Lord Pickles: ‘Cancelling local elections is unconstitutional’

Last month, the Telegraph launched its Campaign for Democracy, which calls for the clause in the 2000 Local Government Act that permits the delay of local elections to be scrapped.

That is a cause I support. In several areas, this will be the second year running that voters are denied their say. The result is that councillors elected in 2021 could remain in office until 2028, serving terms of almost seven years.

Labour have this idea that their reorganisation of local government, which will replace the current two-tier district and county system with larger unitary councils, will save a lot of money. If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it is that it will end up costing more. That is because of the cost of setting up new headquarters; the rows and the scramble over roles that will take place. Policy development will be put on the back burner.

One cannot ignore the wider political context either. Local government should be truly local. The Government talks about devolution, but what they’re actually doing is putting local government in stasis.

A dislike of the “shires” and county areas is deep in the party’s DNA. Its enthusiasm for large “strategic authorities” and centrally imposed structures speaks to a deeper instinct: power should be concentrated upwards, even if that means weakening the connection between local representatives and the communities they serve. They are obsessed with metropolitan authorities, they’re obsessed with cities. To a degree, they have wanted to break up the two-tier county system of county and district councils for political reasons.

That instinct is on full display here. Councillors are effectively being handed extended terms. Voters are being told to wait. And ministers are asking the public to trust that all of this is being done in their best interests. It is hardly surprising that many people suspect something else is at play.

Under the Tories, in my role as secretary of state for communities and local government, I saw at close hand how councils operate. Sadly, we were swept out by the introduction of the poll tax, and the benefits of our initial, tough decisions needed more time to show through.

But I still believe that local government is the purest form of government, because it’s closest to the people. In reality, the national Government doesn’t really touch your life that much. The local government – the one collecting your bins, filling your potholes and caring for your relatives – does.

A common misconception is that the people running councils are frequently wrong, idle, and even stupid. I disagree – most people enter councils with good intentions; they want to make a difference and make people’s lives better, but the system sucks the very life out of them. Unfortunately, a lot of councils suffer from the same inertia as many large companies.

It follows that there is a sense of apathy among voters: if people actually felt local elections would make a difference to them, voter turnout would be much higher.

There is no silver bullet, but one learning from my own career would be that, in order to make any meaningful difference, the councils themselves must be in charge of decision-making. We should resist the temptation to continue top-slicing – taking grants away from local authorities and then redistributing it back through another grant for, say, seaside towns, or economic growth. Let councils decide where the money should go, otherwise it’s just a job creation scheme for ministers.

Moreover, there is no need to delay local elections. Outside war or a national emergency, this is without modern precedent. Dressing it up as a “postponement” does not change the reality. The Government’s justification is that this is necessary to facilitate its programme of local government reorganisation. But this argument turns democracy on its head. Elections are not an obstacle to good government. They are the very thing that gives the government its legitimacy. If a reform programme cannot proceed without suspending the democratic process, then it is the programme – not the elections – that ought to be slowed down.

What makes this more troubling is that the warning lights are flashing from bodies that are supposed to be above politics. The Electoral Commission has been unambiguous: scheduled elections should go ahead as a rule, and postponement should occur only in exceptional circumstances.

It has made clear that extending mandates risks damaging democratic legitimacy and public confidence. That is not a partisan attack. It is a constitutional warning.

The real danger is not just what happens in 2026, but the precedent that is being set. Once it becomes acceptable to cancel elections for reasons of administrative convenience on one occasion, it becomes easier to do so again. Democracy depends as much on habit and expectation as it does on law. Regular elections are part of the political rhythm of the country. Disrupt that rhythm too often, and trust quickly drains away.

None of this is an argument against reform or devolution. Conservatives have a strong record of supporting locally-led change, joint working between councils, and directly elected leadership where communities want it. But devolution should mean handing power down, not pulling it up to Whitehall and suspending elections to make the process easier.

At the very least, elections should never be delayed by more than one year, and no councillor should serve more than five years without facing the electorate. Better still, the 2026 local elections should go ahead as planned, with reform carried out at a pace that respects democratic accountability. Cancelling them is unconstitutional.

Democracy is not an inconvenience to be managed. It is the system itself. Churchill had it right: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]