David Simmonds
MP for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Secretary of State back to the Dispatch Box, and I thank her for early sight of her statement. I am not sure that this was the triumphant return to the subject of devolution that she had in mind, because our councillors and the communities that they represent are looking aghast at yet another shambolic U-turn from this Gover…”
“Given that the Government have been banking on millions of pounds in savings—we have challenged them on those savings repeatedly across the Dispatch Boxes—to mitigate costs, which include the massive rise in national insurance that has driven many councils to the verge of bankruptcy, what assessment have Treasury colleagues made, and what…”
“Given the promises made and that all our political parties have selected candidates who have been campaigning for mayoral elections and new unitary authorities that the Government promised were coming into being, with elections to take place next May, will she give a categorical assurance that those new authorities will be in place, or pr…”
“Can she tell the House from the Dispatch Box why she is not satisfied that it was lawful, and will she place all the non-privileged documentation and correspondence relating to this debacle in the public domain and in the Library?”
“Finally, I appreciate that the Secretary of State has returned to the role after others have been stewarding it, but will she apologise to all those councillors, all those local government officials, all those political candidates and activists and all those businesses who have engaged in good faith with the Government’s process?”
“Planning permissions for new homes, of which there are already around 1.5 million, are one thing, but getting those units built is another. With Savills reporting that two thirds of London boroughs have seen net zero new housing starts under the Mayor of London, what proposals do the Government have to ensure that units with permission ac…”
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“I declare that I am an unpaid parliamentary vice-president of the Local Government Association, which has supplied one of the witnesses for this panel.”
“We would, of course, welcome any provisions that improve accessibility and engagement, but it has to be within those boundaries of trusted and credible information. In terms of changes in electoral law, we always seek a six-month implementation window. Any change to this system will bring an element of risk, but our very skilled administrators and leaders across elections know how to deal with change and address it, and they will deliver safe elections. But having a six-month lead-in provides that security. I will repeat a comment that Solace often makes on behalf of its members: we would ask for indemnity for returning officers when any changes are brought in very close to an election, which may result in issues that are not any fault of the returning officer.”
“I will not say it is a safe place for returning officers to be, but it means we have the certainty to say, “That is a police matter,” or “That is a commission matter,” or “That may be a planning control matter,” for example. It is about taking a step back and learning about how we deliver elections, and that goes right from young people all the way through the system. It is also about having a reset, to say, “Where are we now?” because there is lots of misinformation flying around from various sources. Emily Yule: I echo Mr Stanyon’s points about the different sources of information. The Electoral Commission and the returning officer must be the trusted source of information for the democratic process for electors.”
“Some of the feedback we received about recent by-elections was simply about a misunderstanding of what the process is. There is an obligation on returning officers, the Electoral Commission and local authorities to do what they can to explain it, but there is also an obligation on candidates and parties to understand the changes coming in. We almost need a reset, to say, “What is the best way of engaging with voters to give them what they need?” I am sure Emily will echo this point, but the one thing that an RO will not want to get dragged into is any debate about whether something is crossing a line that they do not have control over. There are very, very strict boundaries at the moment.”
“Parliamentary elections have six or eight weeks’ notice; you are doing six months’ work in eight weeks. It puts on pressure. Going back to the earlier point on the timing of postal votes, for example, anything that gives two or three days in a timetable is a huge benefit—not just for administrators, but for the suppliers who deliver those things. Going back to the earlier point on harassment, intimidation, translation into different languages and things like that, there needs to be a wider understanding of what elections are all about. We are living in a modern age, but elections are very much based on paper and pencil. They are trusted, in the main, but at the end of the day it is about making clear what the electoral process actually is.”
“We need early indications so that we can prepare properly—not only the people organising the elections and the candidates, but people who may think that they can use their village hall or school and suddenly cannot. We need to have clarity in advance. It cannot be left to the last minute. On languages, from an LGA point of view all I would say is that it is important that everyone entitled to vote has the ability to understand what is actually happening. I think that is a fair way of putting it. Peter Stanyon: I echo the comments on timing. The word I often use around elections is “certainty”. For scheduled polls, you usually plan six months in advance. In reality, I think a lot of the authorities carried on during the on-off period when the local government polls were rescheduled recently.”
“Should that new clause be part of it? Do you have an alternative body of evidence suggesting that a different approach is required? Councillor Bentley: I would put in a plea for village halls, because they are vastly used and other organisations cannot use them for that entire day. If you are going to make changes to the electoral system, there needs to be clarity around that in advance. We do not want knee-jerk reactions so that suddenly all plans are off, then on, then off, then on again. We cannot have that. We need to be clear if elections are going to change. We are going through a great period of local government reorganisation, which may happen on other occasions.”
“Q There are two areas I would like to explore briefly. We heard a lot from the local government family about the chaos created by elections being cancelled, then uncancelled, and so on. Part 3 of the Bill includes a number of provisions to change the arrangements for elections. We heard about police needing to be put on the rota, then cancelled, then put back on again and schools needing to close, then reopen, then close again because polling was going ahead and then not. What are your reflections on the timeline, the consequences of those changes and the considerations that go with that? Secondly, new clause 37 is about the provision and use of election materials in non-UK languages. We heard a great deal about that in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, when cross-party concern was expressed. What should the Bill say?”
“Are the Government open to amendments to clause 47 to try to address that and at least bring clarity to what is meant by a bank card, so that polling staff, who may have to have that conversation with people, know exactly where they stand? Samantha Dixon: You mentioned digital ID. For example, we have introduced the digital veterans card as a form of ID. It has the holographic clock in it, which means that it cannot be screenshotted or used fraudulently.”
“Q I have a brief question about clause 47 on the voter identification requirements. We have heard quite a lot on the point about bank cards. I am mindful that the Government’s own MoneyHelper website sets out how to get a bank card if you do not have any ID at all and also if you are of no fixed address; I know that is routinely used in electoral processes to establish your entitlement to vote in a particular place. Clause 47 is also silent on the use of virtual cards. We know many banks issue payment cards that are online, so quite a lot of people have their payment card on a mobile phone and do not have any physical item with them that would meet that standard.”
“Q Just to be clear, the question is about digital bank cards. A lot of people have on their phone an image of a card; they will not have a physical card. Samantha Dixon: Right. My point is that, where a digital ID has that holographic clock, it is possible that the Government would consider that measure. But I do not believe that digital bank cards currently do.”
“We need to make sure that we have tough measures in place around illegal migration and an appropriate and compassionate response to those in need.”
“One thing that is very clear—I expect that most of us, as politicians, will have heard this while canvassing—is that voters tend to be very positive about all the migrants they personally know. They like the ones who run the local shop, who work in the GP practice, who drive the bus or who are their next-door neighbours. It is all the others they are worried about. There is therefore a big job of work about demystification. When we as Conservatives, in the previous Government, decided to open the door to large numbers of refugees from Hong Kong—people who were traditionally associated with our country and had a right to be here under that scheme—it gained very widespread public acceptance. The same was true of the Ukraine refugee scheme.”
“It is clear that no party has a monopoly on practical compassion when it comes to support for those who seek refuge in our country. Indeed, we can thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), now the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for the actions that he took during his time as our Home Secretary, which produced the significant fall in net migration into this country, which this Government have seen as a benefit. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) outlined in reference to his report, there remain significant concerns about putting the appropriate package of measures in place to ensure that our borders are robustly and consistently controlled. We need to make sure that these debates are happening.”
“Diversity and dealing with these issues at a local level are things with which my constituents and I are extremely familiar. Over those years, we have had many debates—I will touch on this in my questions to the Minister—about how we ensure a fair and appropriate dispersal of asylum seekers across the country. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is now hosting some asylum seekers dispersed into his constituency—but for many decades local authorities in Scotland, for example, demanded a more liberal approach to our borders in respect of asylum seekers, while absolutely refusing to be dispersal areas for those people when they were here. While the 31 mostly Conservative authorities in south-east England volunteered to become asylum dispersal areas, the plea fell on deaf ears north of the border.”
“As the Leader of the Opposition said very clearly, the Government will have our support in implementing them, should they run into any difficulties in that respect. However, it is also clear that many of the challenges around asylum and migration, like many of the challenges that face our Government and our country more generally, are getting worse. The situation is deteriorating. My own entry into this area of work came because, as a local councillor, I saw the consequences for communities of the arrival of very large numbers of asylum seekers. Indeed, to this day, the Hillingdon part of my constituency has the highest per capita level of asylum seekers of any local authority area in the country, with more than 100 different first languages.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I host a researcher from an asylum charity in my office. I am sure that the Minister is glad to have a friendly face in this debate, so it is particular pleasure to speak and to congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) on securing it. I agree entirely with what he said about the timeliness of the debate. It has been a very broad-ranging one, so I will make a few observations on the debate and then finish with some questions, which I hope the Minister might address. It is clear that there is a degree of commonality between the official Opposition and the Government on many of the measures that are being brought forward.”
“I have watched footage of people in those boats who, seeing the police approach, pick up children and throw them in the sea, knowing that the police will have to rescue them rather than stop the migrant boat. We should make no apology for taking robust action to address those concerns.”
“The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) spoke about the absence of Members from certain parties from this Chamber. Those colleagues who we saw scuttling off to Reform have serious questions to answer about why, when given free rein in the Home Office, they failed to implement even the measures that this Labour Government have brought forward to address some of the loopholes that the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) highlighted. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) described some of the characteristics of illegal migration. I have been to Calais and I have seen the drone footage gathered by the French police of the boats on the beaches and the camps set up by the traffickers who are bringing people over, and it is clear that we should be robust and extremely cautious.”
“What consideration will the Minister give to using protocol 16 of the European convention on human rights, since it is clear that UK tribunals go well beyond the provisions of that protocol in many cases, to ensure that we are not doing more than we should be doing? Even with all those questions, I can assure the Minister that as the official Opposition we will be providing support in the Lobbies to ensure that those measures are implemented, even if we remain of the view that they should go further.”
“In the spirit of a constructive approach, may I ask the Minister whether he has given any further consideration to the idea of an asylum visa, going beyond the simple prospect of safe and legal routes? If people wish to study, work, come to get married or live in the United Kingdom for any other reason, they have to apply for a visa, but we do not have any such measures in place for asylum seekers, and that is helping to drive the illegal traffic across the channel. What discussions is the Minister having across Government about avoiding cost shunts, which are an increasing concern and a consequence of speeding up asylum decision making—in particular, the rapid rise in the cost of temporary accommodation for local authorities as asylum seekers get status and turn up at the town hall seeking help or are left destitute in local communities?”
“No recourse to public funds, the first time that asylum seekers were taken out of the standard benefits system and eligibility for council housing, was introduced by the Blair Government. The asylum dispersal system was introduced by the now Mayor of Greater Manchester when he was the Immigration Minister in those years. On the Conservative side of the Chamber, we are broadly supportive of the measures based on the Danish model that are being brought forward by the Home Secretary. We remain very concerned, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire have highlighted, that many of those measures will still fall short and that our constituents’ concerns will remain.”
“I do not entirely share that view. I have seen the challenges that the French police face, with something like 1,000 members of their constabulary covering 10,000 km of coastline. The traffickers will sometimes send 50 or 100 boats to sea simultaneously, knowing that there is no way that the French police can possibly deter them. Each of those boats is worth €70,000 to €80,000-worth of revenue to their criminal enterprise, so they have a big incentive. The Minister is here in an honourable tradition of Labour Governments taking robust action on our borders. The first immigration controls that our country ever had were introduced by the post-war Labour Government in response to concerns about the exit from empire.”
“She is making a change to shift it from the general fund—that is part of the annual budget-setting process of a local authority—into the collection fund, which is subject to a longer period of decision making. I can see why there might be some arguments for doing that. However, it would be helpful to understand what she expects the consequence to be, so that when our local authority colleagues set their budgets, they have a clear sense of what the consequence will be of shifting the flow of that money from an account covered by the general provision on fixing council tax, which has to be balanced in-year, to a collection fund, where more flexible rules apply.”
“Clearly, those could be quite substantial, and this is a system of top-ups and tariffs, as we have had in place to a degree for a long time, so it would be helpful to understand whether there are any significant winners or losers as a consequence of the decision that people are being asked to make. Secondly, when the Minister refers to a reset of the business rates mechanism, what does she expect it to reset to, so that those local authorities have a clear line of sight that says, “This will be the consequence for your business rates collection at a local level”? Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to the explanatory memorandum that she has kindly circulated. Paragraph 5.6 addresses the way in which the funding is to flow.”
“Over the years—it is no different with the current Government—central Government have been very keen to encourage local authorities to give consent to developments that create additional business that pays more business rates, creates jobs and all the rest of it. We know that is facing a significant challenge at the moment, and local authorities looking at this instrument can see that they will be losing out, having put the cost of consenting to a development on to local taxpayers, which will certainly discourage them from being so willing in future. Can the Minister set out briefly for the Committee what she expects to be the consequent changes in funding levels?”
“We do not have the information in front of us to set out what the consequences will be at a local level, but we know that has been a key concern for council leaders of all parties, not least because if they consent to a very substantial development that leads to very significant growth in their business rates income, that growth in income is intended to offset its negative consequences. For example, the development might generate additional traffic or lead to a lot more workers travelling to a particular area, requiring additional emergency facilities. The loss of that income through redistribution to other parts of the country, through a formula that we do not have in front of us, could have quite a significant negative consequence.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. The Opposition do not propose to divide the Committee on this instrument, but I have some questions that I would like to put to the Minister. One of the challenges with an instrument of this nature is to understand what its consequences will be. We have just heard my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill raise a question on behalf of his constituents about what this will mean in practice. The Government’s consultation on the business rates reset clearly described it as a “redistributive act”. The purpose of it is to take business rates growth away from places that have also had the consequences of developments, allocating it to other areas.”
“I apologise, but I meant paragraph 5.13, not paragraph 5.6, of the explanatory memorandum. I had turned over the page and misread my record.”
“My constituent, Vijay Odedra, has been telling me how his small business, CapnoTrainer, has been working with the Royal Navy to improve the fighting capacity and resilience of our sailors. While we wait for the defence investment plan, will the Secretary of State tell us what steps he has in mind to harness the innovation in our small and medium-sized enterprise sector?”
“It is very clear that a whole range of issues are brought to our attention by what is happening in Surrey. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have set out their particular concerns. I hope that, as a result of the observations made in the debate, we may see the Government come back with a revised set of policies that reflect a clear sense of place and the opportunity for all our constituents to know that they will have elected representatives who can make the decisions that they want to see made at a local level.”
“Unemployment has been relentlessly rising every single month since the Government took office, homelessness has surged up 27% in London alone since the Government took office, debt is rising rapidly, planning decisions are grinding to a halt and housing delivery is grinding to a halt. We need to give local communities hope that there is a prospect of solving some of those matters. I share a concern with the hon. Member for Crawley, which affects us very directly. The decisions that the Government have made in the Home Office, speeding up decision making on asylum seekers, pushing those people out the door and up the road to the town hall which then has responsibility for housing them, is putting acute pressure on my local authority, his local authority and many others across the country who are doing their best in difficult circumstances.”
“I have heard former Chancellors say that when the demand for additional day-to-day spending becomes unbearable, the temptation is to simply slow down the exit of capital from the door on major projects. One of the benefits of localisation is that it removes that temptation from Chancellors and ensures that things that are committed to, become deliverable at a local level. There are many urgent pressures. One of the key concerns I hear from councils all the time is that the Government do not have a huge amount of time to think, not just in the sense of the parliamentary timetable but when we look across our country.”
“As all Members who spoke passionately about their enthusiasm for getting local Government right recognised, when we compare ourselves, sometimes unfavourably, to other European countries and ask why they seem to be able to build railways and public transport infrastructure faster than the United Kingdom, the answer is largely that those decisions are made at local and regional level; they are not made by central Government. Delivery of rail networks or citywide transport, for example, which I know is of concern to a huge number of Members where lots of good projects are on the stocks, is much faster and cheaper in many other countries. We need to look at what we can learn from their experience. We need to reflect on the role of the Treasury.”
“However, that is significantly larger than the existing footprint of most unitary authorities. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire described, it risked losing the sense of place and identity. Ministers quite wisely backed off. They looked at the bids from the local authority areas that were instructed to submit them and settled on a smaller footprint. That fundamentally undermines the case that this will result in significant revenue savings to the Government in the medium to long term, for the reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Crawley. A concern that the Opposition have raised a number of times on the Floor of the House is that the Government have no independent modelling or independent financial analysis to back up their direction of travel on these reorganisation decisions.”
“Two thirds of London boroughs report no new net additional homes. That is an absolute indictment of the state in which many of our councils find themselves because of the delay imposed by this process. As the hon. Member for Crawley outlined, both the Government and the wider argument for this reorganisation rely on a now rather old report that was prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers at the instigation of the County Councils Network to support the case for county-based reorganisation. It is clear from the evidence he presented that the hon. Member, who left us in no doubt about what he thinks of this process, knows of what he speaks. The start of the process was simple. Half a million people was the minimum footprint in order to secure savings. That was the level that the Treasury expected to see delivered.”
“There were supposed to be elections this May for new mayors in Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Hampshire and many other places. Political parties and local leaders had been working on that basis, only to find after a 24-hour U-turn last December that the elections that were promised to go ahead were suddenly being cancelled. All this delay and dithering is imposing costs. I met yesterday with a finance company that told me that the procurement of new finance systems across the local authority sector has simply ground to a halt in the absence of any clarity from Government about what is happening. The commissioning of new services in social care to address homelessness has collapsed, which I know concerns the Minister, as has the delivery of housing—both the pipeline of new applications and the completions of new properties.”
“Spelthorne, which has been mentioned today, is one example of that: what would have looked like an extremely sound commercial investment turned into a very bad one because of the impact of covid. We find ourselves today in a situation where Surrey is unusual. It is the only authority announced for the devolution priority programme that has got to the point of creating new successor unitary authorities. At the outset of this process, the Government were very clear that they were going to cancel the elections in all the devolution priority programme councils, which we voted against at the Delegated Legislation Committee that considered that matter. They did so on the basis that elections for the new unitaries and mayors would take place across the country.”
“Other Members have spoken passionately and with a degree of criticism about the impact that investment decisions at the council level have had. We all recognise that councils led by all of the parties represented here have made both good and bad decisions when it comes to investment, but we should be wary of criticising local leaders for having made decisions in good faith that did not end well. At a time when the public works loan board interest rate was 0.25%, the decision—even by a council—to take a loan and put it in the bank would have generated additional finance that could have supported local government services. Those decisions were not always innately wrong, but the impact of covid on local authorities’ investments in commercial property was absolutely devastating.”
“With regard to recent developments, I spent 12 years in local government under the previous Labour Government and a further 12 years there under the Conservative Government who left office in 2024, and many of the decisions that were made then by central Government—statutory requirements placed on local authorities such as SEND arrangements, social care, the fair access criteria that were introduced, housing—were never fully funded. Since the early 2000s, there has been steady growth in the share of local government spending that is consumed by social care and housing. We have seen an erosion of the ability of our elected local leaders to deploy locally raised resources against local priorities, to the extent that social care now consumes around 70% to 80% of the budget of a typical social care authority. That is not sustainable.”
“This is not simply a matter of what happens in a single Government Ministry; it brings together services, activities and decisions across Government. Reflecting on the long history of local government reorganisation, it probably predates the existence of our country as a unitary state. Certainly the role of some ancient Saxon kingdoms is quite akin to the behaviour of some local government leaders today. The particular challenges that come from the difficult relationship between central and local government are manifest here today.”
“The observations that other Members have made about the impact of special educational needs and disabilities demonstrate that complexity, where an issue that sits outside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is one of the single biggest factors in the viability of local authorities. The last time we faced each other across the Dispatch Box, I asked the Minister, with particular respect to Surrey, whether there was an update on negotiations. Surrey had set out very clearly that its deficit on SEND spending sits at around £350 million, and the Government had been clear—in fairness, it was Department for Education Ministers—that they would pay off 90% of that deficit. The offer to Surrey was £100 million, which was significantly less than the 90% that we were promised at the Dispatch Box.”
“This country is already very under-represented in democratic terms at the local level, with the fewest elected politicians per capita of any developed democracy. It is also intensely centralised by comparison with most other countries, with decisions that would as a matter of routine be local decisions in most other democracies taken by Parliament or central Government. I have a huge amount of sympathy for the Minister, because while she is from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, council services touch on the work of the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education, the Department for Transport, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.”
“It was interesting as a parliamentarian to be present, a short time ago, at a Delegated Legislation Committee in which Committee members agreed the abolition of the historic county of Surrey and its replacement with two unitary authorities. That was the conclusion of a long period of debate in which, as the hon. Member for Crawley outlined, the leaders of county councils in particular argued strongly that local government reorganisation on the footprint of the existing county structure would be a way to save money. Many district councils argued strongly against that idea, and it was called into question by many experienced unitary leaders. We all recognise that there is a need to look again at our local government settlement.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests on my roles as an unpaid parliamentary vice-president of both the Local Government Association and London Councils. I congratulate to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) on securing the debate. He, the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) set the tone of a debate that has engaged, with a high degree of seriousness, not only with the issues that stem from the specifics of what is happening in Surrey but with what they say about the wider local government reorganisation debate.”
“Member for Birmingham Perry Barr; this must not become a debate about attacking Islam. We are a country that is a plural and liberal democracy. In a community like mine, that means that women and girls have the freedom to wear a headscarf if they choose to, and the protection of the law from those who would seek to force that on them if they choose not to. Both those things are equally important.”
“Many will have heard the news coverage of the speech given by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, if not the speech itself, in which she set out a number of workstreams seeking to address many of the concerns that Members have described today. It seems to me that this is an area where there is a high degree of cross-party consensus; we know that we need to address these issues in order to strengthen our society. Let me briefly set out some of the Opposition’s principles around cohesion, some of which are quite focused on local government and some of which are much broader. It is striking that all Members who have contributed to this debate have spoken of the importance of our society and values and the principles of freedom and the rule of law. I was particularly struck by the comments of the hon.”
“We saw the work that was done by synagogues, mosques, churches and non-faith organisations to support each other not just in my community, but across the whole country. We know that cohesion is something that we can do well, and we know that its leadership often sits with local government. Indeed, when the last Labour Government promoted the roll-out of food banks, it was a recognition—as was the case in my community—that there was a level of need that statutory services were not always able to meet, which that particular community initiative was able to serve. That is why we saw the spread of those across the country to meet that specific need. We are having this debate at a time when there is a growing level of interest in issues around cohesion.”
“I reflect on my own time as a councillor, when the 9/11 incidents happened. Suddenly, the airspace of the United States was closed. Hillingdon council worked to provide accommodation for thousands of stranded travellers from across the world and to enable them to communicate with their family members to tell them that they were okay and that they had somewhere to stay for the night when all the hotels were full. It also worked very closely with the military, for example, to ensure that the logistics were laid on so that people were supported. As a number of Members have referred to, that kind of leadership came to the fore again during the covid era, when organisations such as H4All in Hillingdon and Harrow came out and ensured that people had food and medication delivered.”
“It is my privilege to represent an extremely diverse but thankfully very cohesive constituency. It is served by two local authorities, both of which are extremely proactive; they have interfaith networks and hold a huge variety of community events. In response to the situation when flags were being raised across high streets, which was clearly intended by many as an act of intimidation, they used those lamp posts and other public street furniture to display flags that celebrated the borough’s heritage and the heritage of the local community, in order to crowd out that space from those who sought to use it to divide the community. That shows a degree of local leadership that we all appreciate. The fact that we are having this debate in the context of housing, communities and local government demonstrates the breadth of council services.”