Localism Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 120B, I shall speak also to the other eight amendments in this group, which are in my name and in the name of my noble friend Lord Tope, who will arrive in a minute, I hope. Although we have debated only two groups of amendments so far, we have made quite a lot of progress in discussing the issues around the proposals for referendums. These amendments address the question of who can call referendums under the provisions of this chapter. We approached the question of referendums with some scepticism—that has become obvious. Nevertheless, we understand that there is a localist case for referendums regardless of whether referendums themselves are a suitable part of local democracy. The case was made well by the noble Lord, Lord True, before the lunch break. We are troubled by referendums not just because they present various practical dangers and difficulties, which we talked about last Thursday and this morning, but because of the question of whether local democracy should be plebiscitary or deliberative. The problem with referendums is that they demand a yes or no answer to questions that very often require a great deal of careful discussion and deliberation and are not answerable in a yes/no sort of way; they are answerable in a much more complex way that requires amendment, mediation and compromise between different interests in the community. This is at the heart of the question of who should call referendums. This suite of amendments would delete those parts of the Bill that allow referendums to be called by a small number of elected councillors. It would also delete the provision that an elected mayor, whether in London or elsewhere, could call a referendum. It would also, perhaps for different reasons, delete the provisions that allow a council itself to call a referendum. I will take those points in order. In our view, the provision that allows a small number of elected members to call a referendum in their wards is open to a great deal of misuse and abuse. In particular, if, "““one or more members of the authority can make a request””—" in the words of the Bill—then the, "““member for an electoral area””," or, "““a majority of the members””," in a multi-member area can call a referendum. It is not clear whether councillors for adjoining wards could join together and jointly call for the same referendum in two or more wards. I put that question to the Minister. Last Thursday we discussed the danger—so I will not go into it in great detail now—of councillors using referendums in their wards as a tool for re-election, calling a referendum on a populist issue on the same day as they are due to face the electors. An equally dangerous prospect is rivalry within a ward, if perhaps two out of three councillors called a referendum in order to do down the election campaign of a colleague of a different party. A further problem is that wards do not necessarily, and very often do not, match communities. For all these reasons, many of us find undesirable the possibility that a small number of councillors—one, two or three—can call a referendum in their part of the borough and, as long as it fits the provisions of the Bill, the council will not be able to stop it. The arguments apply equally to elected mayors, who could quite easily call populist referendums to coincide with their own re-election or to boost their popularity. There seems no reason why a mayor should call a referendum about issues that relate to the mayor’s powers because the mayor can address them without a referendum. As far as the resolution of the council is concerned, these provisions seem unnecessary. Councillors can call referendums at the moment under their existing general powers, and presumably they will continue to be able to do so. They are also able to make arrangements appropriate to the particular referendum that they might want to call. We were given an example in the King’s Lynn area where a referendum called by the district council cost £80,000. It resulted in an overwhelming majority one way, and then the county council ignored it. The argument for not having a referendum on the basis of the resolution of the council is that it is not necessary, and the council can do it anyway without being constrained by the detailed rules and regulations in this Bill. My final point is that the Bill suggests that referendums can take place within a ward or an electoral division or they can take place in a whole area. However, if you think about towns such as Keighley, which is a clearly separate town within the city of Bradford, why should it not be able to have a referendum, if we are going to have referendums, in a clear community like that? In the case of Burnley, Padiham is a clearly separate town in the Burnley district, but it consists of two wards and bits of other wards; so why should it not be able to have a referendum in the natural community rather than the artificial wards? I beg to move.