Local Government Reform

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I preface my remarks by saying that I have a high personal regard for the Minister and I am sure that she would never personally wish to do anything unfair or politically partisan. However, there are very good reasons why, when changes are made to anything to do with constituency arrangements or democratic arrangements, they are normally carried out under the authority of an impartial body. I believe, as I suspect my Conservative colleagues believe, that if a body such as the Boundary Commission had been in charge of this operation, the results would have been very different. A coach and horses has been driven through anything to do with local, cultural or historical, as well as, shall we say, orientation among communities—all those ideas have been totally disregarded.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) on securing the debate, but I must say to him and to you, Dr Murrison, that we would need a much longer debate if we were to do justice to the enormity of what has been proposed. My hon. Friend laid out the fact that totally inappropriate areas will be subsumed under and swallowed up by the city of Leicester. That is exactly what is happening in the city of Southampton, with the naked land-grab of huge areas of the New Forest East constituency—wards known collectively as the Waterside—coupled with another land-grab of wards from Test Valley borough council that are contained in the Romsey and Southampton North constituency.

I must emphasise that the changes were first proposed long after the general election and were not in Labour’s general election manifesto. Labour rightly thought it proper to put in its manifesto the fact that there would be elected mayors and strategic authorities, but the abolition and merging of historic borough councils, district councils and county councils was nowhere flagged up in advance of anybody’s vote.

The Government like to trumpet the fact that they are strongly in favour of the devolution of political power and of listening to what local people want. Well, I have some data for the Government. Ever since this outrageous proposition that Southampton should take over vast areas of my constituency—splitting the constituency and the New Forest apart and tearing the Waterside away from the New Forest, which Waterside inhabitants have for hundreds of years viewed as part of their community—an online petition has been gathering signatures. This issue is relatively local to a part of the south of Hampshire, so we might think that, if we were lucky, the petition might get 5,000 or 6,000 signatures. I checked at exactly 10 o’clock this morning and there are 22,812 signatures so far, and I am sure that the total is well over 25,000 with paper signatures taken into account. What sort of issue must there be for 25,000 people in a local area to say that they utterly reject the tearing apart of the New Forest in this way and its takeover by the city of Southampton, which, as we have heard is the case in other scenarios, is in a far worse financial position than the people who live at present under the aegis of New Forest district council are accustomed to being in?

I have many more points that I would like to make, but, out of consideration for my colleagues, I am not going to make them. I will make just one final point. We have tried—we really have—to engage in a sincere way with the Government. When the original Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), wrote to us, he set out what appeared to be reassuring criteria: there would be no unnecessary duplication or fragmentation, and the building blocks of the new unitary authorities would be the areas covered by the existing borough and district councils unless—as an exception—there was a very strong reason for interfering with boundaries. However, the only reasons given have been vague comments about maximising economic prosperity or something, which could be said in justification of any change, no matter how politically outrageous.

I am sure that if this Minister had full strategic authority—to make a bad pun—over this policy, we would not be experiencing what we are experiencing. There is total outrage about this matter. It needs to be put right, and I hope the Government can be persuaded to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I also share my congratulations with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) on securing today’s debate. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) on his appointment as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department. We all know that he has been a champion for local government and we all recognise that his constituents—like mine—benefited from an enormous vote of confidence in their local Conservative council at the recent elections. I am sure that he will be once again sharing the insights of benefiting from that in his role at the Department.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), my right hon. Friends the Members for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), my hon. Friends the Members for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford), my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), my hon. Friends the Members for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) and for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) all shared valuable insights about the impact that the local government reorganisation process is having on the communities that they represent. A lot of those frustrations reflect the simple fact that at the start of this process, the Government—perhaps because it was not in their manifesto—did not ask what, in their view, local government is for.

Essentially, this is an instruction to do what is being done at the moment, but a bit less of it, at lower quality and at a higher rate of tax. That is certainly something borne out in the local government reorganisations in places like Somerset, which a number of Members used as a reference point for the concerns that their constituents have.

As a country we already have the fewest elected representatives for our constituents of any major democracy. Our constituents have less elected representation in the decisions that affect their lives than their counterparts in the United States, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Yet we have a Government bent on a path of reducing that local democratic voice even further.

Just last week the Government announced that, in a planning system where 98% of decisions are already made under delegated powers, even fewer of those decisions will hear the community’s voice, whether local councillors, planning committees or a public forum where people can express concerns—as Members have proudly expressed today—about the impact on towns of overspill and concreting over green spaces. They will further lose the opportunity to share those concerns.

That is based on a policy that is underpinned by no independent financial analysis. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire referred to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by the County Councils Network to support its case for county-based devolution. That was an entirely reasonable exercise to undertake. One would expect that central Government would then say, “If that is the case being made by one side, let’s see what the case is for unitarisation, for district-based and for reorganisation along some other lines.” None of that has happened, which is perhaps why there is a high level of concern in places such as Leicestershire that the impact will be higher taxes, poorer quality of services and less ability for local people to share their concerns.

In a moment I will put specific questions that I know the Minister will want to consider, but let us reflect on where we are. The streets of Belfast are on fire and last week there was a massive rise in community tension in Southampton. Last year, my local authority of Hillingdon had to deal with a murder on the street of a local individual walking his dog, by an asylum seeker housed in the local area. The ability of credible local leadership to respond to those challenges is critical at such moments. We are all learning the significance of that.

This is not purely about the administrative convenience of Whitehall. This is not, in the words of a former Local Government Minister, about councils as a delivery mechanism for central Government policy. It is about the leaders of those communities and neighbourhoods having a powerful and credible voice locally and the ability genuinely to affect the decisions that make a difference in that area. By failing to ask what local councils are for, the Government are setting up the new authorities to fail.

As a number of Members highlighted, housing is one of the most obvious examples. The Government have set a target of 1.5 million new homes to be delivered over the course of the Parliament. Those 1.5 million new homes already have planning permission. Local authorities have been granting those consents over many years. In Broxbourne, Leicester and South West Hertfordshire there are sites ready to go. They have been designed, laid out, and discussions have been had with utility companies. Yet the economic conditions created by the Government mean that that development is simply not happening.

Rather than addressing those economic conditions, the focus is on removing a bit more local democracy from the planning system. That risks a situation, highlighted by the impact of the expansion of Leicester and Southampton, where many treasured green fields will have planning permission for unbuilt homes, while old mills in city centres remain undeveloped. That is due to a failure of leadership by a local Labour city mayor and a Government not creating the economic conditions for housing development to happen. When there are so many challenges, to which local government delivering on average 800 different services to local residents could be the answer, whether in public health, education, housing, transport and the environment, the fact that we have what is essentially a reductive exercise about how can we do this, but a bit worse at a higher cost, is simply not the answer.

I will conclude with these questions. At the heart of much of this debate has been the fact that elections were promised and cancelled, and mayors committed to and their elections deferred. It would certainly help us all to understand the decision making in the Department if the Government were willing to release the correspondence between the Secretary of State and the local authorities about the cancellation of elections. That has been the subject of freedom of information requests and questions in the House. The Minister, who I know is committed to local democracy, will understand that it would build confidence if the Government were willing to share how the Secretary of State gave local government leaders a steer in that controversial process.

Secondly, will the Minister commit to a full and independent financial analysis of the impact of the reorganisation process? That analysis should not simply rely on something written specifically to support reorganisation, but should be independent and say what is in the interests of the whole country. Will she tell us why it is not appropriate, in her view, for local residents to have a say at any point in the process? There will be debate about whether this is a matter for referendum, local election or mayoral election—there are various ways for it to happen—but a number of Members have shared the sense of frustration felt by local people about the absence of a route by which they can have their say.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

There is one point that I should perhaps have mentioned to emphasise how united the community is. When I wrote initially to the Minister’s predecessor, the letter was co-signed by the leaders not just of the Conservative group on New Forest district council, but of the Lib Dem group, the independent group and the Green group. When there was a vote on supporting the New Forest Together campaign, every single member, including the sole Labour member of New Forest district council, voted in favour. This is a unified community howl of protest against what is being imposed on us.

[David Simmonds]

My experience, unlike that of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham, does not go as far back as the Redcliffe-Maud report, but what has been described over the years, as we have just heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East, is people’s frustration about things being done to rather than with them. This is not about local community leadership growing up from those neighbourhoods; it is about administrative convenience in Whitehall.

I will finish with a question at the heart of building a sense of community confidence. Residents in Leicestershire and Hampshire feel that this is about enabling cities to dump their housing targets—which they have failed to achieve within their own boundaries—in the neighbouring area. We have seen that issue around the fringes of London, historically in south-west Hertfordshire in places such as St Albans. That has been the subject of legal action and Government intervention in the past. We need absolute transparency from the outset.

What do the Government want the new councils to do? When they go to the ballot box, and when they engage in consultation and talk to their Members of Parliament, residents need to know that the new councils will exercise the functions that they are there for, and they need to know what it will cost them and what it will mean for their neighbourhood. It is not too late for the Government to pause the process, listen to the concerns that have been expressed powerfully today, including by the Minister’s own Back Benchers, and look at how lessons can be learned, so that we have a local government system fit for the future.