Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, very briefly, and perhaps with a little surprise, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, on the Conservative Front Bench: we have to regret what happened about these elections. We can also celebrate that eventually democracy won out. I am looking forward to the affected elections on 7 May, not just because the polls suggest that they, across these islands, are going to work out rather well for the Green Party. Regret is the right term, but we might also say that what has happened—the mess of the Government’s creation in terms of these on again, off again, on again elections—has helped to highlight the weakness of our constitutional arrangements, which really cannot be described as a democracy. We have a situation in which Westminster is dictating far too much what happens on these islands, not just in terms of elections but in so many other ways. We have local councils that have enough money and power to carry out only their statutory responsibilities; that is, those dictated from Westminster. We really need to think about so many other issues on these islands, not just because of the outcome of the Brexit referendum in 2016, but because of the slogan that people very clearly expressed then. They wanted to take back control. People do want to take back control in their local communities and to have the power and resources there; and, crucially, they should know when the elections are going to be. That should be a regular schedule that cannot be interfered with for political convenience. I commend the noble Baroness for persisting with this, because it is an issue we need to keep highlighting. We need to keep stressing that this is just one example of the way in which our current uncodified constitution, accreted over centuries of historical accident, is not meeting our needs in the 21st century.