Clause 38
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
11:30 am
Robert Syms (Shadow Minister (Local Government), Communities and Local Government; Poole, Conservative)
Names are quite often important in politics, not least because there is usually a degree of history behind them. Wards are sometimes named after ancient parishes despite having been overcome by large housing estates. Nevertheless, I am nervous about changing names, because sometimes they can indicate also whether a seat is marginal, and a change of name can have an impact on that. Dare I say that the name “Basildon” has on occasion been totemic in people’s perceptions?
If I took over a local authority and worked out that it contained five marginal wards, the first thing that I would do would be to change all five names, because that might convey a different view of whether some of the wards were safe or marginal. Names are quite important in political competition. People who live in a constituency with a particular name may know that at a certain time it might not be marginal but that over many years it might become so. For that reason I am nervous about giving local authorities the right to change names of wards essentially at will, and without reference to anybody else. Subsection (3) says that that cannot happen
“If the name of an electoral area is protected”,
but will the Minister say what that means? I prefer to stick to names, so that people cannot change them at will until an overall boundary review.