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Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (England) Regulations 2012

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council. I do not set out to make this a Newcastle debate. However, Newcastle is one of the 11 cities identified. I do not regret this Motion and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is mistaken in moving his amendment, for a number of reasons. Let me explain why. I believe that the debate about elected mayors has moved on. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is absolutely right that a year or two ago I felt that the balance of evidence was strongly against. I no longer believe that to be true. One of the key reasons for that—there are several, which I will come on to—is the elected police commissioner, which I believe has altered the nature of representative democracy at a local level, and that as people get used to electing directly an individual to a role, it will be very odd if the leader of a council is not similarly elected. I will come back to this. I have not fully understood the issue of cost. There clearly is a cost in running a referendum but actually the referendum will take place on a local election polling day, and the election, should it be approved, will take place on the day elected police commissioners are being voted in. The decision to have a referendum in the cities identified was actually part of the Localism Bill. We debated it and we came to a conclusion. That Bill is now an Act. Of course, the proposal was in the coalition agreement—it featured it as one of a number of matters—and both that agreement and the decision in the Act should be honoured. The second reality is that the campaigns have actually started because the polling day is only three months away. I just do not think that you can now seek to put the clock back. Of course, this is only a regret amendment, but we should now be willing to test the opinion of the electorate and it is right that in the 11 cities a decision should be made by those electors. I note the criticism about the powers of the Secretary of State, but actually those powers simply require a referendum to be held and do not dictate the outcome. It is very difficult for politicians to argue with the ballot box. Electors will make a decision as to what they want. They should be informed about the reasons in favour and those against. Those cases can be made, people can campaign, but people should be allowed to come to their own conclusions. Local authorities now have the power to decide the outcome—to hold or not to hold a referendum—unless 5 per cent of an electorate call for a referendum. The difficulty with that argument is that in a city with an electorate of 200,000, 5 per cent amounts to 10,000 people. That is a barrier. There has to be a very strong campaign for a mayor to be elected for people to gather 10,000 names out of an electorate of 200,000. That drives the status quo, unless there is a very good reason why people are prepared to campaign and spend time and money in calling for a referendum through gathering petitions. How much better it is if you simply test public opinion, as the Government wish to do. There are advantages in a mayoral system. I welcome the referendum campaigns because they enable those advantages to be debated. There is a whole set of reasons why I think a mayoral system is right. Mention was made of the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Heseltine. I am convinced by the arguments both have made—it is partly about leadership, partly about figureheads and partly about connecting the electorate with a person who is democratically accountable for what happens in that city. However, the argument goes further than that. It is better for a council leader—and I have been one myself, for a period of just over four years—to be elected by the electorate as a whole rather than by a party caucus meeting, which is what happens in practice. In other words, if, for the sake of argument, you have 40 councillors and you are the majority party, you can actually elect the leader of that council—who has statutory powers—on 21 votes. I do not think that that is sufficient mandate and I have come to the conclusion that it is better to have a mayoral system where there is an electoral mandate for that person. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, talked in terms of the evidence base, and whether it is better. I believe that collectively, the cities of England punch well below their weight. The context of this is devolution into Scotland, into Wales, and into Northern Ireland, and also into London. Tonight we see, in the Evening Standard, that the Mayor of London is urging that he be given power over the railways into London. There is a strong case for that, and indeed, as part of discussions going on with the eight English core cities on a devolution to them, issues around transport are being discussed. With an elected mayor in each of those 11 cities, where there would also be a cabinet, and ward members, who would implement some of the powers of the Localism Act, not least around neighbourhood planning, I do not see this as simply a matter about a two-thirds vote. I see it as being about renewing democracy, and empowering ward members as part of the Localism Act. However, we will have that debate at a later stage. The question is whether we should test the public view, and in my view, we should. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said a moment ago that there is no apparent public support for elected mayors. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the very recent referendum in Salford which voted in favour of an elected mayor, and of course the recent decision over Leicester—