Tag Archives: centralisation

As Parliament approaches the summer recess, the government is pushing out announcements to set the agenda for the autumn.  An ‘English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’, 300 pages long, was published on July 10th, which according to the Local Government Association ‘signals a significant shift of powers from Whitehall to local leaders – making it one of the biggest changes to local government in 50 years. It will have a profound impact on all tiers of local government’.  The government is about to publish a White Paper on Election Regulation, in preparation for the Elections Bill it will bring forward in the next parliamentary session.  Both have major implications for British democracy; both take us away from a Liberal approach.  Last week the ‘UK Government Resilience Action Plan’ was also published, setting out measures to respond to future epidemics, disasters and domestic emergencies. 

Looked at together, these three embody Labour’s approach to Britain’s democracy: a deep commitment to the two-party system, a focus on delivery rather than participation, and an assumption that ‘local’ government is about delivering central government’s priorities.  Liberal Democrats will want to argue for a much more open democracy, for relying on local activity to respond to local problems and crises, for allowing and encouraging local initiatives and experimentation in providing public services, and in drawing local citizens in as far as we can to participate in public life.

Liberal Democrat local councillors will have strong views on the weakening of local democracy over the past 30-40 years.  Reorganisation has decreased the number of elected councillors and Councils, increasing the gap between ‘local’ government and the people it serves.  Council taxes have remained the main source of revenue; transfers from central revenues have been cut back and repeatedly altered from one set of conditions to another, while obligations placed on local authorities have increased.  What the Bill now proposes is to extend the elected mayoral model across the whole of England, leading ‘strategic authorities’ which will deliver government priorities, with a single tier of local government below them.  There will be fewer local elections, and fewer Councils; ‘local’ government itself will become more remote from England’s towns and villages.

The Elections White Paper will reverse some of the damaging aspects of the Conservatives’ 2022 Elections Act.  We expect some tightening of the rules on political finance, although Liberal Democrats will press for these to go much further.  The voting system for elected mayors that the 2022 Act changed to First Past The Post will be returned to Jack Straw’s ‘supplementary vote’ in the English Devolution Bill, in the hope of getting it in place for the 2026 elections; the Elections Bill is unlikely to offer any concessions to the transformation of the UK’s political landscape, with ‘the two major parties’ failing to retain the support even of half the electorate between them.  There will be nothing to address the depths of popular disillusion with Westminster politics.