Minister denies Labour is afraid of facing the public by postponing elections
CHILDREN’S Minister Josh MacAlister has denied that Labour is trying to avoid electoral scrutiny by postponing some mayoral elections.
Asked if Labour was trying to avoid voters, he told GB News: “Absolutely not. We have got elections that are going to be taking place in May. We’ve got areas of the country where they’re setting up a new mayor and have got unitary local authorities already in place.
“They’ll be going to the polls in 2027 and then these other combined authority areas have still got county councils and district councils. They’ve reorganised themselves. That’s the reason they’re being postponed.”
Asked if county council elections are to be delayed in those areas as well, he said: “I don’t know the detail of that, but basically what we’ve got is the country moving towards now is UK-wide parliamentary elections, a general election, there’ll be strategic authority mayoral elections covering large parts of England, and then they’ll still be councils.
“So they’ll still be unitary local authorities that are going to the polls. Some of those will be going to the polls in this coming May. And then there’ll be a combination of local authority and mayoral elections in 2027 and 2028.
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“I do have to say the hypocrisy of Reform and the Conservatives criticising the government when it’s trying to roll out devolution properly, having blocked Parliament having its say numerous times with prorogation back in 2019, is pretty staggering, and we won’t take any lectures from either of them on that, right?”
He added: “We’ve got new mayors being set up across the country. Some of those mayors will be in areas where the local authority, the council that sits below the mayor’s role, hasn’t yet been reorganised, because they’re still in this old fashioned system of having a district council and a county council, putting reform with a mayor, as in reform of mayors, on top of that would be chaos.
“Now what we see in Lancashire County Council and in Kent, with Reform running both of those councils, is they are chaotic. What we want to do is get devolution right. So, in areas of the country where they’ve still got districts and counties, they first of all need to put themselves into a unitary council, and then there’ll be a mayoral election. That’s the only reason this is happening.”
On whether delaying the elections is undemocratic, he said: “Well, I really don’t agree or accept the premise of that question.
“You know, the last government had 14 years to sort devolution out, and they introduced a tiny number of new mayors. They’ve been really successful, but a tiny number.
“We are rolling out a revolution in devolution across this parliament, but it will take this parliament to get those changes rolled out. We’re doing it in dozens of parts of the country.”
