Clause 31
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
10:30 am
Tom Levitt (PPS (Rt Hon Hilary Benn, Secretary of State), Department for International Development; High Peak, Labour)
I rise to continue the Back-Bench rebellion that has been swirling for more than 12 days and almost 15 minutes. I have 10 years’ experience in local government at all three levels: four years as a parish councillors, two as a district councillor and four as a county councillor. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, I have experience of both election by thirds and all-out elections.
I would not advocate that a county council move to thirds because it would mean large multi-member constituencies and, in any case, county wards are so big that they do not equate to community boundaries; they are bigger. However, at district level, I have had experience of both systems and I favour elections by thirds. In Stroud district council, of which I was a member for two years, that does not necessarily mean that each ward has to be a three-member ward. It just means that a third of the councillors, including one in each three-member ward or none in the single or double member wards is elected each year.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said, voting by thirds means that there will be no catastrophic change, leading to long-term planning not being possible. It means that there is constant public scrutiny and annual accountability. When there is a problem with a hung council, which is not always a problem, it can be resolved by the electorate within 12 months. Voting by thirds means that the parties have to find fewer candidates and that fighting elections costs less, although over the cycle the costs would be considerably greater. Although the turnout in any particular year can be shown to be smaller for elections by thirds than all-out elections, the turnout over the four-year cycle is considerably greater. Many people take the opportunity to vote more than once in the four-year period, and many more people have the opportunity to cast a vote.
I am not arguing that thirds is always the answer or that it should be the aspiration, but as others have said, it should be an option. Councils have the option to choose one method or the other and to change from one to the other, but very few councils take that opportunity. Therefore, to make it implicit in the Bill that a change in one direction is favoured over a change in the other—that one direction is right and the other is wrong—is almost to address a problem that does not exist. In any case, it does not address the question of a local council having the ability to decide. The unfortunate impression given by clause 31 is that it will make the process a one-way street. I therefore hope that the Minister will remove it. A former Secretary of State with responsibility for local government, Nicholas Ridley, who was for a time my Member of Parliament, described one-way streets as an infringement of civil rights. He may have chosen the wrong target for that comment—he was Transport Secretary at the time, I believe. However, in the Bill, a one-way street should not be the only way for councils to go when considering their electoral arrangements.
The downside of elections by thirds is that they are more expensive for councils to run. They eat up the time of officers because of the need to have elections in three years out of every four. It means that councillors need to have one eye on the electorate the whole time, not only during elections. Council tax has to be set bearing in mind electoral consequences every year, not once every four years. There are many reasons why councils should avoid voting by thirds, but they are not particularly good reasons. Paradoxically, the effect of passing the Bill as it stands could be that fewer councils will move to all-out elections, because they will not want to take the irrevocable step of moving in that direction. I do not think that there should be an implicit bias one way or the other; there should be a choice.
Finally, all-out election clearly fits the model of an elected mayor rather better than election by thirds. However, the tail should not be wagging the dog. We need to look at a wider range of models of executive accountability, a matter that we will come to later. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said, some members of the committee form a little cluster: Denton and Reddish, Hazel Grove, and High Peak. I hope that the fourth member of the cluster, our neighbour the Minister, will join us. However, I hope that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove will withdraw his amendment and allow the Government time to take into account the view of both the Committee and of those who participated in the previous scrutiny process.
Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester, South) (Lab) rose—
Patrick Hall (Bedford) (Lab) rose—