Local Authority Boundaries (Referendums) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

As I have said in this place many times before, local representation matters. Individuals and communities need to have trust in their local authority, which is charged with acting in their best interest, regardless of which political party may be in charge at a local level. Residents need to be reassured that the framework, the model, the structure and indeed the geographical area that they are represented within has a local authority that has not only the capability, but the capacity to act in their best interest.

My Local Authority Boundaries (Referendums) Bill aims to re-empower local communities that feel completely disenfranchised and forgotten about by their local authority. I am lucky enough to be presenting this Bill to the House once again on its Second Reading, and why? I think it so very important that local people living within a community feel and know that their local authority has their best interests at heart, and residents know that through its actions and how it delivers the services it undertakes for them.

Let us not forget that local authorities have perhaps more influence on an individual’s or a family’s day-to-day life than any other level of government. We all know as MPs the weight of our postbags and the vast number of emails we all receive that strongly relate to local government issues, whether that be sorting out highways or potholes, putting in speed cameras or dealing with local planning policy, housing, schools, children’s services, adult services, bin collections, leisure centres, libraries, regeneration or driving local economic growth.

That was a powerful list of service areas that local authorities deliver for the good of all our constituents. Does my hon. Friend agree that within the spirit of what he is presenting, the boundaries question needs to go beyond local authorities and into other public sector bodies, such as integrated care boards, where our experience in Buckinghamshire, having been segregated from Milton Keynes, makes no sense whatever?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We do not live within boundaries, so to speak, we live within communities, and that is why it is important not only that the local authority is best representing the community in which one lives, but that other organisations are, too, as he mentioned.

On that point, does my hon. Friend also agree that sometimes planning applications might affect a neighbouring constituency? One of the challenges there is that those in the neighbouring constituency, while affected, might not necessarily have a say. There is an argument that local authorities should work in unison to ensure that constituents are spoken to and engaged, so that they have a say in a decision that will affect them.

That is another excellent point made by an hon. Friend. There is an illustration of it in Ilkley, where the border between West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire is literally the River Wharfe in some cases. There will be planning applications going through in North Yorkshire that have a direct impact on West Yorkshire. On that point, it is incredibly frustrating that Bradford Council does not allow the objections or comments on a planning application to be seen by the wider public. It hides them from scrutiny, which is incredibly frustrating for many of my constituents. The point that I am making is that these issues matter because they have an impact on everyone’s day-to- day life.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing his Bill this far. His plea for localism will strike a very strong chord in Christchurch. When Christchurch had its independence taken away from it, a council was created with 76 members, but as Christchurch has only 10 of those members, it effectively has no say at all in what happens in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council.

My hon. Friend makes another excellent point. It is important that what is said by any individual who represents a body of people or a community carries weight and is heard. If a local authority is too large in terms of the number of residents it represents, or its geographical area is too great, or a single city within a local authority’s boundaries is getting all the attention from that local authority, with the outlying towns and villages being deprioritised, there is a real risk that communities will suffer. Unfortunately, that is exactly what my constituents are experiencing within the communities that I represent. Communities in Keighley, Ilkley, Silsden, Steeton, Riddlesdown, East Morton, the Worth Valley and areas within my wider constituency are full of passionate people who quite rightly are incredibly proud of where they live. They want their area to grow, thrive and prosper, but, for far too long, have felt completely unrepresented and ignored by our local authority, Bradford Council.

The Bill is all about creating smaller unitary authorities, so that a local authority is able to better focus on the needs of their local residents. I do not seek to create a further tier of government, but, simply, to make local government work for local people and local communities.

I commend my hon. Friend for introducing this Bill. As he knows, as his parliamentary neighbour, my constituency suffers exactly the same problem as his in that it is ruled by Bradford Council but without any real say. Normally, in local elections, people would be told to vote to change their council if they do not like what it is doing. However, if all of my constituents and all of his constituents voted against the local council, it would still not change the make up of the council. That means that we are completely disenfranchised when the council is merely concentrating on its Bradford city heartland. Is it not the case that this Bill, which would allow a referendum, would enable people, including those in Bradford because it would affect them as well, to have a say? Is that not a way of making sure that people can feel properly represented by their local authority?

My hon. Friend and neighbour makes a valid point. He has been working tirelessly with me on this Bill, which creates a framework and a model that would enable us to unlock the potential of our communities so that they are better represented. The reality is that we are dealing with a local authority—as in Bradford Council—that is just too big, and I will come on to that point further in my speech.

I fear that there will not be time for me to make a speech, so I will make my point more succinctly in an intervention. I know my hon. Friend’s feelings well, because, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, we, too, have a town to our east—with due apologies to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon). There was an attempt in this House in 1930 to extend Stoke-on-Trent to amalgamate Newcastle-under-Lyme and Wolstanton completely against the wishes of the people of Newcastle. I am happy to brief my hon. Friend further on it, because I know that it was a long time ago. He might note that a postcard poll taken at the time showed that residents opposed that extension Bill by a majority of 97.4%. It was their Lordships who took the unusual step of refusing to send the Bill to Committee on Second Reading. That is not a great analogy, because we were avoiding a shotgun marriage; he wants a divorce. But if he gets that local number in a referendum, that would really do him some good with his cause.

Both of my hon. Friends have picked up on the size of a local authority. My area has one of the largest unitary authorities: Bradford District Council currently has a population of around 550,000 people. When we compare that with neighbouring Calderdale Council with a population of just under 200,000, or Gateshead Council with a similar number, or even Hartlepool Council with a population of 85,000, we can see that an effective, efficient, smaller unitary authority can work and is able to deliver the services that their residents need. I will get on to the mechanics of the legislation, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it is important to use this time to outline why the Bill is so important to me and my constituents. The root cause of many of our problems is that my constituents feel that they are being used as a cash cow for Bradford and getting very little back in return.

Council tax and business rates are all sent from my constituency to Bradford city hall, while nowhere near the equivalent amount of funds are being reinvested back into our area. The Keighley and Ilkley and Shipley constituencies generate the highest tax revenues for Bradford Council through our council tax and business rates payments. Data released by the council illustrates that wards such as Ilkley, Wharfedale and Craven pay the highest proportion of council tax, with very little coming back into our areas.

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that there are too many examples of Labour-led authorities that have put politics before delivering for residents? Ipswich Borough Council has been one of the worst performing councils in the region, despite being awarded £25 million from the Government’s towns fund.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. For a lot of our residents, all they care about is the delivery of basic services. They are not necessarily bothered about the political make-up of a council; they just want to get what they are paying for through their council tax.

I come to a clear illustration of where decisions by Bradford Council are not made in tune with local priorities. It was only last week that Labour-run Bradford Council was forced into a screeching U-turn on its decision to close the Keighley tip, a household waste and recycling centre that is heavily utilised by many of my constituents and businesses. Had the council ploughed on with its decision to close the tip, it would have forced residents to take their waste to other sites, causing congestion at busy locations where tips are provided. They might have had to go into the clean air zone tax area to get rid of their waste, so they would have been doubly charged for a very basic level of service. Had it not been for the fantastic local community champions Laura Kelly and Martin Crangle getting together a petition, which received well in excess of 7,300 signatures—a petition that I presented to the House—Labour-run Bradford Council would not have changed its decision and we would now be without a local tip.

I want to follow up on my hon. Friend’s point about how much some of the wards in his constituency and mine are billed for council tax, and how little they get back. Not only are they billed for huge amounts of money; they actually pay it. About 99.9% of the council tax asked for in our wards is paid, yet the council tax receipts for Labour wards in Bradford—such as City ward, where the council collects only roughly 60% of the council tax that is billed—are lamentable. Not only are we paying so much more and getting very little back, but we are actually subsidising the lack of collection of council tax in other wards in Bradford.