English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

I look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Committee in this debate on these amendments and others covering alternative voting systems, the scrutiny of election cancelations, and candidates providing electors with a means of contacting them—which I will address when winding up. I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendments 211 and 212 in this group, which are in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock.

On the return to this vexed question of election postponements and cancellations, as we have covered that several times already on various previous occasions—I am sure we will again in future—I will take a slightly different tack this time and focus partly on the future. I also hope, perhaps overoptimistically, that the Minister feels that these amendments are actually helpful.

Thinking about the future first, there are very clear, sad and worrying lessons from countries all around the world about how quickly democracies can become fragmented and undermined. The responsible reaction we all should have to that is to be determined to embed democratic norms as deeply and firmly as we can. That does not guarantee their future protection but it will certainly make life more likely to be successful, whether for our future selves or our successors, if we have to defend democracy. I hope we all agree on the clear principle of embedding the idea that democracy should not just be an easy thing to postpone or cancel.

However, at the moment, unfortunately, it is just a little bit too easy for elections to be postponed or cancelled. The two amendments in my name set out a very clear route, as indeed do other amendments in this group, by which we could more firmly protect our democracy against future strains.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly pointed out, there are several different approaches that one could potentially take to this. I certainly acknowledge the merit of the approach taken in some of the other amendments regarding both ensuring that the 2007 and 2011 Acts referred to in them are properly catered for and, indeed, the interesting idea of the one-year limit that is present in one of those amendments.

My concern, though, with those alternative approaches —I will certainly listen carefully and with interest to noble Lords who contribute to the rest of this debate—is that those alternative approaches rest, in the end, on the willingness of Parliament to vote down secondary legislation. In the end, that is the prime safeguard in them. It is obviously a matter for another day or occasion to debate the merits of the deeply held, principled position that I know many in both the Labour and Conservative groups here take—I do not share it but I appreciate it—that the main opposition party in the House of Lords should not vote for a fatal amendment to a statutory instrument.

The problem is, whatever one thinks are the rights or wrongs of that principle, that that essentially means that any safeguard that is based on the idea that the Government have to put a statutory instrument or secondary legislation in some form to Parliament is of very little use. In the end, when push comes to shove, whatever the principal opposition party is in the Lords, it will say, “As a matter of principle, we aren’t going to vote it down”. It is a safeguard that, when needed, will not keep us very safe.

I said that I was going to be optimistic and try to persuade the Minister that these amendments are a helpful measure. I say that because I am absolutely sure that, in good faith, the Government never set out to say that some councillors who are elected for a four-year term of office should stay in office—as it will turn out under their plans—for seven years. I am sure that was not the original intention, but it is unfortunately the position that we have stumbled into through a sequence of events. That is a very significant and, outside of wartime, unprecedented extension to the term of office of councillors. We have ended up in this unprecedented and frankly unsatisfactory position because some of those councillors who have had their four-year term extended to seven years are in power, running councils, and they are being given three extra years in power without the public getting a say on that.

As I said, I appreciate that that is the result of a sequence of circumstances, and in that sense it seems that the Government have stumbled into a series of events. Whether through the mechanisms set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, or through mine, the advantage of making it a little harder for the Government to cancel elections in the future is that it would protect Governments from stumbling into a similar sequence of events again. So I hope we will hear some movement from the Minister in due course on this issue.

But of course, like any good Liberal Democrat, I cannot resist the opportunity to talk a little about the merits of different voting systems, so I will refer briefly to Amendment 213, although the ticking clock protects noble Lords from a William Gladstone-type speech about the relative merits of different voting systems, tempting though that may be. Although it is obviously no surprise, I am sure, for the Minister to hear me say that I certainly prefer the supplementary vote to first past the post, it is a real shame that the Government do not intend at the moment to go a step further and introduce the alternative vote. The big weakness of the supplementary vote is that you have to correctly second-guess the two parties that will be in the final round so that you can cast your second preference vote in a way that will be counted.

I will briefly make reference to the research by the Make Votes Matter coalition that was carried out a couple of years ago and which encompassed 217 different elections conducted by the supplementary vote in the UK. It found that only 46% of the second preferences that people expressed actually ended up being counted in the final run-off round. Over half of all second preferences correctly filled in on the ballot paper none the less got discarded because they were for candidates who did not make it into the second round. That is quite a flaw in the supplementary vote. It is a system essentially designed for a world in which it is pretty clear who the two main parties, or the two main candidates, in an election will be. However good or bad it may be, we are certainly not in a situation where that is the norm in our politics any more, so I very much hope the Minister will consider the merits of the alternative vote.

On Amendment 214, I simply observe that, in Scotland, the single transferable vote is used for council elections and is pretty popular with not only many members of the Labour Party but indeed many members of the Conservative Party there. If it works well in Scotland, as it does, perhaps we should be able to have it in England as well.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will not talk about different voting systems; I cannot think of anything more boring—I am so sorry. Actually, lots of things are more boring. I could not agree less with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about the value of first past the post. It is a thoroughly discredited system and its time is over. What we see again and again is that we have a completely unrepresentative Government, as we do at the moment: they have a huge majority on a small proportion of the vote, and the Conservatives should be thinking more about how they can get back into power—obviously, I do not particularly want that.

Under first past the post, councillors elected often bear little resemblance to how people actually vote. Large numbers of residents can turn out, cast their ballots in good faith and still see their views go completely unrepresented. That leaves too many people feeling that local government is something done to them rather them with them, and proportional representation offers a way out of that. My noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle’s Amendment 215, and Amendment 214 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would allow a shift towards a voting system that would reflect the diversity of political opinion in our communities and reward candidates who can build broad support, rather than those who simply scrape through on a minority of the vote. It would open the door to councils that would look more like the places they serve, politically and socially, and that really matters, especially at a time when councils are becoming larger, more remote and more powerful.

As the noble Lord said earlier, in Scotland local government elections have used the single transferable vote for nearly two decades. In Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, STV is well understood and widely trusted. In Wales, councils are now able to choose it for themselves. Of course, we have proportional representation in London for the London Assembly.

I have been elected under PR and under first past the post. Quite honestly, it did not feel very different, but a completely different view could be spoken and presented much more forcefully when we had more people elected under proportional representation. Voters in those countries manage perfectly well with a system that allows them to rank candidates in order of preference. The result is representation built on consent and co-operation rather than tribalism. This will be much more important as we move towards much larger councils and combined authorities. If power is to be devolved upwards, representation must be strengthened downwards.

--- Later in debate ---

To conclude, I am extremely grateful to the National Association of Local Councils, which is very supportive of Amendment 218 which seeks to ensure that local authorities can hold council meetings in an online or hybrid format under the circumstances I have set out. It believes the Bill should be amended to make provision for remote meetings and to make reforms to standards regimes to make this possible. With those few words, I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 219 and 220. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has indicated, they attempt to achieve something very similar to Amendment 218 but go a bit more broadly. All three of the amendments in this group get at the idea that it is reasonable—in some carefully defined and carefully protected circumstances—for councillors to be able to participate in council business even though they are not able to be physically present.

One of the reasons for putting forward these two amendments is, frankly, a bit of embarrassment. Both Houses of Parliament, in their own way, allow some degree of remote or proxy participation. Although every noble Lord is undoubtedly very special, are noble Lords and Members of the other place really so special that, while it is okay for us to be able to do that, oh my goodness, we must not let councillors do it? Frankly, it is a little embarrassing that, although we understand that these powers need to be carefully protected and defined, we say that this is okay for ourselves, yet, so far, we do not allow councillors the same thing.

This is also a matter of pragmatism. Through the experience of the House of Lords, through the experience of the other place, through the experience of councils in lockdown and through the experience of councils in the UK but outside of England, we have a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience of how measures such as those set out in the amendments in this group work. The answer is that they have worked well. They have worked successfully. They are good ways of dealing with, for example, some of the challenges of geography and weather that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned earlier. They are good ways of dealing with some of the challenges around increasing participation in politics and the diversity of our elected representatives.

These are not just my views. The Government helpfully carried out a thorough consultation last year, asking for views on remote attendance and proxy voting in local authorities. Just as I did in the case of my earlier amendment on cattle grids, I will quote approvingly from the Government’s words—with more success, I hope, than I had on that amendment.

In the consultation, question 2 asked:

“Do you agree with the broad principle of granting local authorities powers to allow remote attendance at formal meetings?”


A resounding 86% said “yes” in response to that. Similarly, question 8 in that consultation asked:

“Do you think legislative change to allow councillors to attend local authority meetings remotely should or should not be considered for the following reasons?”


Reason number one was:

“Councils would be more resilient in the event of local or national emergencies”;


91% agreed with that. This was another option given:

“It would likely increase the diversity of people willing and able to stand for election in their local area”;


79% of people agreed with that.

The government consultation rightly concluded that, in the Government’s own words:

“The government is of the view that in-person authority meetings remain vital for local democracy”—


I agree—

“but that hybrid and remote attendance, and proxy voting, will enable local authorities in England to develop more modern, accessible and flexible working practices”.

The Government went on to say:

“We have carefully considered arguments for and against remote attendance and proxy voting, and we plan to legislate to support permanent provision in relation to both policies, when parliamentary time allows”.


Having raised this at Second Reading and listened carefully to what the Minister said in response, the puzzle for me is that we have in front of us a piece of legislation that would enable exactly those conclusions from the Government’s consultation to be implemented. The Government say that they need parliamentary time to do this; well, the parliamentary time is immediately in front of us.

The Government like talking about how they are taking action on many issues at pace. Here is the opportunity to act at a swift pace on the results of that consultation from last year. I very much hope that, when we hear the Minister’s response, even if we do not get my most optimistic outcome—a straightforward, “We agree to these amendments”—we will at least get to unpick this mystery a little. Why, when the consultation and the Government’s own conclusions were so clearly in favour, and other arguments so clearly stack up in favour, are the Government not taking the opportunity of the Bill in front of us to proceed at pace and implement what they themselves have said they wish to do?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, like many others, I had a leading position as a councillor during Covid. The Minister and I corresponded on many calls. Remote working worked well during Covid, but there were some famous failures. Some councillors fell asleep live on YouTube—not in my council, I hasten to add. Others went to the toilet, got undressed or got out of the shower. Children bumbled in. There was that famous meeting where a woman had no authority but managed to cut the other chap out; I cannot remember her name, but we all know the one. So, yes, it can work, and there are safeguards.

I completely disagree with proxy voting, so I have no truck with Amendment 219. However, I am broadly sympathetic with Amendments 218 and 220, which are trying to ask how we can participate remotely, although I find it difficult to support them as they are currently constructed.

This is complicated. There are different types of meeting, and each has different consequences. There is the full council meeting, in which everyone gets together. It is important that everyone gets together to cast their vote as a council rather than as a set of individuals sitting at home—in their underpants, let us say. There are executive meetings and cabinet meetings. They are really important, and people want to see them; there are rights of attendance, and people will want to lobby. There are scrutiny meetings, but that is not an executive function. Then there are policy-formation committees, which are not for decision-making but are part of scrutiny. So we have the distinction between what are and are not decision-making committees. Then there are quasi-judicial meetings, such as those on planning or licensing; in-person attendance is really important for those. None of this fine-grained texture is in the amendments but, if they are to progress, it should be.

Local government is becoming more complicated. There is certainly a need to travel more, particularly in the larger authorities such as North Yorkshire. The answer to that is not to have something quite as big as North Yorkshire, but we are where we are. There are going to be more combined meetings under these combined county authorities. There are also more trading companies involved in local authorities now. They are at arm’s length from the council—they may be owned by the council but they are not of the council—and we have to take them into consideration, too. There are significantly more partnerships, some of which are joint committees of more than one council. We would have to work out, if two councils came together and one had the freedom to do online meetings and the other did not, how that would mesh in joint committees, of which we are seeing a lot more. We have development corporations as well. There is a lot of public money there, so will they be meeting in private or in public?

We have to sort out some of the ground rules. It is not quite as simple as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh said. I am interested in taking this forward, but it will need a lot more work before Report before any of it could really be considered a realistic proposal, rather than just a good idea for probing.