be implemented. Thus, the Home Secretary’s decision was invalid and had to be scrapped.
That was an extraordinary mistake, particularly for a statutory instrument that was already tight up against the date of the election. Only this morning, our scrutiny committee in this House published an additional short report, following an exchange of letters with Home Office officials and Ministers, and it repeated its description of what had taken place as “extraordinary”. Consultation was rustled up at short notice to last between 20 December and 31 of January—just think of those dates. It started almost as our Christmas holiday began and went right through the New Year break, so it was not surprising—here I disagree with the Minister—that the response was hardly heavy. To add insult to injury, as has been found out this evening, the result was against this change, although of course I do not make too much of that point.
Predictably, the Home Secretary gave permission again for the transfer of power. This statutory instrument followed, and the Government are up against this very tight timetable that is entirely of their own making. Those who have read the scrutiny committee’s report will know there were other issues that concerned it, but the most concerning is that the Act of Parliament was not properly read by the Government, and thus this situation arises.
I agree and argue that the House should regret this statutory instrument on two grounds. I believe the throwing out of democratic norms in order to give your mate a job that he wants is the most grievous ground for the regret amendment. We should regret this statutory instrument both for the liberties it is taking with our democratic arrangements and for the mismanagement that means no one in the West Midlands
knows, just 50 days before the election, how many elections there will be and who the candidates are. The House should surely say, “This is just not good enough”. I beg to move.