Nigel Farage

No taxation without representation is quite a powerful political adage, and it has worked well over the years. What people were facing in many parts of the country was paying their council tax, but not being able to have a say and, in certain cases, elected county councillors staying in position for a full seven years. However, it was not just the Minister that did this. It was done with the connivance of the Conservative party, which did everything it could to deny the vote in Norfolk, Suffolk, East and West Sussex, and initially in Surrey—doing its best to stop people voting for two consecutive years. And the Lib Dems got in on the act in Cheltenham, although, granted, in slightly different circumstances. Talking of the Lib Dems, I have been having a very good chat with a prominent Liberal Democrat who I get on rather well with, Sir Bob Russell, who represented Colchester for many years. He made the point that there was last fundamental local government reorganisation in England 50 years ago, but no one suggested that elections should be cancelled, delayed or postponed. In fact, the debate about the shape of local government reorganisation became part of the campaigns and an issue upon which people voted. I am proud of the fact that 153,000 people signed the petition, but I am even prouder that 4.6 million people will get the vote on 7 May because of the judicial review that I took against the Government. I am proud of that, and Reform will go on fighting for proper, open democracy. It is clear that section 87 of the Local Government Act 2000 delegates way too much power to a Minister of any Government, and that elections are completely fundamental to liberty and freedom in our country. We need to change section 87—I ask the Government to support this—to make sure that, in the future, any delays to elections, for whatever reason, must be the subject of primary legislation, open debate and a vote by all Members of Parliament. If we do that, we will never finish up in this awful mess and with this lack of trust in politics again.