TOWN POLLS (Hansard, 23 February 1955)

§ Mr. Woodrow Wyatt (Birmingham, Aston)

I beg to move, That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to town polls and town meetings. This Motion relates to a very simple Bill, designed to redress an anomaly which has existed since 1872. Until 1872, corporations had no power whatever to promote Bills. They were then given the power subject to the approval of local government electors. This approval was to be shown in the form of town meetings specially convened for the purpose and later, if it was requisitioned, by over a hundred voters in a town poll.

That, no doubt, was a practical proposition when the arrangements were first made, when the franchise, and particularly the local government franchise, was exceedingly limited and did not amount to more than a few thousand electors in any town. When, later, rural district councils and county councils wished to have powers to promote Bills, they were not obliged to hold town meetings and town polls because it was thought that this was an anachronistic method and entirely unnecessary because of all the other safeguards that existed.

The London County Council today is not required to hold town meetings or polls, nor, indeed, are the Metropolitan Boroughs if they have not paid for the cost of the promotion of a Bill but have allowed the London County Council to pay for it for them.

As far as boroughs and urban districts are concerned, these provisions have continued with ludicrous effects. In Birmingham, for example, where the electorate is about 780,000 and the population is 1,250,000, the town hall holds only 2,000 people; so it is not possible to get a town meeting of the entire electorate of Birmingham, and it never was and never will be. The result is that when the town poll is 'held very little interest is shown by the people as a whole and only a very small proportion of the electorate votes.

In 1948, for example, only 6.7 per cent. of the Birmingham electorate voted to throw out two Clauses of a Bill. In 1954, only 3.8 per cent. of the electorate 1294 voted to approve one opposed Clause and to throw out five Clauses. In 1937, fewer than a hundred people attended a town meeting in Sheffield, for example, and in 1949 only twenty attended a town meeting in Leicester. To take at random the example of Nottingham, over the last twenty years the average percentage as voters at town polls has been only 7 per cent.

The cost of promoting town meetings and town polls is very heavy on a local authority and the average cost in Birmingham, for instance, is £5,000 for each poll. Usually, this is more than half the total cost of promoting the Bill in question and is a quite unnecessary expenditure. What happens is that a few particularly interested parties, whether they are for or against a contested Clause or a contested Bill, can defeat the will of the council and the will of the electorate by taking energetic methods and raising a little money for necessary propaganda.

It may be argued that on a matter affecting the electorate the entire electorate should vote on all these questions at town polls. I really do not see any reason why it should. The electors already vote once a year in the municipal elections, and they elect or re-elect their councillors. That ought to be a sufficient safeguard and watch over the doings of the council. When they vote in municipal elections they entrust the management of their city to those whom they elect, and they do not expect continually to have to deliberate detailed issues.

We in this House do not think that our power should be superseded by referendums from time to time, and there is no reason why a town council should have to submit to frequent referendums on what it is doing, and I do not think that town councils' management requires such action.

The issues on which the electorate is required to vote are far too complicated to be grasped without considerable study. I have here, for example, the ballot sheet in connection with the Birmingham Corporation Bill, 1954. It contains six items. I shall read only one, because it is typical of the others. The voters are required to vote for or against each of the six propositions. Here is the first: That the Electors of the City of Birmingham hereby approve the promotion by the 1295 Council of that City of Clause 14 (as to purchase of land for purposes relating to redevelopment of areas of bad layout and obsolete development) of the Birmingham Corporation Bill, 1954, together with so much of the preamble and of the other Parts of the Bill as relates or is ancillary to that Clause. I do not think it is reasonable to require municipal voters to answer a series of six items put in this form. They would all have to bring a copy of the Bill with them to understand each of the items, and they would have to discuss the matter with officials of the town council, and it is not reasonable to expect them to do so, and, of course, they do not do so. Incidentally, the Corporation, in this particular case, arranged for explanatory statements to be distributed at 650 places in the city, and advertised in four separate newspapers on three different occasions. The result of it all was that only 3.8 per cent. of the electorate thought they understood the matter sufficiently well to vote, and I am not at all surprised.

It has long been recognised that it makes no sense whatever for borough and urban district councils to go through all this procedure. The Association of Municipal Corporations has long been attempting to get the law altered. There is no political issue in this matter. Commissions composed of both, indeed all three, political parties have frequently recommended that these provisions should be done away with. The Royal Commission on Local Government recommended, in 1929, in its Final Report, that town polls and town meetings should be abolished. In 1933, the Chelmsford Local Government and Public Health Consolidation Committee, the Committee presided over by Lord Chelmsford, endorsed the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Local Government, but nothing yet has happened about it.

A Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons is now sitting to consider what alterations, if any, are desirable to the practices and Standing Orders of the two Houses relating to private legislation. It may have the power in its terms of reference to consider this matter. It may be that it has not that power. It is a questionable point, and I myself should not like to venture an opinion upon it, but, whether it has or has not, this is such a simple matter, which has been reported upon by high-powered commissions in the last 30 years, both of which recommended 1296 sharply and definitely that this provision relating to town polls should be abolished, that I do not think it would be necessary to require the Joint Committee to deliberate at great length on a matter which has been agreed upon by so many eminent authorities of different parties.

All that is required is a simple Bill to delete Section 255 of the Local Government Act, 1933, and the Ninth Schedule which refers to that section. After that is done there will still be adequate safeguards against the abuse of powers. In the first place, a local authority would still have to have the promotion of any Bill supported by a majority of all the members of the local authority, not merely a majority of all those present. It would still have to give ample notice in the local newspapers of its intention to promote a Bill, so that objections could be made.

Objectors could still object to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and the Minister of Housing and Local Government still would have to give his approval to the promotion of such a Bill. After the Bill has been deposited the local authority would still have to have another meeting at which a majority of the members would have to approve the Bill. After all these processes have been gone through, the Bill would have to go through a Committee of this House, could be debated on Second Reading, could still be altered.

All these arrangements are considered adequate safeguards for county councils and rural district councils, and I do not think it is right to penalise large towns, authorities far bigger than some of the county councils and rural district councils, by making them go through this antiquated procedure, which everybody agrees is quite unnecessary.