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

My Lords, the passion at the end was very good. It has been a low-key debate apart from that. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington—if I may hesitantly say so—has quite a short memory, particularly in relation to putting legislation in place before it has been passed. I stood where the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is on more times than I care to recall, telling the then Government that they were introducing and had almost put into effect legislation before it had been passed. Therefore, I do not accept that challenge to what we are doing here, but I do think the noble Baroness must not forget that that was a situation with practically all the legislation that the previous Government put in place. We must not forget that. The grant to each local authority is done against a formula—as indeed the previous Government did. We have argued for years over which way the formula was going, one way or there other. People have short memories. We must just all try to remember where we came from. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, drew attention to the fact that the coalition Government’s programme made it clear that we are committed to creating directly elected mayors. That commitment was carried out in the Localism Act and was a commitment to having a referendum in 12 cities. Those cities are now 11 because Leicester took the decision to move to a mayor under the original provisions in the Local Government Act 2000. The Government believe that there is good evidence that a powerful, dynamic and directly elected mayor can provide strong, visible leadership, increase accountability for local decisions, deliver local economic growth—that is really important—and bring greater prosperity to their city. However, we believe that it is up to the electorates in these cities to decide in a referendum whether they believe that the mayoral model is one that they would wish to embrace. Through directing that referendums take place, we are ensuring that the people have the opportunity to address the question for themselves. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said that the question that was going to be asked was skewed. I remind him that it is set by the independent Electoral Commission and not by the Government.