Tag Archives: local democracy

Lord William Wallace

Defending Local Democracy

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 2nd April 2026 - 9:20 am

While we are all campaigning in this year’s local elections, Liberal Democrats need to be aware of the implications of the ‘English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’, which has already passed the Commons and is now close to completing its passage in the Lords.  It’s designed to complete the project the Conservatives began of imposing elected mayors and ‘Combined Authorities’ all across England, with larger unitary authorities to replace remaining district and county councils.

As the Liberal Democrat group’s Cabinet Office spokesman, I had not intended to get actively involved in the Bill beyond its constitutional significance for the governance of the United Kingdom – which is almost ignored in the Bill.  Sitting alongside our Bill team as we moved from Second Reading through eight days of committee and two days of voting on amendments at report stage (one more to come on April 13th), I’ve become more and more appalled – like my colleagues – of what it means for local democracy.

Its title itself is fraudulent.  It’s about decentralization, not real devolution, and it empowers mayors, not communities.  Its underlying assumption is that the minimum size for efficient local administration is a ‘community’ of half a million people, with ‘strategic’ decisions taken above that level by mayors in ‘Combined Authorities’ responsible for 1-2 million or more.  Just for comparison, there are two sovereign European states with populations of half a million – Malta and Iceland, each with subordinate tiers of democratic government.  Luxembourg is slightly larger.  The larger combined authorities cater for populations approaching those of the Baltic and Nordic states.  They are to be governed by executive mayors, who will appoint a substantial number of ‘commissioners’ as responsible for specific areas – Parliament is still contesting how many they may appoint.  Councillors from the unitary authorities below them will have limited powers of scrutiny.

London is both a model and an exception for this reform.  Its 32 boroughs (plus the City of London) range from 150,000 to 390,000 people, with an elected Assembly to counterbalance the executive Mayor and his appointed deputies.  But there are murmurings that ministers and officials regard London boroughs as ‘outdated’ and wish as soon as possible to shrink their number to some 6-8.

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Mark Valladares

28 August 2025 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 28th August 2025 - 11:20 pm
  • Lib Dems call on Farage to intervene after Nottinghamshire Reform council bans local journalists reporting
  • Davey calls on Blair to give evidence in Parliament following White House Gaza meeting
  • Adult mental health waits stretching to more than 1,000 days
  • Rennie comments on report showing bill for flood schemes is spiralling

Lib Dems call on Farage to intervene after Nottinghamshire Reform council bans local journalists reporting

The Liberal Democrats have written to Nigel Farage to demand he intervenes after Reform’s Nottinghamshire County Council Leader blocked his councillors from speaking to local journalists from Nottinghamshire Live and the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Liberal Democrat Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson Max Wilkinson has written to Farage demanding he step in and urge Reform’s council leader Mick Barton to reverse the “dangerous and chilling” decision.

Max Wilkinson said the move risks contravening local government’s code of conduct, which calls on elected officials to “submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure … accountability”, and prohibits information being withheld from the public “unless there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so”.

Max Wilkinson MP, Liberal Democrat Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson, said:

Reform’s move to block local journalists from reporting on their work is straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook. It’s a cornerstone of our democracy that politicians of all stripes are held to account — but for some reason Farage’s cronies think they can make themselves exempt.

This move sets a dangerous and chilling precedent for if Reform were to win power nationally and goes against our deeply rooted British values of freedom of the press. We must stand up to Reform’s assault on those principles.

Nigel Farage pretends to champion free speech: I’m calling on him to take some responsibility for once in his political career and demand that Nottinghamshire County Council Leader Mick Barton reverses this decision.

Davey calls on Blair to give evidence in Parliament following White House Gaza meeting

Responding to Tony Blair’s meeting at the White House with the Trump administration discussing the war in Gaza, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

Tony Blair needs to come before Parliament to give evidence about his discussions with the Trump administration about the ongoing war and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

If he has special insight into Trump’s intentions, it’s only right that Parliament and the Government are made privy to this.

Trump has a unique power to help end this war, get the hostages out, and get the desperately needed aid in to relieve the horrendous human suffering in Gaza. We must leverage all the information and resources at our disposal to make him do the right thing.

Adult mental health waits stretching to more than 1,000 days

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has today said that the SNP have no plan to fix the crisis in mental health after new research by his party revealed shocking waits for psychological therapies across many of Scotland’s health boards, including a patient waiting more than seven years to start treatment.

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Lord William Wallace

Local Democracy, or Devolved Administration?

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 5th December 2024 - 4:50 pm

Within the next few weeks the Labour government will publish its promised white paper on Devolution.  Reports so far suggest it will extend combined authorities with directly-elected mayors across the rest of England, abolish the remaining district councils and move to unitary councils covering parts of combined authorities – in practice a new two-tier system in which the relationship between combined-authority mayors and unitary councils will remain to be settled.  There’s unlikely to be any significant change in financial control from the centre or tax reform.  A move towards three-year settlements for central funding of local and combined authorities is more likely.

I’m not an expert on local government; nor do I know whether our party yet has an agreed position on how to respond.  I accept that the mayoral model in London works well – with a London Assembly to hold the mayor to account, and London borough councils to provide local services and representation.   The mayoral model is suitable for conurbations – though it needs (as in London) to be balanced by a representative assembly, with multiple local councils constituting it.  But I’m doubtful whether a similar model suits the rest of England.

In Yorkshire the consensus among MPs and council leaders was strongly for a regional body and local councils, if necessary also with elected mayors for the conurbations of West and South Yorkshire.  Instead the last government imposed upon us combined authorities both in North and East Yorkshire, with only two elected councils in each.  The imposition of a unitary authority across North Yorkshire has replaced district councils that covered distinct communities – Harrogate, Craven, Scarborough and Whitby, Richmondshire, and Selby – with a geographically vast area with a much smaller number of councillors.  York, however, was left outside, so an elected mayor and combined authority has therefore been imposed on two very different local authorities.  The combined authority and mayor for East Yorkshire will similarly sit over only two existing local authorities.

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Lord William Wallace

English Devolution, or local democracy?

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 25th July 2024 - 6:26 pm

Labour promised as it came into government that it would bring in a ‘Take Back Control’ Bill to return power from Whitehall and Westminster to local communities across England.  If it actually moves in that direction, it will deserve heartfelt support from Liberal Democrats.  But the indications of what is intended provided in the King’s Speech debate and the accompanying Briefing Note are not encouraging.

The English Devolution Bill, we are told, defines local leaders as mayors of Combined and Combined County Authorities.  ‘Mayors are critical to delivering economic growth and will be vital partners’ with central government.  The Bill will put ‘a more ambitious standardised devolution framework into legislation’, modelled on the devolution deals negotiated with existing metro mayors in Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere.  And ‘the Government will establish a new council of the nations and regions’, in which ‘the mayors of combined authorities’ will represent English interests.

‘New powers for mayoral combined authorities’ may be a step forward from micro-management of regional and local government from the Treasury and other Whitehall Departments.  But it’s not democratic local government as Liberals understand it, nor would it provide the regional counterweight to London which we have long called for.  Labour appear to be following their Conservative predecessors in wanting to replace democratic local government, within reach of the people whom it serves, with strong mayors with limited democratic scrutiny while in office who will carry out centrally-funded strategies within tight national guidelines.

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