Power to Cancel Local Elections

Will Forster Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Mr Mundell. Thank you for chairing this debate. I also thank the almost 153,000 people across the country who signed the petition, including 186 in my constituency of Woking who I think signed it because they—we—unreasonably lost our right to vote in Surrey county council’s elections last year, which were unreasonably taken away by this Government.

Did people lose their right to vote because of massive, significant events that meant that we just could not go and vote? Was it a world war? Elections in the first world war and the second war had to be postponed. Was it a foot and mouth crisis like 2001?

[Mr Francois]

Just as a matter of record, we had a general election in Britain in July 1945, when we were still involved in fighting the second world war in the far east. If we can have a general election in wartime, I see no reason why we could not have local elections this May in peacetime.

[Mr Forster]

I quite agree. My memory does not stretch back as far as that, but the right hon. Gentleman is completely right. Elections have been postponed only during serious wartime, during the foot and mouth crisis of 2001 and, as we all—even I—remember, during the covid pandemic in 2020. But in Surrey and across a lot of the country, people lost their right to vote because of local government reorganisation, which is not exactly an existential threat to our way of life.

People in Surrey are now stuck with county councillors who were last elected in 2021. The only reason why there are Conservatives representing my constituency is that since 2021 it has not been possible to vote them out of office. Every year since then, the Conservatives have put up candidates for Woking borough council. They have lost every single election.

We are now creating a new council for my area, West Surrey council. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give my area a fresh start. We have not had such an opportunity for 50 years, but in the meetings setting it in motion, there are people who have lost their mandate because it has expired. That is completely unreasonable, and it is because of the use of the Secretary of State’s powers that the petition opposes. After the past month, the Secretary of State probably wishes he had never had them in the first place.

These are my questions to the Minister. Given that the Government have now reversed their decision to postpone the 2026 local elections following legal advice, can she confirm whether the same legal considerations applied to the nine local council elections that were postponed in 2025, including those for Surrey county council? Can she confirm to me and my Woking constituents, by outlining what legal advice the Government have had, that those elections were lawfully postponed? Finally, what material change in circumstances occurred between the decision to postpone the 2026 local elections and the subsequent decision to reverse that postponement?

Because the Government have not been open and transparent about the legal advice that they received, my constituents of Woking and the 153,000 people who signed the petition have lost what little trust they had in government and politics. The Government can start to regain that trust by publishing their legal advice and ensuring that in future no one Minister can cancel local elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Reform)]

Cancelling elections is always wrong, unless there is an extreme situation that necessitates postponement of an election. I cannot think of many examples in recent years in which that was necessary. I remember when Margaret Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council. She extended its term by one year only and then the GLC was, rightly, abolished. I remember that during the covid pandemic, the Greater London Authority’s term was extended by one year, but then it was shortened in the next term, so there was a five-year term and then a three-year term. Cancelling elections—I think, in this case, purely for political reasons—is fundamentally dishonest of this Government. It was only because of the actions of my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who sought a judicial review, that the Government were forced to do another U-turn, allowing the right of the people of this country to vote for their chosen local councillors in the forthcoming elections on 7 May.

I would like to make a further point, because democracy is not only about how people vote in local elections and whom they choose as their local councillors; it is also about the structure of local government. My borough is the London borough of Havering, as the Minister knows only too well because I have spoken about it on many occasions. I was rather disappointed that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) did not acknowledge that the London borough of Havering actually is also an Essex borough. The problem is that the people of my borough have never been given the chance to choose whether we want to be under the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority, or whether we would prefer to be a unitary authority or under the new Greater Essex. We simply do not get given the chance to decide. We are not asked. Our opinion does not matter. We are forced into an artificial Greater London structure that does not suit the interests of my borough. It means that we are paying vast sums of money to, effectively, subsidise inner London. It means that things like ULEZ are imposed on us. It means that planning is taken out of our control, so we are Londonised and are becoming a concrete jungle. All these things have no democratic mandate from the people of Havering.

Postponing elections is really just as bad as denying local people the right to choose what kind of structure they would like to be in. My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton was in Romford outside the town hall only last week, and the popularity in my borough of a local referendum on becoming a unitary authority outside Greater London is extremely high. I say to the Minister that if we believe in democracy, we need to be given the chance to make those decisions.

The key point here is that we are only debating this issue because of the petition—I commend the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on introducing it to the House. Frankly, it is a disgrace that we have to do this and that so many people had to sign a petition purely to demand their right to vote in a democratic election on 7 May. My borough was voting anyway; our election was not postponed. We are looking forward to quite a big change in Havering—and I think there will be a big change—because people are tired of being governed by City Hall and tired of being governed by a town hall that is not representative of the local community. I firmly believe that we will have the first Reform UK council in the Greater London area.

I would like to make a point to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster). I agree with everything he said. The Liberal Democrats have an honourable position in terms of democracy—I think there was a little issue in Cheltenham, but let’s not worry about that. The Liberal Democrats were very clear that there should have been elections. However, under the restructuring of local government, his new local authority will be called West Surrey. Surely it should be called West Surrey and South Middlesex to reflect the true historic county identity of that area. If we are going to rename local authorities, we should give them names that reflect the geography and history of the area. It is very important that Middlesex is included in the name of the new unitary authority. I hope he agrees.

[Mr Forster]

I thank the hon. Member for highlighting that matter, with which I have some sympathy, and which Liberal Democrat colleagues in Spelthorne have highlighted. We are going to have a new council called West Surrey, one sixth of which is in south Middlesex. The Government are considering the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, and I hope they give it due consideration. One of the concerns is that only one sixth is in south Middlesex, so why should it be half the name? However, I am more concerned about the fact that the council will inherit over £4 billion of debt from the former Conservative administrations. That is more of a priority for me than the name, but I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has sympathy with me, because local identity matters. Giving a council a name that everyone feels represented by is very important, so I hope that will become a reality. Middlesex Heritage is campaigning strongly for this. Even I get requests to raise this issue, although I am not a Middlesex MP—I am an Essex MP, and proud of it.

I hope that the Government have learned a lesson here. Democracy has been fought for over many centuries and many generations. It is not something to just discard, postpone or delay purely for political advantage. I am afraid that the Government have been caught out on this issue. I believe the Minister should apologise today for the denial of democracy. Thank goodness the threat of a judicial review prompted the Government to make the U-turn so that the people of this country can properly vote in local elections on 7 May.