Localism Bill

It is something like that. I do not think that it was extended to 10 pm; it might be only until 8 pm; I am not sure. In my experience of parish polls, there is sometimes agreement between the council concerned and the district council or borough council, which has to organise the polls from its normal election process, not to have all the polling stations open. I am aware of a smallish town which has six or seven polling stations. They have a parish poll and they opened only one of the polling stations in the town centre on the grounds that it did not cost them as much. That flexibility is available, and it is an altogether simpler process. Of course, it is open to abuse because of the small number of people who can requisition a parish poll. Even if the Government are keeping provision for parish polls, I would think that, as part of the review, they will consider how the referendum provisions will impact on parishes. There are now a lot more much bigger parishes than there ever used to be. A lot of places which, before 1974, were urban districts or small boroughs, have now become town councils. If you have an electorate of 18,000 or 22,000, or even more, having 10 people able to turn up at a parish meeting and only a small number of those being able to requisition a poll is nonsense. The parish poll provision is there for small, rural parishes, and the world is, in many places, not like that any more. Have the Government any firm plans for what they will do or is it all provision in case they want to do something in the future? If they have firm plans, can they tell us what they will be before Report? The Bill’s provision about possible central government funding for referendums in parishes, organised by parish councils, is interesting, but I cannot believe that it is serious. It would leave it open to organise referendums in parishes on a large scale without any financial implication locally. The more that we discuss this in Committee, the more I come to the view that the number of referendums which will take place is probably a great deal less than some of us feared when we started looking at this, simply because of the financial problems. We saw in the AV referendum that the no campaign campaigned heavily on the cost of the referendum itself—as though that was a logical reason to vote no, although the spending was already taking place. That was a very effective way of campaigning, and I am coming to the view that local referendums will meet a huge amount of opposition simply on the basis of cost. When people go around trying to organise them, once the cost and the implications for the council budget are revealed, a lot of them will not go ahead. That is just musing about the future. The more that the Government can tell us about their proposals for parishes now, the better. I make it absolutely clear that I am in no circumstances trying to abolish parish polls. I am probing the Government's intentions.