Following the cancellations of this year’s county council elections, Cllr Andrew Mier who represents Southern Rother on Rother District Council, gives this view on behalf of the Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrats.
Liberal Democrats are committed to democracy. That might seem an uncontroversial statement, but these are difficult times. Mature, advanced economies stagnate while less democratic ones rise and democracy faces the need to justify its existence. Even in the USA democratic methods and institutions are being severely tested, perhaps to destruction.
Democracy, growth and prosperity no longer seem automatically linked in the minds of many. To those not fascinated by politics, bad-tempered and ill-informed debate seems a far from uplifting or profitable way of getting things done. It has long been said that democracy is the “worse form of government barring all the others” and “two cheers for democracy”. The world is a messy place and we have to navigate our way through it.
The rule of law and a rules-based international system has served us well, despite present problems, and we have had eighty years of relative peace with vastly improved prosperity and public services since the second world war. Those old enough to remember the 50s and 60s may have nostalgic memories of their youth, but would be under no illusion about the material standard of living in those days.
Against that background we have the government’s proposals – some would say diktat – to restructure local government. This has been rushed through in Sussex with the three higher-tier authorities – East and West Sussex County Councils together with Brighton and Hove Unitary Authority – bludgeoned into opting for fast-track restructuring with just three weeks and five days between the government’s December 16 white paper and the government’s deadline of January 10. “Come up with proposals within narrow government-defined parameters or have it forced on you with detrimental financial consequences” was the message. Realistic consultation has been impossible.
We are to have three authorities, based on the areas of the former East and West Sussex and Brighton and Hove to deal with the basic functions of the existing counties and districts combined. There will then be an elected mayor over the whole of Sussex dealing with the big strategic issues. Rother District Council, along with Hastings and Eastbourne Borough Councils etc. will cease to exist.
All this will take a couple of years to achieve. Meanwhile the government has postponed until at least 2026 the county council elections due in May this year. This is deplorable. The county councillors’ mandates will have expired and it is those cling-on councillors who will be negotiating the way forward with the restructuring. This is particularly corrosive in East Sussex where the ruling Conservatives have a wafer-thin majority and were expected to be voted out in May. The government white paper says in terms that it will be a good thing to have fewer elections and fewer councillors. How will we defend democracy in the wider world when we behave like this at home?
Finally we have the questionable proposal for an over-arching and directly elected mayor. Liberal Democrats believe in democracy and not an elective dictatorship. We need to watch the checks and balances and governance arrangements for the mayor. Above all we need to ensure that the mayor really has the support of a majority of the electorate. The Conservatives changed the mayoral voting system from one where the winner had to have 51% of the votes, second choices being counted until that was achieved. They reverted to first past the post where a candidate can be elected on a very small proportion of the votes. That can easily happen where, as today, there are numerous parties in the running. What credibility would a mayor elected on, say, 25% of the votes have with the public? Democracy requires better.
Image Credits: Wkimedia commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:East_Sussex_map.png cc https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/, UK.gov .
Far from being at risk, democracy will be the stand out winner from devolution, if by democracy we mean engagement with institutions of government, direct access to local elected representatives and accountability instead of obfuscation. I respect Cllr Mier’s views and always admire the way he delivers them but we see things very differently in this case, except that I agree the delay in elections was regrettable.
Its very clear to me that the current confusion of roles and responsibilities between District and County can’t continue and having a democratic mandate the government is addressing this confusion in a timely way, why hang around when the issues are clear and when we have many examples of successful Unitary councils already in the nation? What is taking time, quite correctly is reflection and understanding of how the new authorities will be shaped, will we use current boundaries or will they take more account of inter and intra county demographics such a sense of place and identity? Helena Dollimore MP’s recent question to Angela Rayner prompted a revealing response “We recognise that certain areas may have different needs…. We will work with local areas to look at what their needs are and then adapt”. So, not quite the destruction of democratic and state institutions we are witnessing around the world in states where oligarchs are now running the show. Simplifying government and devolving power to Mayors brings democracy closer to communities and the sooner the better.
Si – not sure I share your confidence- I’ve been around long enough to witness, and take part in, numerous small and large scale local government restructuring schemes – not been great so far !
Simon McGurk says the Labour Government has a democratic mandate to reform local government and thereby get rid of the tier of elected local government closest to the public, districts and boroughs. The manifesto actually says ‘Labour will review the governance arrangements for Combined Authorities to unblock decision making.’ Hardly explicit at all, and with a consultation period as short as 17 working days to comment on what is a wholesale change to local government.
The Conservatives changed the proportional system for electing Mayors to first past the post when they were in power, with the consequence that, as Cllr Mier has said a mayor for the whole of Sussex could be elected on little more than 25% of the vote. Is that democratic? And even worse, when asked whether Labour would change the system to a more proportional and fairer system, the answer was a flat no. This was hardly surprising when Labour had just won the General Election with 64% of the seats in the House of Commons, with only 34% of the vote!
As with most things to date from our government, the real motives for this action are far from clear. Not a great fan of Mayors (unlike our mainly ceremonial Mayors we have today) of large undertakings, as Sir Sadiq Khan has shown, they can be exceptionally undemocratic and destructive.
With four tiers of government, Central, County, District and Parish, the existing system is designed to pass the buck and avoid actual action. A small example is the promised footbridge across the Tillingham between Tilling Green and the Schools/ Leisure Centre.
I remember the Unitary Authorities plan where each large town, like Hastings, would control its hinterland.
That proposal failed when there was an outcry at losing the old pre-conquest Counties.
If this current proposal goes ahead an essential part must be PR, to give Greens a chance!
Completely agree with Cllr. Mier. Now’s hardly the time to be complacent about democracy. It’s under threat at home and abroad. As Stephen Hardy notes, the Government was handed 100% of the power on a shameful third of the vote. First Past the Post has driven down faith in democracy over decades and given rise to the pervasive feeling that our voices do not matter. That, in turn has fuelled the rise of Farage. A man in the same tent as Trump, Musk and Vladimir Putin… A man who could conceivably be our next PM. And, as Stephen also observes, the implementation of FPTP for mayoral elections means we could have a Reform mayor too. But rather than confront the perils to democracy and make haste to reinvigorate faith, Labour cancel elections! And propose to move ‘local’ government to Chichester! I don’t know how that brings democracy ‘closer’ to this community… And all this at time when all our focus should be on making people happier and better off…
It really is time to wake up and to recognise that the British values that our Grandparents fought and died for are in peril – truth, justice, fairness, law, decency and democracy… That is our ‘culture’. We need to restore faith in British democracy with a fair voting system under which we can beat Farage on a contest of values. Running scared of Reform might shore up Labour’s vote in the short term, but it’ll send us all to hell in a handcart in the long term.
It may, or may not, make financial sense to do away with District Councils, thus removing a tier of democracy, but at what cost? I do not mean financial cost but our loss of being represented by local councillors.
Eastern Rother seems to be ignored most of the time, except when it comes to raising the Council Tax, then we have to pay up but receive little in return. Within the area of the whole of Sussex, from west of Chichester, north to Crawley, to Jurys Gap, our area is but a minority.
We do not feature large on the expenditure sheet of RDC or ESCC as it is, within Sussex we are an outpost, best forgotten when there are larger populations who shout louder to receive attention.
As for having a Mayor, likely based in Brighton, having a say in what happens in Rye and the villages I have little faith in any improvement at all, in fact quite the reverse.
The removal of democracy is a downward spiral which must be resisted lest we end up in a dictatorship.
I agree with much that you write. The White Paper celebrates the reduction in the number of councillors who will inevitably be more remote. A Mayor on the far side of Sussex would be very physically and in every other sense remote indeed. Perhaps the Mayor’s office and secretariat should be based at Hastings as a way of bringing money into the town and giving a boost to a deprived area?
To be fair to our own much-maligned Rother District Council there is significant (over a million) investment by Rother using central government funding to improve facilities at Camber. Rother shoulders the responsibility for managing the beach with something like 20k visitors on a peak day. A very heavy commitment for a smallish council. Work is going on with the owners of the old Pontins site to bring forward a new use for that significant site. More generally Rother has worked hard to support the fishing industry at Rye and has worked hard and effectively with local people, contractors and County over the Rye leisure centre / swimming pool issue.
“Rural” councillors across Rother have been keen to promote local issues and to ensure that both Bexhill and the rural parts receive fair treatment.
In Camber you have two councillors (Eastern Rother ward), one of whom (Cllr Paul Osbourne) is a very effective chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
It may be that we shall not appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone.
One has to smile at Guy harrises comments,when he talks about democracy, remember the B######s to brexit from his party, maybe he could tell us why Reform did so well in the Hastings and Rye elections, and he finished bottom of the pile.
No, John, my friend, I’ll decline. But thanks for the gracious invitation. I think you express more clearly than I ever could what’s at stake…
Enjoy the weekend, John.
I struggle to see how the proposed changes “will be a stand out winner from devolution”! We are distant enough from local decision-makers as it is. This a pure money saving exercise – apart from the additional cost of the mayor and his entourage!
Yes Mike, the government plan does not save a layer of local government – it removes the Districts and Boroughs (who will need to be replaced by Town Councils where none exist at present) but adds the Mayoral Authority – which will be very remote and potentially very dangerous if there are not sufficient checks on the Mayor’s powers.
Those of us in rural areas have had three tiers of local councils since 1894. Is there confusion as to who does what? Well yes – but will the proposed changes alter that? There will still be three tiers – local councils such as Rye and Northiam, plus the new county council merging six councils into one, plus the so-called Combined Authority covering the whole of Sussex including Brighton and Hove.
Devolution implies bringing power closer to communities – but the government’s proposals transfer most decisions from a council meeting in Bexhill to one twice as far away in Lewes. Will more people get excited by the prospect of electing a mayor for the whole of Sussex? Turnout in mayoral elections elsewhere suggests not. And how will these super-mayors emerge? Through the usual party political channels?.
The proposed changes will leave a big void at local level. Our town and parish councils get no new powers or resources under the scheme but they could chose to do more. The void will most noticeable in Eastbourne and Hastings. They were self-governing county boroughs until the reorganisation of 1974. Will they seek parish council status as Bexhill has done?
Many more questions than answers – but readers should take the opportunity to respond to the consultation available on line – deadline in April. Government may think it knows best – but it claims it wants to listen to local views!
To add to Dr Clark’s comments: I agree there will still be three tiers under the new system, but note the addition of a fourth – the Mayor will be a member “Council of the Nations and Regions”, which sounds as remote as you can get. (You can read about it on Wikipedia.)
The government’s consultation on our own Mayoral arrangements is at –
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/sussex-and-brighton-devolution/sussex-and-brighton-devolution-consultation
I say consultation, but I doubt we have much choice.
By way of an update on 24 February Rother District Council passed a resolution in the following terms –
“Rother District Council urges the Minister to ensure that “First Past the Post” is not
used for the Mayoral elections, but a system which ensures the winning candidate
has the support of at least 51% of the electorate.”
I (Lib Dem) proposed the motion and it was seconded by Cllr Christine Bayliss (Labour). Rother Alliance members were overwhelmingly in favour, but most Conservatives voted against.
The debate (like all public Rother DC meetings) can be viewed online at –
https://rother.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/952987/start_time/4831000
On 19 March at 6.00pm there will be an Extraordinary Meeting of Rother District Council. The meeting has been called to enable Council to debate the Interim Plan for Local Government Reorganisation within East Sussex.
Cabinet will be meeting directly after Full Council at 7:00pm, or at the conclusion of the Council meeting whichever is the later, to approve the Interim Plan.
Each meeting can be viewed live online or as a recording later.