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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I stand not as an opponent to the weapon of a referendum but as someone who wants it to be used sparingly. I fully support its application where it has been applied, but I am wedded to the idea that every four years, or whenever, the best referendum in the world takes place—an election. People might tell me that they know of a referendum in which the turnout exceeded the number of people who vote in a local election or anywhere else, but I doubt it. A referendum on a particular narrow issue is capable of being hijacked by interest groups that have a purpose in mind. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his in-touchedness with local government matters. I speak only from my own experience, which is nothing like as wide or as deep as his, but what, after all, do you elect a council for? By whatever method you elect it, you give it the authority to continue to govern. If it decides that it wishes to change, the mechanism already exists to do so. However, if it wants to change but the change is then subject to a referendum, I can see that being a hostage to fortune. Already we are talking about too much bureaucracy, interference and being told what to do by Whitehall. My days on a council—I still attend group meetings of various kinds—mean that I have every faith in the sagacity and integrity of those who ultimately become elected councillors. We must bear in mind the fact that they are elected on a manifesto. They tell the people of the locality what they believe in and how they will do it, and they are open to criticism. The councils regularly take care, most of them with public relations officers or through some other mechanism, to ensure that people understand what is going on. I have every sympathy with what the noble Lord continues to do: that is, to find a means of making a properly working democratic system work even more democratically. That is a laudable objective, but I do not see any need to do what he proposes in this amendment.