Local Government Reorganisation

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Reforming local government is not optional. Councils are the front line of the state, responsible for the visible signs of whether a place is succeeding or failing. The public expect better local services and they are right to do so. It was important that we acted swiftly on these elections when further advice was received. I recognise that has been difficult for affected councils and I want to assure colleagues that we did not take this difficult decision lightly. I have spoken to many councillors and Members of Parliament in recent days and understand the scale of disappointment acutely, but ultimately the Government must act when legal advice says that we need to do so. We will continue to rebuild local government after a decade of neglect, so residents get the services that they deserve. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have sown confusion and imposed unnecessary costs upon the taxpayer by cancelling local elections, only to reinstate them weeks later and then seek to distance themselves from the consequences. What was presented as a firm and settled judgment has unravelled in short order, leaving uncertainty in its wake. That matters, because it is not an isolated U-turn or rethink or change of position; it joins a growing catalogue of reversals, each compounding doubt and carrying a financial price.

Stability in public administration is the foundation upon which local authorities plan, candidates prepare and citizens place their trust. Against that background, it is important to recall how we arrived here. The original decision to cancel these elections was taken by the Secretary of State. He defended it repeatedly in the other place, and the Minister defended it consistently in your Lordships’ House. In the press, the Secretary of State went so far as to describe the elections as “pointless”. Yet what was so confidentially asserted has now been undone.

Two issues now arise. The first is constitutional. Does the Minister accept that there should be strict limits upon the power to delay or disapply elections outside the most exceptional circumstances, such as war or public emergency? If she does, then, in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, will she urge her colleagues to reflect upon the sentiment of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and those in my name, which would limit the power of the Secretary of State to cancel elections by secondary legislation and constrain the power to alter the timings of local polls? It is notable that members of the governing party voted down those safeguards in the Commons.

The second issue is practical and goes to the heart of delivery. Local government is already navigating a demanding programme of reorganisation. Councils are restructuring governance, staffing, finance and service delivery. To remove and then abruptly restore elections in the midst of that process has inevitably diverted senior officers and members from their primary duty, which is the delivery of services to their residents. In other words, reorganisation requires focus, discipline and clarity. Instead, councils have been drawn into administrative uncertainty, legal contingency planning and accelerated preparations at short notice. That is not without consequences. It absorbs scarce managerial capacity and risks delay to the very reforms that the Government profess to champion. If community empowerment is truly the objective, one might expect the Government to strengthen local capacity rather than burden it with unavoidable disruption.

It is precisely because there are constitutional and practical consequences that your Lordships’ House is entitled to transparency on the costs of all this. Can the Minister therefore inform the House of the full costs of this regrettable sequence of events? What have been the expended legal fees on wasted preparation and the emergency arrangements that are now required to conduct elections at short notice? What support is being provided to local authorities required to shoulder these additional burdens? There is talk of £63 million, but is this on top of the already agreed election costs? Has an assessment been made of the impact upon council capacity and service delivery, and if so, will it be published?

The same need for clarity applies to the Government’s approach to election pilots. What is their present status? How many councils that initially indicated they possessed the capacity to participate later informed the department that they did not any longer have that capacity?

Taken together, these questions point to a wider uncertainty. Where does this leave the Government’s much-heralded program of reorganisation? Confidence in reform depends upon steadiness of hand and clarity of purpose. If Ministers will not answer fully and restore transparency, then we feel that serious reflection is required at the highest level. I would suggest that that is not at Secretary of State level, as he has been the person responsible for this unnecessary mess.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, here we are again with a topic we have discussed and debated in different forms several times. I will do my best not to simply repeat the points made previously, particularly as it seems like each time we return to this topic, it is messier and more expensive. Although the outcome in the end is welcome—that all elections will be going ahead in May, as should originally have been the case—I think we can all agree that the route by which we have got here is a highly undesirable one. Therefore, having read the Statement that we are considering this evening very carefully, and having read Hansard for the debate on Monday in the House of Commons about the Statement, I have three particular questions for the Minister.

First, in that debate on Monday, the Secretary of State was asked whether, in the light of the latest legal advice and the Government’s current understanding of the legal situation, the Government believed that the cancellation of elections last May was legal. The Secretary of State was asked that direct question and chose not to answer it. We can all speculate why, but I hope that the Minister will be able to clear that matter up by giving us a direct answer on that.

Secondly, having looked at the reasons the Secretary of State gave in the Statement for cancelling elections, I think that they do not sit easily with what he wrote in the article published in the Times newspaper ahead of the consultation closing on potential cancellations. The Statement that we are considering this evening says that the cancellation of elections,

“should only ever happen in exceptional circumstances”.

That is a sentiment with which I suspect we all agree. But in the article in the Times newspaper, the Secretary of State said:

“They want pointless elections, Labour wants to fix potholes”.


The existence of potholes in need of repair is absolutely not an exceptional circumstance. It is a frustrating daily reality. It is really hard to see how one can reconcile the Secretary of State’s comments about wanting to fix potholes with the claim that these are exceptional circumstances.

Moreover, the Statement we are considering goes on at some length about how the Government were listening and consulting. Again, however, looking back at the article in the Times newspaper, published before the closure of the consultation over elections for this May, we see that it kicks off right from the very first sentence with a very clear steer that the Secretary of State thought that cancelling elections was a good idea. It goes on to make that point repeatedly in the succeeding sentences and paragraphs. So, given that that article, published before the close of the consultation, could be seen both to have prejudged the outcome of the consultation and to have given different reasons for cancelling elections than those considered in the consultation—all of which potentially would result in some legal issues about the validity of the decision—I wonder whether the Minister could again clarify matters by letting us know if the Secretary of State’s comments, both in that Times newspaper article and elsewhere, were a factor in the change in legal advice being given to the Government about the legality of the cancellation of elections.

Thirdly, turning to perhaps a more positive aspect, I absolutely welcome the comment in the Statement that the Government are willing to think again—particularly in the context of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I am sorry: the phrase is that the Government are “reflecting carefully”, which I hope means “thinking again” as well, about the amendments that have been tabled, such as by myself and by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the powers and the circumstances in which elections might be cancelled in the future. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be able to tell us whether those reflections will be carried out involving a degree of cross-party discussion. Will they be carried out in time so that, if the outcome of those reflections by the Government is to decide that changes to the law are appropriate, we can do that on Report of that Bill?