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Baroness Scott of Bybrook
“Purpose of this ActThe purpose of this Act is to—(a) strengthen community empowerment,(b) secure sustainable council finances,(c) protect vital social care services and enhance local accountability in their delivery,(d) support local growth through devolved powers and locally led decision-making, and(e) enable flexible and locally driven housebuilding and planning to meet community needs.”Member’s explanatory statement
This clause sets out the overarching purpose of the Act, emphasising locally led, consent-based governance, sustainable council finances, and strong accountability for social care and growth. It also clarifies the Act’s intent to support flexible, community- driven planning and housebuilding.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, first, before I start, I wish a belated happy birthday for yesterday to the Minister. I hear it was a big one, and I hope she enjoyed it. Secondly, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils.
I am pleased to open the debate today on the first amendment on the first day in Committee on a set of important principles that should guide the remainder of our debate on the Bill. I must also say, with respect, that the Title of the Bill still promises rather more than its text delivers. It speaks of devolution and community empowerment, yet too often it reads as central direction dressed up as local choice. We can and we should do better than that.
Amendment 1 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Jamieson goes back to first principles: the purpose of this Act. It asks the Government to be clear in the Bill that we will champion consent over compulsion, secure sustainable council finances without unfunded mandates, protect social care with stronger local accountability, support local growth through devolved powers, and enable flexible, locally driven housebuilding and planning. These are not abstract aspirations. They are the everyday tests by which our residents judge whether devolution is real and beneficial to their lives.
Proper devolution is built, not imposed. It is negotiated, not mandated. It respects identity, geography and local choice. That has been a consistent theme in the debate on this Bill: concern that the centre would gain broad powers to redraw local structures, create strategic authorities, consolidate councils and impose mayors without clear and explicit local consent. That is not empowerment; it is compulsion. At Second Reading, many noble Lords raised precisely this point, and we did so again when the Government proposed to commit this Bill, a constitutional Bill, to Grand Committee without the agreement of the usual channels. Process matters because it reveals intent.
Our amendment therefore states plainly that the Bill’s first purpose should be to strengthen community empowerment by championing consent over compulsion. Noble Lords might think that that should be a given in a Bill called the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, but the detail of the Bill does not follow. It risks a power grab, enabling Ministers to force reorganisations and mayoralties on areas that have previously said no and even to postpone local elections to fit a central timetable. That is not how you build trust.
Local government cannot be rebuilt on financial quicksand. We all know how many councils have come to the brink. We have heard repeated warnings about local government reorganisations that promise continual savings but deliver costly transitions and do not make any of those savings into the future, and about new duties placed on councils, such as social care or regulation, but without the resources to meet them.
The second purpose listed in the amendment calls for a simple commitment: no unfunded mandates. If the Government wish to assign functions downwards, they should assign the means to discharge them as well; otherwise, we will set up local leaders to fail and then blame them for that failure. That is not partnership; it is abdication. Commons colleagues pressed this exact point at Second Reading and on Report: stop hoarding power in Whitehall while offloading pressures on to town halls. Put the principle of fiscal sustainability into law and plan reforms accordingly. If we do not do so, we risk even more tax rises through the back door.
Nowhere is the risk of failed devolution clearer than in adult and children’s social care. Every noble Lord who has served in local government, of whom there are many, understands the arithmetic, the demography, the demand and the duty. This does not change where local government is organised or reorganised. If we devolve responsibility with capacity, we will simply move waiting lists from one council to another and call it reform.
The amendment’s third principle seeks to
“protect vital social care services and enhance local accountability”
for outcomes, with transparent reporting to the people who depend on them. Reorganisation cannot become a distraction from stabilising the front line. We need to understand how this is going to work. Social care is perhaps the biggest responsibility of local government, yet the Bill does not even mention those words.
Growth is not ordained by Ministers; it is enabled by place and by leaders who know their patch and who can unlock a stalled site or knit together skills, transport and planning to make things happen. The Government’s own narrative for the Bill claims that it is the biggest transfer of power from Whitehall in a generation. If that is truly the case, the test is simple: will local leaders get the levers they need, or are we just creating authorities that must still ask for permission for every pilot, every power and every penny? Our amendment’s fourth principle states a purpose to
“support local growth through devolved powers and locally led decision-making”.
Finally, on housing, communities will support more houses when homes make sense: the right homes, in the right place, with the right infrastructure. That is achieved through locally driven planning that takes communities with it—not rigid national targets that ignore character, capacity or constraint. The Government speak about flexibility, but our amendment would require it. It would clarify that the Act’s intent is to
“enable flexible and locally driven housebuilding and planning to meet community needs”.
This is perfectly compatible with ambition, but it rejects the idea that Whitehall always knows best.
This purpose clause would not blow the Bill off course but set its course. It states exactly what Ministers say they want to achieve: empowerment, sustainability, accountability, growth and locally led planning. If the Government mean what they say about handing power back to local people, they should welcome having this in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I declare at the outset that I have been a vice-president of the Local Government Association for a number of years. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, said many things with which I agree. We are in a position where we are seeing the cumulative impact of many years of underfunding—serious underfunding of both local government and problems such as adult social care, to which the noble Baroness referred—for which a proper policy has never ever been devised.
I want to be clear that we are in favour of strategic authorities that can drive growth. I am, however, bothered about the potential for upwards mission creep, on which the electorate have no direct say other than via the election of a mayor every few years. So I see this Bill not as a destination but as a staging post towards something that genuinely devolves power.
I went first to the overview of the Bill, given that this amendment seeks to define the Bill’s purpose. In the Explanatory Notes, the Government have indeed done that. I shall read it out, if I may. It is very short:
“The purpose of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is to transfer power out of Whitehall, by giving local leaders the tools to deliver growth, fixing the foundations of local government, and empowering communities”.
There is great potential in the Bill for delivering growth. However, I do not think that it fixes the foundations of local government or that it empowers communities. As we go through the Committee stage, I hope that this will become clearer.
In Amendment 1, the purpose of the Bill has been redefined by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook. It has some things in it and other things are not in it. I hope that the Minister will try to explain in greater detail how the Bill does deliver devolution. There are two amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Pinnock. I should tell the Committee that I am standing here because my noble friend is not able to do so. We hope that she will, in the next two or three weeks, be walking much better than she has been able to and will return to your Lordships’ House. I send our very best wishes to her and I hope on behalf of the whole Committee, as I am sure that that is shared by everybody.
In Amendment 95, my noble friend has explained what she thinks the Secretary of State’s statutory duty should be in terms of strategic authorities. Amendment 95 is very important, because it specifies that the role of local government is to be
“the primary democratic institution responsible for the leadership, coordination and long-term stewardship of local areas”.
We have to be clear, and I hope that the Minister will confirm, that that is what the Government think. Secondly, it says:
“Arrangements for strategic authorities must be framed so as to enable constituent local authorities to … pursue a long-term vision for the … development of their areas”.
We need to be clear that they
“exercise convening and coordinating functions in relation to public, private, voluntary and community sector bodies”
and that it is their job to
“integrate the provision of local services with wider economic, social and environmental outcomes”.
The conclusion in proposed new subsection (3) is that, in discharging this duty,
“the Secretary of State must not treat local authorities solely as administrative or delivery bodies for national policy”.
This is a fundamental problem. It is not clear to me from reading and rereading the Bill that that is actually the situation, so I look to the Minister to say that the Government indeed agree with that. We should bear in mind that it was the 2007 Lyons Inquiry into Local Government, under a Labour Government, that clarified that the role of local government was to provide
“democratic, place-based leadership and long-term stewardship of local areas, rather than acting solely as a delivery arm of central government”.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I wish to speak in favour of the purpose clause tabled by my noble friends Lady Scott of Bybrook and Lord Jamieson.
From the outset, the Title of the Bill is quite wrong and misleading. The Bill is not about devolution; it is about centralisation. The number of directed powers it awards to the Secretary of State to instruct combined authorities is alarming. The purpose clause proposed by my noble friends reinvigorates the Bill to achieve what matters most to local government now and the issues most likely to be of concern in the future—namely, sustainable council finances and keeping the “local” in local government through locally led decision-making.
Putting aside the tax-raising powers for mayors enshrined in the Bill, it does nothing to address the serious concerns the sector has about putting the finances of our councils back on to a sustainable footing, or on the ever-increasing DSG deficits or the seismic pressures placed on upper-tier authorities in the delivery of their SEND responsibilities. However, what we had before Christmas was the Government’s unfair funding announcement, which left many councils worse off than before following the withdrawal of the remoteness adjustments metric, which in turn has left councils such as Buckinghamshire £44 million worse off.
We then come to the part of this purpose clause on local decision-making, which my noble friends are correct to underpin. At the start of my contribution, I referenced centralisation. It is astonishing that a devolution-facing Bill will essentially award mass powers to the Secretary of State to impose LGR and strategic authorities without any say from local authorities and groups in those areas. If devolution is to work, it needs to be locally led by local leaders and the community, not forced on communities by Whitehall. Over recent years, we have seen that local government reorganisation and the creation of combined authorities can be agreed by a consensus in local communities and without the imposition of Whitehall. Just look at Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire—two examples of unitarisation which have gone to plan. I welcome the addition in this purpose clause of ensuring that reorganisation and the creation of strategic authorities are locally led.
The Government’s approach to this has already been fairly shambolic. County council leaders who had elections postponed were of the clear understanding that mayoral elections, shadow unitary authority elections or a combination of both would happen in May 2026. Instead, we have had further delay as a result of Whitehall not working closely with local leaders. This is why the point in the proposed new clause about locally enshrined decision-making is worthy. I hope the Government will accept this amendment so that the purpose clause sits in the Bill.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I have no interests to declare, other than that I want legislation to be as good as it can be. I very much welcome my noble friend’s amendment because it provides the foundation for my Amendment 251 that would provide for post-legislative scrutiny, which we will come to much later. Too often, Ministers see legislative success in terms of getting a measure on to the statute book. The real measure of success is when the Act delivers what Parliament intended to deliver. To check whether it has done that, post-legislative scrutiny is necessary some years after it has passed.
To assess whether the Act has achieved what it intended, one needs to know clearly what its purpose is—in other words, the basis on which you are undertaking the measurement. This amendment has the great virtue that it stipulates the five purposes that the Bill is intended to deliver. That would provide the measure against which a body set up to engage in post-legislative scrutiny could examine whether it has actually delivered. That is the great value of this amendment and, for that reason, the Government should have the confidence to accept it, as it would show they believe that the Act will deliver what it is designed to do. If they will not accept the amendment, will they bring forward a purpose clause of their own to demonstrate what they believe are the key purposes against which success can be measured?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I have no interests to declare. Like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I am an academic and am interested in clear language, among other things. I was horrified when I first read the Bill by the looseness of its language. Devolution has already been mentioned. The PACAC report some three years ago on the governance of England noted that
“we … refer to what is currently taking place in England as ‘decentralisation’”
rather than devolution, but it is not really effective devolution. This Bill carries on what its predecessor under the Conservative Government was doing in providing a mayoral strategic structure throughout England.
“Local”, “community” and “neighbourhood” are used extremely loosely throughout the Bill. The use of “strategic” implies something that is not local and has to be seen separately from it. Incidentally, in talking about strategic authorities, we enter into the structure of government in the United Kingdom and are talking about constitutional matters—although, with the odd absence of constitution that we have in this country, Governments can muck about with local government in a way that no other constitutional democracy that I am aware of can.
I regard community as very local. In France, the commune is the village, and each commune has a mayor. I think about the ward represented by my colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton; she has five or six separate communities within the one ward. Neighbourhoods are parts of towns or cities, and a neighbourhood is somewhere you can walk around, but the Bill uses those terms to cover much larger areas. That raises questions about its relationship with central government, in setting up a network of strategic authorities.
I have submitted a later amendment that refers to a mayoral council for England; that indeed has been set up by prime ministerial fiat, but is only a pale shadow of the structure for the Council of the Nations and Regions and the mayoral council associated with it, which Gordon Brown usefully proposed some years ago. If we are to have real devolution, there will have to be some mechanism for negotiation between strategic authorities and central government. That is why the absence of any reference to the fiscal issue here also indicates that we are not really dealing with devolution.
The last thing I want to say is that, according to all the opinion polls, we are in a situation in which public trust in national government is remarkably—horrifyingly —low. Public opinion polls also say that public trust in local government is less bad than it is in central government. Strong local government, with councillors whom your average voter might actually know, is one of the ways that one holds democracy together. Colleagues like the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, find themselves trying to represent 15,000 people per ward in a district like Bradford; that is not really effective local democracy. It is very hard for the councillor to know all the electors, let alone for the electors to know the councillors. When we come to the question of town and parish councils, and devolution from strategic authorities to the levels below, we will wish to emphasise that.
I signal that, as we talk about the context of the Bill and strategic authorities, we must first be clear how those strategic authorities relate to central government and, on the other side, how they relate to the single tier of effective local government and to the town and parish councils in which we hope your ordinary voter will find some sense of identity and participation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
Before I comment on the amendments in this group, I send my very best wishes to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We had an online meeting with her last week, and I know how frustrated she is not to be able to be part of this Committee’s work at the moment. I hope that she will be able to return to work with us in due course, so please convey our best wishes back to her.
I thank all noble Lords who have continued to engage with me since Second Reading and for the amendments that have been submitted. This House does great work on Bills, as I have experienced on both occasions that I have taken Bills through the House recently, and I am very grateful for that engagement and the work that has been done between Second Reading and Committee. I will start with a brief introduction of my own.
The Bill will deliver a landmark transfer of power out of Westminster to mayors and local leaders, enabling them to unlock growth, transport and infrastructure and deliver the change that we need in our local areas. It will deliver our commitment to a fit, decent and legal local government as the foundation of devolution by establishing, for example, a new local audit office that will transform our broken local audit system. We have committed to transfer power out of Westminster to all levels, which is why the Bill will also empower our communities via a new duty for local authorities to establish effective neighbourhood governance, bringing decision-making closer to communities, and a new community right to buy, which will help our authorities to have the power to do with the assets that they value what they think is the right thing.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. Turning briefly to Amendments 95 and 266 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock—I wish her well; we are missing her already—I agree with the principle that this Bill should provide genuine devolution, with decision-making lying with local government and not dictated by central government. This was the guiding principle behind my amendment. I am especially grateful to those who recognise that this is not about trapping the Government but about anchoring their ambitions in the text of the Bill and I thank my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Norton of Louth for their support. I am looking forward to his Amendment 251, where we can discuss further the important issue that he is raising.
Ministers tell us that the amendment is unnecessary because these principles already guide the Government’s approach, but the evidence simply does not sustain that claim. I want to look at one relevant example—housebuilding. The facts are stark. England delivered 208,600 new additional dwellings in 2024-25, well below the Government’s implied benchmark of 300,000. In the first half of 2025, completions fell by 12.6% year on year. Some areas recorded extraordinary collapses. Labour-run Islington saw a 90.2% fall in completions. Even the OBR forecasts show housebuilding falling from 260,000 annually to just 215,000 by 2026-27. That is a 17% decline, moving us even further away from the trajectory and the numbers needed. New-build completions hit an eight-year low in 2025 at 190,600, again far below what is required.
We have heard warm words about empowerment, sustainability, local accountability, growth and locally led planning, but the real-world outcomes—the measures by which our residents judge us—tell a very different story. That is precisely why this purpose clause is needed. This amendment asks the Government only to put in the Bill what they say they believe—a very simple message on the front of this Bill, not in guidance on a large piece of paper, but a simple message that says that devolution should be consent led, that local finances must be sustainable, that social care must be accountable and must be protected, that local growth must be enabled through genuine local powers and that housebuilding must be locally driven and responsive. If the Government are confident that they will already be fulfilling these aims, enshrining them in a purpose clause should not be a burden but a reassurance to councils, to communities and to Parliament.
I hope that the Government have listened and will consider this amendment very carefully to align the Bill not just with the Government’s rhetoric but with the realities facing local government today. But at this point I would like to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Jamieson
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe whether, within a strategic authority’s competence, it would have the power to borrow in order to nationalise local transport.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in central Bedfordshire. This group of amendments on Clause 2 concerns the areas of competence afforded to strategic authorities under the Bill. The amendments tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook are probing. They seek to test the scope and limits of the powers the Government intend to devolve, and to understand the rationale behind the choices made in drawing up this list.
We have tried to understand the logic that underpins the Bill. Devolution, if done well, can bring decision-making closer to communities, improving outcomes for local people and delivering better value. But ambition must be matched with clarity, legal certainty and a clear understanding of how these powers are intended to operate in practice. Clause 2 is central to that. It is right that this Committee examines it carefully. Of course, this would be so much easier to debate if the Government were being clear on the powers and fiscal capacity that they are devolving to local government. However, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook commented, we see little in the Bill of what is actually being devolved.
Amendment 2 in my name would leave out Clause 2(a). This amendment probes whether, within a strategic authority’s competence, there would be the power to borrow to acquire local transport businesses. The Bill as drafted appears to give strategic authorities a broad remit over transport, but it is not clear whether this extends to the acquisition of assets, the taking over of services or the borrowing powers that would be required to do so. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out the Government’s intention here. Is the power envisaged to be purely strategic and co-ordinating, or could it extend to ownership and operational control? If the latter, what safeguards or limitations would apply? Is transport buses and trams, or is it also rail?
Our Amendment 5 concerns the reference to public safety. This is a term that appears in a number of statutes but its meaning is not always consistent. This amendment seeks to determine what is meant by public safety in the context of the Bill and on what legal definition this remit is set out. Do the Government intend this to relate to emergency planning, community safety partnerships, policing or something broader? Clarity is essential, not least to avoid overlap or conflict with existing statutory duties.
Amendment 11 in my name seeks to clarify how strategic authorities will be expected to identify, seek and assume powers in their areas of competence, and how accountability for those powers will be maintained. The amendment proposes that strategic authorities may exercise functions only within a powers framework set by the Secretary of State, who would be required by regulation to specify the scope and limits of powers, identify any functions reserved to central government and impose any conditions or statutory objectives. It would also require strategic authorities to publish a statement setting out which powers they have assumed and how these relate to the functions within their constituent councils. This is intended to ensure clarity over scope, limits, conditions and transparency for both constituent councils and Parliament as to where responsibility lies.
Before I conclude I want briefly to acknowledge the other amendments in this group, which raise important questions about the breadth and ambition of the proposed areas of competence. My noble friend Lord Lansley seeks to include community engagement and empowerment, a reminder that devolution must be rooted not only in institutional structures but in the active participation of the people it is intended to serve.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. My Amendment 3 would make a simple change but it highlights something fundamental to the Bill, so I want to spend a bit more time going through it than that single-word change would imply.
In looking through the areas of competence, energy is conspicuous by its absence, given that it will be a central challenge for the country—and, indeed, the mission of the Government—in the coming years. I shall use the Midlands region, where I live, as an example; of course, the first energy transition really started in the Midlands. I recently visited the Science Museum down the road, where there is an excellent example of the Boulton and Watt steam engine, which was brought into use in Birmingham and started to turbocharge the demand for coal and the first energy transition from biomass to fossil fuels.
That was a locally led transition, of course, but today, the Midlands remains the industrial heartland of the UK. We have so many energy-intensive users and heavy manufacturing, ranging from nuclear reactors and aero engines to trains, excavators and cars. As a region, we want to help lead the latest energy transition, as articulated in the recent Midlands Engine’s White Paper on energy security; I chaired the task force to produce that.
For a number of years, I have been making the case that, to date, the energy transition has been delivered in a top-down fashion. We have had many welcome developments, such as the formation of the NESO—the National Energy System Operator—but there is still a sense that this is something being done to communities, rather than bringing them along on the journey. No doubt progress is being made on the regional planning for the local power plant through Great British Energy, but we are not yet in a place where we have a fully joined-up governance system that marries up the necessary top-down view of the energy system and the critical bottom-up view that informs it.
Why is it important to drive the transition locally? First, I have already mentioned bringing local communities along on the journey. We are talking about significant changes to buildings, including changes in how we heat and insulate them, and changes to both grid architecture and next-generation charging. All this will be much more effective if communities are helping to drive this themselves and seeing those benefits.
Secondly, local areas have the knowledge of how best to implement the energy transition. For example, they know their local housing stock best. They know which technologies are best for future heating solutions, whether that means district heating or heat pumps. They know where the grid, the charging and the local generation is.
That feeds into my final point, on costs. The cost of the energy transition is getting significant attention at the moment, but the benefits for the Government here are the cost savings possible with a locally led approach. Billions in savings are possible if the most appropriate solution is brought forward for local areas, using local knowledge rather than one-size-fits-all. Regions and authorities are recognising this and taking action, but the Government need to drive this approach forward and avoid the patchwork nature referred to in our debate on the previous group.
What is needed is proper energy planning, at a local level, which then feeds up into regional plans and, ultimately, into the spatial strategic energy plan for the UK that the NESO is producing. That is when we will have a transition where we bring in all the expertise at a local level, which means the most efficient solutions at the lowest cost. There is an opportunity here for the Government to recognise, in the areas of competence, the centrality of energy to what strategic authorities need to deliver; this would ensure that strategic authorities are delivering on energy for their regions. The Government could use that to define how a bottom-up governance system for energy could work, how that might flow up into the spatial strategic energy plan, how that will interface with GBE and NESO, and so on.
I was grateful to meet the Minister last week. We discussed how paragraph (a) refers to “transport and local infrastructure” and how that is slightly misleading, in that it may give the impression of a focus on transport. The other benefit of this amendment is that it would clarify that first part of Clause 2 and provide clarity in the language on what strategic authorities are trying to deliver. With that, I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a visual artist. Amendment 4 in my name is a small but important clarifying amendment. It simply adds the words “including through tourism” to paragraph (d) of Clause 2, which already defines “economic development and regeneration” as a core “area of competence” for strategic authorities. This reflects the Local Government Association’s view that tourism should be explicitly recognised in the Bill rather than left implicit.
Tourism is not a marginal activity; it is one of the principal ways in which economic development and regeneration happen in practice. It supports local jobs, sustains town centres, underpins cultural and heritage assets and brings external spending directly into communities. In many places, particularly outside the large cities, it is the economic driver.
I have deliberately not proposed tourism as a stand-alone category nor sought to incorporate it into the important Amendment 6 tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to which I have added my name. His amendment rightly strengthens the strategic recognition of the arts, heritage and creative industries. My amendment is narrower and more operational. It simply makes it clear that tourism sits within economic development and regeneration, which is how local authorities already understand and deliver it in practice.
Too often, tourism is grouped alongside the arts and creative industries in local authority structures, where its scale and commercial focus can unintentionally shape priorities and funding conversations that are not directly about culture itself. Placing tourism clearly within economic development helps to maintain that distinction while allowing cultural policy to retain its own strategic clarity. This matters particularly in the context of the Government’s emerging work on a visitor or tourism levy. Even at modest levels, published estimates suggest that such a levy could raise hundreds of millions of pounds a year in England and potentially over £1 billion annually if applied more widely—sums that would exceed Arts Council England’s entire annual capital budget and be comparable in scale to a decade of lost local authority cultural investment.
In the Cultural Policy Unit’s helpful paper A City Tourism Charge—the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, will no doubt develop this point further on Amendment 6, with which I entirely agree—there is a strong and well-evidenced case that a significant proportion of any such levy should be invested directly in cultural and heritage assets, which are often the very reason that people visit in the first place. For strategic authorities to play a meaningful role in shaping and deploying such tools, tourism needs to be clearly within scope. Without explicit inclusion, there is a risk that tourism falls between stools—assumed but not quite owned. This amendment provides clarity, not prescription, and I hope that the Minister will see it as a proportionate and helpful addition.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 8 in my name, which would have the effect of adding to the list of areas of competence in Clause 2 an additional paragraph (h), “community engagement and empowerment”. Noble Lords would not be surprised by the suggestion that this should be designated as one of the areas of competence of strategic authorities and mayors, as the clue is in the Title: the Bill is about community empowerment, and community engagement is instrumental to the achievement of community empowerment. It is therefore one of the areas of competence for mayors.
This led me to thinking about what the Government are trying to achieve by listing the areas of competence—let us understand that and then we can decide what it is sensible to put into the list. As it happens, the White Paper was somewhat more helpful than the Bill itself in this respect, since quite clearly what is intended, as the White Paper puts it, is that this list should comprise
“areas where Strategic Authorities should have a mandate to act strategically to drive growth as well as support the shaping of public services, where strategic level coordination adds value”.
I am looking at that and thinking that “competence” is not necessarily the right word for this; perhaps it is “responsibility”. Let us not worry about the word, but let us at least understand what the Government are trying to achieve. Then I realised that, of course, the point is that they have listed seven because subsequently there is an intention to have up to seven commissioners. Is the answer, “Well, there just has to be seven”? I do not think we need constrain ourselves in that regard.
I then thought that perhaps these are listed because they are the areas of functional responsibility where additional functions are provided by the Bill at a later stage, but when one looks at the functions of mayors, six are the subject of additional functional responsibilities and powers itemised later in the Bill. Environment and climate change is left out but is none the less an area of competence, so we are clearly not talking just about what the Bill adds to mayors by way of responsibilities; we are talking about what mayoral strategic authorities should be engaged with to drive growth, to create social cohesion and to shape public services.
It seems to me, therefore, that there are a number of additions and no problem about how many, as long as they are genuinely representative of the areas of competence—meaning, responsibility and functional powers that are available to mayoral strategic authorities. It seems to me—this will save me getting up and saying anything more on the next two groups—that both Amendments 6 and 7 have merit, in that respect, in adding arts, cultural and creative industries on the one hand and definitely adding rural affairs on the other.
The number of commissioners should be determined in their own right, rather than by reference to the number of areas of competence. If there are more areas of competence than there are commissioners, that is not a problem. Interestingly, while listing the seven areas of competence as we have them in Clause 2, the devolution White Paper said:
“We are interested in where this list could be expanded now or in the future”.
I think that we can help the Government by expanding the list. I personally think that all three that I mentioned could be added without any demerits. They would then be more comprehensively illustrative of the range of functional activities that strategic authorities should be engaged in, in order to achieve maximum growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, quite rightly illustrated by reference to tourism—how they can promote growth, shape public services and improve the circumstances for the populations that they serve.
From my point of view, community engagement and empowerment is central to the delivery of many of these. I have no intention that community engagement and empowerment should be the responsibility of a commissioner. It should be the responsibility of the mayor and, of course, it is a cross-cutting area of competence. I can see no reason why one would leave it out, since it is instrumental to the achievement of the objectives.
I shall finish with just one question to the Minister, which I am perfectly happy to take up with her at a later stage. If it is indeed the Government’s belief that this list may be expanded, either
“now or in the future”,
as the White Paper said, where is the power to add to this list? I cannot find such a power. It seems to me that on the face of it there should be such a power. Even if the Government are not persuaded today, clearly in the future, if, for example, using later powers, the mayors of established mayoral strategic authorities were to make proposals for changes to the Secretary of State and acquire additional functional responsibilities, this may be in a new area of competence, but where is the ability to put that into the legislation? I hope that the Minister may, at this or a later stage, agree that we should add an order-making power at that point.
Lord Mawson (CB)
My Lords, in this discussion, there is a lot of confusion between what I call the two Ds: democracy and delivery. I have spent over 40 years working in East End housing estates. Around the time I first arrived, I sat in a room with a youth worker, who asked a group of young people, “What do you want to do?” They said, “Well, miss, we want to go to Walton-on-the-Naze”—which is a seaside resort in Essex—“and we want to go ice-skating and horse-riding”. So I got on an Empress Coach with this youth worker and all these young people, and we did those three things. Then a year later, I returned to the same room with the same well-meaning youth worker, who asked again, “What do you want to do?” They said, “Well, miss, we would like to go to Walton-on-the-Naze and horse-riding and ice-skating”. I said to the youth worker, “You’ve been to university, you’ve been to Australia and you’ve travelled around the world. Why are you asking these young people this ridiculous question?” She said, “This is democracy. This is giving them a real choice”. I said, “Really? Why don’t you suggest we’ll take them across the Sinai Desert in six months’ time?” She replied, “Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve never heard of the Sinai Desert”—precisely.
With a business partner, we ended up taking 200 of those young people, in a programme we developed, across the Sinai Desert with the Bedouin. We climbed Mount Sinai and had an amazing experience. When these bright, sharp, entrepreneurial young people from East End housing estates came back, they raised all sorts of interesting questions. One of them, called Darren, wanted to go off to New York—which he did; he then developed an amazing piece of youth work, which was very entrepreneurial and which the Princess of Wales recently visited.
In the very early days in Bromley-by-Bow, we began to embrace an entrepreneurial programme which was created with local people, including local young people. Some 97 businesses have been involved in that over the last 10 or 12 years. Over the years in Bromley-by-Bow, we must have hosted more than 70 Government Ministers, but I fear that we are still asking the same question in many of these processes. With this kind of legislation, because the granular detail is not understood, I fear that we will spend a lot of time with large infrastructure asking people what they want and where they want to go, without thinking about how we really empower a community, particularly a poor community. That is about jobs and work and, in our experience, about helping them build businesses and enterprises and lifting the game.
I agree that community engagement is really important, but so is the granular detail of how you do it, what it means in practice and how you generate learning-by-doing cultures on the ground in some of our poorest communities. If we do not start to do that, I fear that, once again—I must be on my 14th Government now—we will have some restructuring. We will use all these very fine words, but we will be back in that room with those young people asking them what they want, with no clarity about democracy and delivery. I have found with East Enders that they are interested more in delivery than in talk—that when you promise things, you actually do them, and you transform the opportunities for their children. That will not happen unless we get more into the granularity and create learning-by-doing entrepreneurial cultures. That is what empowerment looks like.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, I feel the need to stress that we should not write off deliberative democracy, where people can access information and ideas and come together to reach new conclusions. Let us also stress that the economy—businesses and jobs—is one part of a much larger whole that is the community. Our society needs resources, education, time and health, so a simplistic, one-directional look at what our communities need will not answer our issues.
It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who made some very telling points about how this is a seriously half-baked Bill. Your Lordships’ Committee is going to have to add quite a bit of heat to get it anything like ready for the table. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the National Association of Local Councils. I too wish the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, well and hope that we can see her back soon.
I start with the noble Baroness’s Amendment 95, as it demonstrates why we need many of the amendments in this group. It sets out in clear terms that the role of local government is to provide “democratic, place-based leadership” and it should not be
“solely a delivery arm of central government”.
Increasingly, that is what local government has been forced into being through the decades-long power grab by Westminster, accompanied by swingeing austerity that has left councils unable to carry out pretty well anything but their statutory responsibilities, which are of course determined by Westminster. That is a major driver of the extremely high disillusionment with politics and why the slogan “Take back control” was so popular in 2016.
I set all that out because my Amendment 9 seeks to add to the list of areas of competence. Most of the amendments in this group, as well as Amendment 95, would take the Government in the direction they say they want this Bill to go. I will focus on Amendment 9, but, regarding Amendment 8 from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on community engagement and empowerment, I have a lot of later amendments on this which are not necessarily contradictory but potentially complementary. I also support the community energy amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Last night in the Chamber, I spoke about community energy; we are just not seeing the driving force that we need to bring renewables to local communities, which surely has to be a crucial part of the areas of competence of the new strategic authorities.
My Amendment 9 addresses food security and poverty. In terms of local food production, according to a recent report from the CPRE, 1,7 00 farms have disappeared around the edges of towns and cities since 2010. We have seen those peri-urban areas stop being food-producing areas when they should be at the centre of local food systems. We have seen a massive cut in the number of county farms; according to figures from 2019, over a couple of decades they have gone from 426,000 acres to about 200,000 acres. We have seen councils’ control over local food systems hacked away.
We know—this is why poverty and food fit together very well—that we have enormous spatial inequalities, arguably the highest in the OECD. That has been increasing over three decades. There is an understandable feeling in Cumbria, Cornwall, Northumberland and north Devon that Westminster does not understand their poverty problem or the reality of their lives. They are right. We cannot fix the problems of each of those places by making one rule from Westminster; tackling poverty in those places has to be a local responsibility, with power and, importantly, resources to go with it. We have been through regional development agencies, local enterprise partnerships, town groups and the wildly unpopular investment zones. There has been a huge democratic deficit in all those systems, and they all have failed.
I draw on two reports from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. The first is The False Economy of Big Food and the Case for a New Food Economy, which focuses on how what is colloquially known as “big food”—large centralised systems—is making us sick. It is the first report I have seen to have calculated the estimated total cost of our broken food system: £268 billion. A lot of that is the costs of healthcare, welfare support, social care and loss of productivity, all of which are having to be met by local authorities. Those are the costs—surely we need to put the solution and a reduction of those costs together.
We have lots to do here in Westminster. We have an extremely uneven playing field with a handful of big supermarkets and big food manufacturers entirely dominating the markets, throwing their weight around against local communities and farmers. Westminster needs to act, but how are we going to fill in the gaps? What are we going to put in all these different communities up and down the land? There is no one answer. Westminster does not have the answers.
I stress that about 22% of people in the UK are in food poverty. That means people who have a limited opportunity to feed themselves well, often relying on food banks, et cetera. UKRI is funding the Food Systems Equality project, involving systems in local communities to ensure healthy, sustainable food that reflects cultural preferences. We have recognition from one arm of government that the solution to our food issues has to be local—that is what UKRI is doing—but we have to put the power into local and strategic authorities to deal with that.
I pick one example of where something great is happening. An organisation called Growing Kent & Medway is an inspiring effort to create healthy and sustainable food systems in what has traditionally been the garden of England. It is place based, with a huge number of small independent businesses. I have tasted some great cheese and cider here in the House when they have come to visit us. But if we are going to have those kinds of systems all around the country in each area, they have to be supported by the strategic authorities.
Finally, I bring together food and poverty issues, including local food security in the UK. There is an interesting piece of work by the Royal Geographical Society, which carried out a visualisation of what food insecurity looks like in different parts of the country. It is useful to have this as a map, because you can see what different colours come out on the map showing the difference in different places. Food insecurity is variable across the country because of the levels of poverty, but the way in which people’s foodscapes are configured are different in different places. There is no way in which Westminster can find the solution for each place, because the solution in each place is different. There is nothing more fundamental for government to ensure that people are fed, but the Government in Westminster have to let go and let local communities find their own solutions.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we have been talking about public safety under Amendment 5. I want to check with the Minister how far the Bill is linked to some of the issues with which other departments in Whitehall are dealing. We all know that all the complicated policy problems are cross-departmental. Chapter 6 of the Strategic Defence Review was about a whole-society approach to home defence and home security, and the need for a broad approach to the multiple threats that we now face, including terrorism, climate change and hybrid warfare of one sort or another. The review stressed that we need local resources, knowledge and co-operation in order to make sure that we face some of those threats. So, I am glad to see public safety here.
I recall that when the Salisbury poisoning took place, the public health officer in Salisbury played a vital and impressive role in sorting out its response. I also remember that, when the Covid pandemic struck, the Government outsourced the placing of testing centres to two large companies, one of which had its headquarters in Miami and made a remarkable number of mistakes in where to place the centres. We need not just strategic but local authorities to be leading on this. I hope that the Minister can assure us that public safety is one of the dimensions with which we are concerned.
I am struck that it has been eight months since the Strategic Defence Review was published. It also said in chapter 6 that we needed to start a “national conversation” on how we respond to multiple threats. I have not heard any of that national conversation yet. I hope that the Minister’s department and the Ministry of Defence are in active conversation about how this dimension is built back into our society and our government structure and how the resources—because it costs money—will be provided to local authorities, local civil rescue services, local fire services and police forces to make sure that we can face these multiple threats to our public safety.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group, but the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made me think that it might be helpful to ask the Minister to explain where she sees land management and agricultural policy fitting in any of these categories. This is a bit of a precursor to the rural affairs amendment coming up, but it would be helpful at this stage to hear that. Food security is key to the agricultural policy that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised. I note my interests as a farmer in Devon. I also sit on the food security programme board for the Great South West. I am interested to understand whether the Government think that strategic authorities will have some competence over those areas. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister thinks.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, I was not going to speak on this group either, but my noble friend Lord Lansley raised some points. I need to declare a set of interests. I am a non-executive director of Norse Group, the part-owner of Porter and Verrells, a non-executive director of Elixr Earth and strategic adviser to Prodo. There is also Efficio and Peopletoo; I think that is it. They are all companies that will, if this legislation goes really well, probably find a way of doing something better. If this legislation goes badly, they will all probably suffer for it. So, one way or another, they will all be tied into this.
I had not realised, because I do not read the Bills like my noble friend Lord Lansley does, that the Government have not left a place in which they could add further powers to mayoral combined authorities as we prove the concept. At the moment, we know that the concept is different in different places. The team in Manchester is steaming away doing loads of brilliant stuff. Most of the other places are sitting further behind. We already have a landscape with different powers. If the Government do not find a way of putting that in after they reject my noble friend Lord Lansley’s amendment, will they consider putting something like a power of general confidence in there for strategic authorities so that they can actually start doing things that are necessary for the areas that they look after, which will be different in different places?
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I would like briefly to contribute in the hope that I can be helpful to the Minister at this point. There is a list of areas of competence in Clause 2. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, told us that this was a probing amendment. By implication, I think that that means some thought can now go into the list of areas of competence.
I just want to add one new thing. I was a board member of a regional development agency, One North East, for a number of years. There is a difference between the list of areas of competence that we had and this list. Let me explain. We had a rural role and a role in culture and sport, particularly capital investment. We had a clear role in tourism and in energy. We had no role in public safety, health, well-being and public service reforms, or community engagement and empowerment, and we did not directly address issues of poverty, although we did indirectly by the nature of what the RDA was trying to do. I wonder if the Minister might take on board all that has been said and look at those areas of competence. I hope that they are not seen to be a final list. In my view, they are not a final list but a very good basis for discussion. I hope that the Government will be willing to do that before Report.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their amendments on the areas of competence and for what has been a useful and helpful discussion on the subject. Many of the amendments in the group seek to probe the list of mayoral competences and I understand why noble Lords would want to do that, but I want to be clear that the areas of competence are deliberately broad to enable a wide range of activities to fall within the scope of strategic authorities. They are intended as a framework that mayors can adapt as their local areas determine where they should place the emphasis.
Amendment 8, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, seeks to create a distinct area of competence of “community engagement and empowerment”. It is important that all tiers of local government work to deliver for their communities, as we all know. Strategic authorities, like any other tier of government, will be empowered to engage with those who live and work in their areas. Those already in place do so effectively.
Indeed, many existing combined and combined county authorities already use their powers to engage with their communities to ensure that their work meets local needs. For example, West Yorkshire Combined Authority has an established region-wide engagement platform, known as Your Voice, to strengthen dialogue with local communities. Through this initiative, alongside wider public engagement activity, the authority is gathering views to inform decisions on how its devolved funding is allocated.
The York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority has invested £1.9 million to support community building projects across the region. Funding has been given to buildings which play an important role for communities, such as the village halls in—I always hesitate to use the Yorkshire pronunciations, so forgive me if I get this wrong —Great Ouseburn and Kettlewell.
The areas of competence have been framed to enable a wide range of activity to fall within scope, including community engagement and empowerment. In this sense, it will be embedded within and throughout all the existing areas of competence. These competences are deliberately flexible. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about any power in the Bill, but we intend for it to be a framework; I will reflect on that point and come back to him.
The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, made a point about action and impact, as opposed to the broader framework. I refer him to the Pride in Place funding that does exactly as he was describing; it is £20 million of funding for each of 250 neighbourhoods. This is a long-term project, over 10 years, to make sure that each place is able to shape the things that are important to it. I refer the noble Lord to that important project, which shows how we are working with communities—not to them—to move forward the kinds of projects that he was talking about.
Amendment 9, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, seeks to create distinct areas of competence for
“reducing poverty and socio-economic inequality”,
and food security. She will not be surprised to hear that I share her objective of addressing poverty, socioeconomic inequality and food insecurity. The Government remain firmly committed to tackling these issues by addressing all the factors that underpin these challenges that we see in communities.
The areas of competence already enable strategic authorities to tackle poverty and socioeconomic inequality in a cross-cutting manner, via skills and employment support, economic development, investing in transport, tackling health inequalities and in many other ways. The same is true for food security. In Greater Manchester, the combined authority is taking concerted action to tackle food inequality and poverty through initiatives such as No Child Should Go Hungry, which has provided thousands of emergency food cards to residents. At a strategic level, mayors will take account of all the needs of their areas, and locally relevant information, such as the land use framework that colleagues in Defra are producing.
Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, seeks to add energy to the existing transport and local infrastructure area of competence. The noble Lord and I have spoken about this Government’s energy plans and I have written to him today. With his permission, in a moment, I will quote briefly from that letter because I think it would be helpful for noble Lords to have a bit more detail. On the role that we intend strategic authorities to play in this space, while I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s amendment, I do not believe at this stage it is necessary. As noble Lords will know, the themes of the areas of competence are, as I have said, deliberately broad in scope and include thematic policy areas such as local infrastructure and environment and climate change. Energy cuts across all these, as well as other areas of competence. Importantly, strategic authorities can, and will be able to, address their local communities’ energy needs through the areas of competence. Indeed, many are already doing so.
On future strategies, the Government are undertaking a number of pieces of work reviewing the benefits of local energy planning for meeting national goals, several of which will lay out our approach for local renewable energy. The forthcoming local power plan will be owned jointly by Great British Energy and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. That will outline our shared vision for the local and community energy sector. We are continuing to develop the local power plan with Great British Energy and updates will be provided soon. Similarly, the warm homes plan will cover housing retrofit and heat network zoning and will be published shortly. There will be more details in that plan on heat network zoning. The secondary legislation, rather than this Bill, will provide the necessary framework to empower local authorities to act as heat network zone co-ordinators under the Energy Act 2023. That is just a bit more information on those areas. For example, the Liverpool City Region is working to establish Mersey Tidal Power, with the aim of delivering Europe’s largest tidal power project by 2030, capable of powering up to 1 million homes. In the west of England, the combined authority has implemented its local energy scheme, which is funding community-led renewable projects.
Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, seeks to add tourism to the existing economic development and regeneration areas of competence. The Bill already makes provision for strategic authorities to support the tourism industry. Clause 41 extends local powers to strategic authorities to encourage and promote visitors. Combined authorities and combined county authorities can use these powers to promote tourism and host events attracting visitors to boost local businesses such as hotels and shops. Many existing combined authorities and county authorities are already making use of these powers. For instance, the West Midlands Combined Authority is investing £120 million into an economy, trade and tourism programme, supporting over 250 businesses and 10 major sporting and cultural events. This example demonstrates that prescribing an extensive list of industries and sectors within the area of competence is not required. The areas of competence will empower mayors and strategic authorities to determine their own priorities in the application of their powers, and many are already doing so to address local issues such as tourism.
Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, would remove transport and local infra- structure from the areas of competence for strategic authorities. I note from the noble Baroness’s explanatory statement that her intention in tabling this amendment is to probe how the power to borrow will work for mayoral strategic authorities. I think the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, was probing this during his speech. All existing mayoral strategic authorities already have the power to borrow for all their functions, including transport. Clause 12 will confer the power to all future mayoral strategic authorities. Strategic authorities have full discretion over the exercise of borrowing powers and allocation of resources, subject to obtaining the requisite support from their constituent members via the budget voting process.
Like the rest of local government, strategic authorities must also operate within the prudential framework— I think all noble Lords here would expect that. This framework comprises statutory duties and codes intended to ensure that all borrowing and investment is prudent, affordable and sustainable. It provides robust mechanisms for oversight and accountability. In practice, this amendment would remove transport and local infrastructure from the areas of competence for strategic authorities. That is clearly contrary to the aims of the Bill.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am sorry, but the Minister does not seem to have mentioned this: I think we are also probing where LRS would fit in and what level they would be if they are going to continue.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I will finish what I am saying, then I will see whether I can answer the noble Baroness’s question.
Including public safety within the areas of competence is important for several reasons. First, it enables devolution of further public safety functions. For example, consideration is currently being given to the role of strategic authorities in resilience as part of the post-implementation review of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, due to be completed by March next year.
Secondly, it allows mayors to delegate certain existing functions relating to public safety to a commissioner; where the mayor is responsible for policing, they must appoint a deputy mayor for policing to whom policing functions are delegated. Additionally, the inclusion of public safety within the areas of competence allows a mayor who is responsible for fire services, but not for policing, to delegate certain fire-related functions to a public safety commissioner.
Thirdly, it enables the mayor to convene local partners and collaborate with other mayors to tackle questions of public safety—something all residents would expect them to do. There is a wide range of activity in which we would expect mayors to participate.
Amendment 11, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, seeks to clarify how strategic authorities will seek and assume powers within their area of competence and then be held to account. One of the central aims of the Bill is to move away from the current patchwork of powers and piecemeal devolution of functions. To that end, the Government’s ambitious new devolution framework will set out a coherent and consistent set of functions.
Part 2 of the Bill sets out specific functions and the voting and governance arrangements that strategic authorities will automatically receive at each level of the devolution framework, categorised under the relevant area of competence. For example, the duty to produce a local growth plan is categorised under the “economic development and regeneration” area of competence. The Bill allows for new powers and duties to be added to the devolution framework over time, ensuring that it remains adaptive and responsive to future needs and policy developments. Mayors of established mayoral strategic authorities will also be able to request and pilot new functions so it will be possible to test and evaluate outcomes ahead of adding new functions to the framework.
Finally, I turn to accountability. Combined authorities and combined county authorities—
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, while the Bill clearly allows for additional functions and powers to be given to mayoral strategic authorities, the specific question was whether the Bill has a power to enable the areas of competence list to be amended.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I heard the noble Lord’s question. I responded earlier that I will come back to him on how this works within the Bill, so if that is okay, I will do it in writing and share it with other Members of the Committee.
Combined authorities and combined county authorities are required in law to establish both an overview and scrutiny committee and an audit committee. Also, all strategic authorities are expected to follow the principles and processes in the English devolution accountability framework and scrutiny protocol. The Government remain committed to strengthening local accountability and scrutiny, and we are exploring models such as local public accounts committees; we will provide an update on our proposals in that regard in due course.
I hope that, with these reassurances and explanations, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Perhaps I might come back to the issue of food security. In her answer, the Minister talked about access to food, which is obviously a crucial part of food security and very much related to poverty, but I do not think she really talked about food production and local systems of food distribution, which tie in with the question asked by the noble Earl, Lord Devon—particularly in terms of vegetables and fruit. We are talking about health, as well as pure calories, here. Do the Government see looking to produce as much food as possible locally as an important part of the new strategic authority?
Back in the depths of Covid, I chaired an online event on research from the University of Sheffield demonstrating that Sheffield could be self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit, growing in the green areas of the city. That is just a demonstration of the possibilities: if you get local attention on solving these issues, we can make real progress.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand why the noble Baroness is pushing her point strongly, but I will stick to the answer I gave: those areas of competence already enable a very wide framework to tackle poverty and socioeconomic inequality—including food production, if that is where the mayor chooses to go in a particular area. The issues raised by the noble Baroness are cross-cutting aspects so putting them into one of the competences would mean that you would not be able to work so effectively across those competences, including on things such as skills and health inequalities. It is right to leave the framework of competences as broad as possible to allow people to determine the best way forward at a local level.
There is other work going on in Defra, as the noble Baroness will be well aware, in relation to land use frameworks—as well as all of the other issues around how we account for local food production—but, from the point of view of this Bill, the competences and the broad framework that they offer give the widest framework for local authorities to tackle needs in their areas.
Lord Mawson (CB)
I know that the Minister cares a lot about these issues around community engagement, which is always encouraging to people such as me. As a social entrepreneur, I have spent my life at the other end of this telescope. I now operate with a team across this country, in some of the poorest communities, grappling with local authorities and the machinery of the state.
To be honest, we and some of our business partners find a lot of this state machinery very broken indeed; it is very difficult to make it work in practice. What people such as me are trying to suggest is that there needs to be some humility. It is difficult. I am aware that lots of colleagues in this Room have spent a lot of their lives in the public sector—I get all that; it has been my privilege to work with some rather excellent CEOs of local authorities and in the health service, as well as some who have not been so good, if I can put it like that—but there are real challenges with this machinery, whatever we say. I am experiencing them at the moment in one town in the north, where our Civil Service is not understanding the granular, practical detail of transformation and innovation—or what those things look like—and is in danger of putting old men in new clothes.
So, with the opportunity that appears before us in this legislation, let me explain why we need to create, at a granular, local level and in place, learning-by-doing cultures that pay attention to how we work with the public, local authorities, the health service, charities and the social sector—that is, how those interfaces work in practice to deliver. I suggest that it is because, at the moment, although the words all seem fine and lots of people care about this, when you try to do this stuff—as my colleagues and I do—something quite different starts to appear. I fear that, if we are not careful—and unless we grip some of that difficulty and some of the things that some of us have got a lot of grey hairs from trying to do—there will be lots of meaning well, but very little will change, in some of our poorest communities.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for those additional points. In this Room there are many people from local government, who have spent many years working to make sure that what he called the machinery of state is not interfering with actually delivering at local level. What we are trying to do with the Bill is to make sure that we continue that, but no doubt we will have many discussions about whether or not it is going to work.
It is very important that what we do is driven by local people at local level. The Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network, which I started with my right honourable colleague from the other end, Steve Reed, about 15 years ago now, sets up pilot projects to show exactly how you start with the impact at local level and then work up to what needs to be done in the machinery to make that work. That is what I want to do but on a national scale, and I hope that the Bill will go a long way towards doing so.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I raised a minor point around paragraph (a) in Clause 2—“areas of competence”—which refers to “transport and local infrastructure”. My point is about the wording. That could perhaps be taken to mean local infrastructure related to transport. That is probably not the intention of the Government and this is local infrastructure in general, but perhaps there is an opportunity to clarify that wording.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The noble Lord knows, because we have had the conversation, that I feel that the order of that wording is a little unfortunate. We will reflect on that because it does look as though it is infrastructure related just to transport. That is not the intention of the Bill. The Bill is intended to reflect that the competences will include local infrastructure and transport. If that local infrastructure relates also to transport, well and good, but it might be other infrastructure. So I will reflect on that and come back to the noble Lord.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this group. What has emerged quite clearly is that there is a huge desire across the Committee for a proper devolution framework that is both ambitious and workable, and one that truly empowers local leaders while ensuring clarity, accountability and coherence.
I want to come back to competence because there appears to be some confusion. My noble friend Lord Porter raised the fact that local authorities already have a general power of competence. Therefore, I want to be clear: what do we mean by competence in the Bill? As the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, raised, what matters for the public is delivery. For that to happen, local authorities, mayors and strategic authorities need to have the responsibility, the powers and the funding. My noble friend Lord Lansley, in helpfully referring to the White Paper, said that a competence is a strategic mandate “to do”, as opposed to the general power of competence. I would really appreciate it if the Minister could clarify—not necessarily now—exactly what we mean by an area of competence and what that means in terms of responsibilities, powers, funding and the ability to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, mentioned energy. Over a century ago the last energy revolution of neighbourhood gas and electricity was rolled out by local authorities because they had the power and the funding—they did not have the responsibility but they took the responsibility—to do so. By the sounds of it, many noble Lords here would like local authorities to be in the same position again to be able to do things at the local level.
The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, mentioned tourism, which is absolutely crucial to delivering economic growth, particularly in certain areas, such as Bedfordshire, where we have the delights of two national zoos and various other things.
My noble friend Lord Lansley and other noble Lords raised the very important issue of empowerment. It is partly because of the need to try to delve into and understand this that my noble friend Lady Scott and I tabled some of our amendments. Amendment 2 seeks precisely to understand what is meant by the devolution of transport powers; I appreciate that the Minister provided some clarity on that. Amendment 5 is about public safety; that term has significant implications, some of which were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. My noble friend Lady Scott raised the important issue of LRFs and where they will fit in the future. The importance is around how this will work in the future and the clarity as we go through this process. It is not just about what areas people are competent in but what powers, funding and responsibilities they will be given to deliver that.
The Earl of Clancarty
“(h) the arts, creative industries, cultural services and heritage.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment adds the arts, creative industries, cultural services and heritage as an area of competence for strategic authorities.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, my Amendment 6 would rectify what is, at present, a significant omission from the list of areas of competence: cultural concerns. Amendment 51 is intended to ensure that this area has its own commissioner. I share Amendment 52 with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on a related subject; they both wish to change 7 persons to 8 persons.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and my noble friends Lord Freyberg and Lady Prashar for their support. I welcome the discussions I have had with Culture Commons. I thank the Local Government Association for its briefing and its support for this amendment. I support my noble friend Lady Prashar’s amendment, which has very similar intentions to my own, and look forward to her contributions as well as those of others.
I have given some thought about how this area of competence should be titled. I believe that certain cultural concerns need to be specified at this level in the Bill to know more precisely what it is we are discussing. In this, I have taken my cue from the Government, who, in talking about education, for instance, refer directly to “skills and employment support” as an area of competence, as currently listed in paragraph (b) of Clause 2.
The arts, including our theatres, art centres and more, and cultural services, including museums, libraries and more, provide what is termed the local cultural infrastructure. It is an infrastructure that, traditionally, local authorities have funded in significant part without a great deal of thought about commercial return, even though we know from countless Arts Council studies how much such investment is repaid many times over. It is therefore about funding—the funding that has survived—for the social good and the provision of a civic necessity. This is an infrastructure that, between 2009 and 2024, according to a report produced by the University of Warwick for the Campaign for the Arts, has suffered over 50% in cuts, as the Minister is well aware.
It could be argued that, without the statutory provision afforded by the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, the losses would have been even worse. This is specifically an aspect over which the mayor should have oversight because of the importance not just of economic growth but of cultural growth to a region—of course, one informs the other. Some of our councils, such as the one in Birmingham, are in dire straits in that respect. The first thing that needs to happen, irrespective of this legislation, is for this sector of the arts and cultural services to be properly funded again.
It is also true that there are a minority of councils where arts funding is virtually zero, and where councils have unforgivably said, “If you want the arts, take the train into London and go and watch a play in the West End”. The arts need to be supported—and in every local area, because local areas make up regions. That is why local growth plans, and the mapping of our arts and cultural ecosystem, are important. Despite the cuts, local authorities—and indeed district councils—are still hugely important as a mechanism for funding, not least because they have the local knowledge.
The arts are also slightly different from the more commercialised end of the creative industries. As I say, all regions should be seeking to support the arts, but not necessarily all the more commercialised creative industries, since certain localities or regions will or should be developing their own industries, such as in film or TV, gaming, digital and tech. The Local Government Association briefing helpfully points to the creative places growth fund and the Tees Valley creative investment zone as examples of these specifically industrial concerns and sources of funding, which of course are important in their own right—as is tourism, in relation to our arts and heritage. I support what my noble friend Lord Freyberg said on the previous group about the use of what will be large sums from the tourism levy for cultural purposes. If the moneys are used in this way, they will return to hospitality through making our cultural attractions even more attractive.
But tourism and cultural concerns are separate issues. Tourism drags in a lot of other things, including transport, for instance. It is important then to make the distinctions that I have made in this amendment between the arts, the creative industries, cultural services and heritage, for quite practical reasons because of the strong subtext of the Bill—one might almost say supertext —which is economic growth. There is the danger that, in the drive for growth through the creative industries, we lose sight of the importance of our basic cultural infrastructure and the importance of a region’s cultural as well as economic growth. The mayor should be as concerned about that existing infrastructure as having an effective creative industry strategy. Both of course are important and will feed into each other.
From this area of competence other things flow, whether or not they are formalised legislatively. Later in the Bill, we will discuss the treatment of cultural assets and local growth plans, in connection with amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and myself. As I said, I have tabled Culture Commons’s recommendation of a cultural ecosystem map, which would be hugely helpful. I have mentioned art centres and theatres already, but increasingly assets such as artists’ studios, grass-roots music venues and recording studios, some of which used to be able to thrive commercially, are under threat and require state intervention if we want to hold on to them. Where there are real concerns and gaps, mayors should be able to appeal formally to central government.
Finally, this should be an area of competence because every strategic authority should have these concerns. Not every mayor will have the experience or natural inclination of a Tracy Brabin, of course, but they should have the framework in which to act. I have two questions for the Minister. Does she believe that such cultural concerns should be an area of competence? I do not believe that it overlaps with any other area of competence. Secondly, if so, what does she understand as the responsibilities of a strategic authority in this respect? I have presented my argument, but I am open to other opinions. I beg to move.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, but I shall also speak to my amendment, which is simpler. As I go through my remarks, noble Lords will see the rationale for my amendment. It is clear that the Bill strengthens the architecture for economic growth. It stops short of embedding cultural and heritage ecosystems within this framework and it does not provide a clear mechanism through which MHCLG, DCMS and DSIT and their arm’s-length bodies can work collaboratively with strategic authorities. It leaves the very sectors, culture and heritage, which are the lifeblood of civic life, which encourage engagement by communities and which are a crucial part of the creative industries’ ecosystem, outside the formal machinery of devolution.
Cultural heritage, in my view, needs to be part of the core toolkit for mayors, since devolution is more than just economic growth. If this new architecture is to work, civic and cultural capabilities, which are the connective tissue of local life, have to thrive, so we need to create spaces where intercultural dialogue can take place.
Intercultural dialogue is not just a slogan but a bridge builder, where an ongoing practice of listening, understanding and negotiating difference to sustain social cohesion prevails for people to meet across boundaries, build trust, shape a shared sense of purpose and see themselves as part of a common story. Culture can be a powerful lever, used properly, to avoid the balkanisation of communities and arrest the intensification of difference in an era where identity politics are rife.
As we begin to develop a more robust regional tier of governance, we must ensure that the aims of fostering understanding and strengthening social bonds are woven into the strategic functions and that this change is seen as an opportunity for genuinely building social inclusion, not social division. I would argue that social cohesion matters for our national security, because we need to ensure that local devolution will help to harness national cohesion. This amendment will, in my view, go a long way in helping to ensure that there is deliberate engagement to coalesce around common issues that deepen what are called democratic behaviours and citizenship.
This amendment will not impose any fiscal or bureaucratic burdens but will ensure that culture and heritage sit alongside other competences. We need national economic renewal, but we also need social renewal. These measures as a whole will build trust and a sense of belonging. I am aware that culture and heritage are often characterised as cross-cutting issues, but the same could be said of other competences. It is because they sit across so many parts of people’s lives that they should not be left to discretionary treatment but should be integrated purposefully into the remit of this Bill.
This amendment is not just an adornment but is foundational and will give human meaning to structural changes. I also want to make it clear that this amendment is not prescriptive about scale, timing or configuration, because it will be rightly worked through by mayors with central government. I hope that the amendment will be looked at sympathetically and I thank Culture Commons for the support that it has provided.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am in favour of all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 6, which I have co-signed. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for introducing the amendment today and so eloquently expressing why it is so important to every strand of British life. Sitting next to a Lancastrian, it gives me great pleasure to extol the virtues of Yorkshire arts, creative industries, cultural services and heritage. I pause to give my best wishes, too, to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and wish her a speedy return to this place. Having broken my ankle, I know how irritating it is to be immobile, but you have to let nature take its course.
As the MP at the time, I was delighted to be patron of Thirsk Museum. Many noble Lords may not know that Thomas Lord came from Thirsk, so when you go to Lord’s, think of Thirsk. James Herriot was also a son of Thirsk and I pay tribute to his son and daughter, who are keeping his memory alive. The James Herriot museum is one of the most visited museums in Thirsk and North Yorkshire. We are also very lucky to have the more recent Rural Arts centre, which is very active and a great contribution to local culture and the local economy.
Will the Minister say whether it was an oversight that arts, creative industries, cultural services and heritage were omitted? Will she look favourably on this amendment to ensure that they are covered in the context of this Bill? This group of amendments is entirely complementary to later amendments that come in my name, and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I support these amendments this afternoon.
Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to support the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I wholeheartedly welcome this Bill. I also wish my noble friend the Minister a happy birthday for yesterday. I was delighted to hear her cite examples of good practice from my old region, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, especially on clean energy. As a city councillor I represented the poorest ward in Liverpool, and as an MEP I had the privilege of representing over 40 north-west local authorities.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to support Amendment 6, to which I have added my name, and to express my full agreement with the case made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I also support Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. Both amendments address a clear omission in the Bill by placing the arts, culture and creative industries, cultural services and heritage explicitly within the areas of competence of strategic authorities, precisely where local government, the Local Government Association and the sector itself understand them to sit. Amendment 51, also in the noble Earl’s name, provides the necessary consequential provision to ensure that this competence can operate coherently in practice. Together, these amendments bring clarity, not complication, and I strongly support them.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 6 in the name of my noble friend Lord Clancarty and Amendment 10 in the name of my noble friend Lady Prashar. I have spoken to a number of people in local government and become convinced that the new strategic authorities could benefit their regions if they had competence over the heritage and cultural sector.
Noble Lords have only to look at the catastrophic situation in the arts and cultural sector in the West Midlands to understand their importance. Birmingham has reduced the funding of arts in the city from £10 million in 2010 to a mere £1.1 million in 2024-26. In 2015, when the first big cuts were announced, they were in part because the political dysfunction of the city council persuaded the Arts Council to redirect funds, with a terrible effect on the city’s cultural and heritage life. Since then, the crisis has continued. The result of this long decline in funding was that in 2024 the city council signed off 100% reductions to funding for some of the most internationally recognised city institutions—the CBSO, Birmingham Rep, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Ikon Gallery, Fabric dance and dozens of community cultural organisations; the list goes on.
Some of these cuts have led to entrepreneurial responses by the city’s cultural sector. For instance, John Crabtree at the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre has put on a more commercial and popular offer that has helped to stabilise the Birmingham Royal Ballet, which is also housed there. The Mayor of the West Midlands, who has strategic authority over the region but does not have legal competence for the cultural sector, has been able to direct some financial support through the regional authority’s cultural leadership board. It has managed to use money left over from the underspend on the Commonwealth Games and wider devolution funding to channel money to at least some of the most important cultural bodies in the city.
However, all these payments are one-off and do not replace longer-term core funding. They are not able to reach many smaller community cultural bodies, which have subsequently closed. In a city where there is huge concern about youth crime, that seems to be a retrograde and regrettable step. Imagine how much more effective the authority could have been if it had a statutory board to oversee and direct more extensive funds to the cultural sector across the region. I would hope that the establishment of a statutory heritage board in the West Midlands Combined Authority, with constituent authorities as members, would bring stability and greater funding to the sector across the region. In the process, that would allow local and national funding bodies to release money to the region and attract private philanthropy.
The acceptance of Amendment 6 would allow this competence and support for the cultural sector and the creative industries. As many other noble Lords have said, the heritage sector is so important for bringing together communities in a region, for giving them a sense of identity and for attracting tourism into the area. I ask the Minister, with her impressive career in local government, to appreciate how important such an additional competency could be in boosting regional development and cohesion.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am very supportive of Amendments 6 and 10. I would have added my name to them, but the slots were already gone on Amendment 6. I am agnostic about the difference in wording between Amendments 6 and 10. Like the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, I am keen to use this opportunity to discuss the best form of wording, but it is important that these areas of life are added to the competences for the strategic authorities, simply because they are the things that make life worth living. I had the privilege of being the Arts Minister as we were bouncing back from the pandemic—a time when people were cut off from the arts, creativity and heritage—and saw the natural yearning in us all to enjoy these things. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and others, they are also the things that forge communities, bring people together across all their differences and help boost a sense of pride in place and a sense of belonging.
It is tempting often to think of them as a drain on resources but, as Amendment 6 does, that mixes things that might be parts of the subsidised creative sector and the creative industries, which are huge engines of growth, with massive employers, often some of the biggest employers in the strategic authority areas that we are talking about. That is one of the reasons why the creative industries were one of five priority areas for the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer and are one of the eight priority areas for the Government now. We all agree about the huge importance of these industries to our economy overall.
The arts, whether subsidised or run commercially, are vital for the skills pipeline that drives all this, and heritage is the infrastructure that underpins them. Our historic houses, churches, heritage railways and more are not just the filming locations for so many of our brilliant TV and film productions; they are places where people can gain skills that they take into other areas of the economy. The Minister knows well Knebworth, which has been the site of many rock concerts from the time of the Rolling Stones to Robbie Williams. These locations are places for literary festivals that draw people in for so much more.
In discussions with local authority leaders when I was in government, I also saw how enlightened local authority leaders could see that, if they invested in the arts, they could save in other areas. If you could get people engaged in arts and creativity, you could save money in your education budget or health budget. They saw the boost in well-being. In so many of the other strategic competences that have been set out, it is important that we think about the arts, heritage and creativity.
It was also clear for me in my time in government that some local authorities get it more than others. I had the privilege of meeting all four shortlisted places for the most recent UK City of Culture competition. It was clear that the four had excellent chief executives and often the local authority leader had previously held the culture portfolio and could see the power of this to galvanise local businesses, employers, universities and more to leverage the opportunities and investments. We have seen from Hull, Coventry and most recently the brilliant Year of Culture in Bradford the inward investment to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. I see my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth—Hull University carried out a good study into the economic impact of Hull’s year as City of Culture, which continues to bring great benefit to that city and wider region.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in the previous group mentioned his role in One North East. I have seen throughout my life the power of the arts and arts-led regeneration across Tyneside, from the Baltic Gallery to what is now the Glasshouse International Centre for Music, rippling up the Tyne to the Mouth of the Tyne Festival and regeneration in Whitley Bay.
But it is also clear that some local authorities do not get it. We have heard about those that have sadly not invested as much. I found myself as a Minister critical of a number of local authorities, including some controlled by my own party. It was not a party-political issue. I found myself criticising Suffolk County Council, the Conservative council, when it slashed its arts budget, the Greens in Bristol City Council and Labour in Nottingham City Council. As the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, pointed out, I followed closely the travails of Birmingham City Council after that city, the largest local authority in Europe, was bankrupted. There were frantic discussions between DCMS and the commissioners who were appointed. They were tempted to sell off some of what they could see as assets, the art collection and the historic buildings in that city. We are not going for those easy wins. These are collections that have taken generations to build up but can be lost in an instant.
If there is not this statutory message, the issue is not always viewed as a priority and certainly not the priority that it ought to be. Even with devolution and trusting strong local leaders, it is important that we give that encouragement and that nudge, particularly if the authorities are to have the powers that we have heard of in relation to the tourism levy. There is a mixture of opinions out in the country about what that will mean for heritage, tourism and local arts. Some are enthusiastic, while some are more sceptical about whether they will see the benefits or whether they will be diverted into some of the other areas that are already set out in the Bill.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I would like to make a point of clarification, if I may, on the Ipswich cuts. The Greens were protesting the cuts, not doing them.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I want to speak to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I became leader of Brighton council in 1987. One of the first things that we did was triple our spending on the Brighton Festival. At the time it seemed like a fairly minor thing, but it triggered a lot of inward investment through leverage. It demonstrated to me the importance and the value of public sector investment in the arts. Since then, the Brighton Festival has grown; it is now one of the largest arts festivals in the country. But you have to make that important statement to attract extra funding and inward investment.
I currently chair a seafront regeneration board for Brighton and Hove City Council. One of the things I am quite determined to do is to bring a new major art gallery to our city, because it is one of the missing elements. Those things have a long-term strategic benefit and that is why I think adding this as an area of competence to strategic authorities is very important.
After all, it is one of the Government’s missions. We often talk about the £128 billion value to the UK economy of the arts. If we can embed that statutorily, we can grow and develop our reputation. We are one of the arts growth leaders in the world economy. It would greatly help our growth mission and our economic and industrial mission if we were to place this as an important strategic responsibility.
Without that, as others have said, it is not there—it is voluntary and it is very much up to the localities to determine, as they rightly should, what their priorities are. But it is an encouragement, and that long-term commitment and encouragement will make a very significant difference to the development of arts and cultural services across the UK.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I would like to add a small voice to the chorus of support for these amendments. I do so from the perspective of my role as the owner of a cultural institution in Devon and my work on the Exeter place partnership, which has been particularly successful in encouraging arts and heritage activities within the city over recent years, such as Radio 1’s Big Weekend, the Rugby World Cup and the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It has been a tremendous success for the city.
I do not want to repeat what has been so excellently stated by many noble Lords. It does not need repeating. But there is one area to consider that maybe has not been emphasised: the importance for the strategic authorities created under this Bill of having competency over the arts and creative industries within their region. If they do not have the competency over these areas within their region, obviously someone else is going to, and that will be a central authority. That is going to homogenise and fail to develop the cultural identity of the strategic authority region. If we can bestow that core competency on the strategic authority, we will see the identity of that strategic authority grow and improve. It will better sustain the health and vibrancy of the strategic authority itself—not just the region but the strategic authority—and we should think of that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches very much support the inclusion of this measure—above all because, if it is enlisted as one of the areas of competence, it will strengthen the argument that strategic authorities will have to make with the all-powerful Treasury that this is one of the funding elements that must be included.
I declare an interest: I live in Saltaire, which is a world heritage site. We are an open world heritage site, which means that we cannot charge for entry. The delicacy of our relations with Bradford Council, with a very strapped budget in terms of providing the resources to cope with the tourists and visitors, is very much one of the things we have to struggle with. As other noble Lords have said, Bradford has just had the most successful City of Culture year. It has done a huge amount for social cohesion and morale—indeed, for all the things the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was talking about earlier, in terms of expanding people’s horizons and bringing people together.
Culture has been funded through a range of different streams. We all know about and remember the battles with Arts Council England about funding areas outside London. We have seen the way in which local councils used to pull cultural elements together through education in schools, local music arrangements and so on. They have dismantled those music hubs, which have been played around with—they have been constructed and put together, then taken apart—and schools have become very separate. If we are to build back to local intervention, local help and regional support, culture needs to be stressed as one of the things that is of enormous benefit to all of us, both socially and economically. It has been squeezed as councils at all levels have had to squeeze their budgets; they have found that culture is one of the things that has to go, as other things seem more important immediately, but it leaves a huge gap in the long run.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, before I speak to these amendments, I have a point of clarification: I believe that my noble friend Lord Parkinson was referring to Bristol, not Ipswich.
The amendments in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, would add the arts, creative industries, cultural services and heritage as an area of competence. The noble Earl has long been a vocal advocate for the cultural and creative sectors; his contributions to these debates and their economic, social and civic value are well recognised by the Committee. The case made by the noble Earl is compelling, as is the case made by the noble Baroness.
Cultural policy is most effective when it is shaped locally, with the flexibility to reflect the distinct histories, assets and ambitions of local areas; we have heard this from pretty much every noble Lord who has spoken today. Taken together, these amendments ask an important question: what role do the Government envisage for culture within the devolution framework? The Bill as drafted is silent on this point. Many combined authorities already treat culture as a strategic priority; local leaders would welcome clarity that they may continue to do so within the new statutory framework.
As with earlier groups of amendments, the issue here is not simply whether culture matters—few in this Committee would dispute that, I think—but whether the Government’s model of devolution is sufficiently flexible and ambitious to allow strategic authorities to support and grow the cultural life of their areas. These amendments invite the Government to set out their thinking and explain whether the omission of culture from Clause 2 is deliberate or merely an oversight. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for Amendments 6 and 51, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, for Amendment 10. These amendments seek to create a distinct area of competence for culture; and to enable a mayor to appoint a commissioner to this additional area of competence. As noble Lords will be aware, we had long discussions about this matter during the passage of the then Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
When I was thinking about this, I thought I would have a look at what was going on in Hertfordshire, my own county, which calls itself the Hollywood of the UK. That might be disputed territory, but that is what it calls itself. When you look at the economic impact in Hertfordshire, there was film and TV investment of £3.7 billion, and 4,000 direct jobs, but 7,000 to 19,000 jobs if you include supply chain and freelance workers. There were major new investments, such as Sunset Studios in Broxbourne, which brought £300 million a year into the local economy; Sky Studios Elstree has an estimated value of over £3 billion over the first five years; and then there are Warner Brothers, Elstree Studios, and all the rest.
I know that is the economic dimension of this, but the whole ecosystem starts with local arts and grass-roots infrastructure, skills and training, and inspiring a new generation of creatives to go into the industry. Mayors and strategic authorities can, and already do, play a very important role in these areas. That is precisely why the Bill’s existing areas of competence have been framed as they have. They are deliberately broad, enabling a wide range of activity to fall within scope, including cultural, creative and heritage activity.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, for correctly highlighting the power of these activities to tackle some of the divisions we are seeing in society; they play a very powerful role in that respect. My noble friend Lady Griffin highlighted the importance of skills enabling the culture industries to thrive, which illustrates the cross-cutting nature of the competences because skills in the creative industries and elsewhere are included in the competences as we see them.
For example, Clause 41 extends a broad power to strategic authorities to encourage and promote visitors to their area. That power sits under the “Economic development and regeneration” heading. This demonstrates how these activities are intended to be captured without the need to list them in a separate policy area. Indeed, many authorities already fund and support culture and heritage initiatives using their existing powers.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made a point about the West Midlands and Birmingham. As we have already had north-west and Yorkshire examples, I will use the example of the West Midlands Combined Authority, which invested £4.1 million into arts and culture projects as part of the legacy funding following the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
However, I take the noble Viscount’s point that for local authorities this has been a very difficult time when they are faced with the difficult choice between whether they fund the adult care services and the children’s services or arts services. That is why this Government have started to work on the fair funding of local government so that we can get local government’s confidence back that there is the possibility to invest.
The provisional 2026-27 settlement will make available £78 billion in core spending power for local authorities in England. That is a 5.7% cash-terms increase compared with 2025-26. By the end of the multi-year period, we will have provided a 15.1% cash-terms increase, worth over £11 billion, compared with 2025-26. The reforms ensure that this funding is allocated fairly and that the places and services that need it most are supported. It is for services such as adult care and children’s services, but it will also ensure all areas are able to deliver at the kinds of cultural services that we have been talking about.
In my own area, I hung on to the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage. In spite of successive cuts in funding, we recognised its value to our community, not only in terms of our strong cultural life but to skills and our economy. It is what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, called recognising the long-term strategic benefit of what that brought to our community. While I am talking about specific places, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned Bradford, and I congratulate Bradford on its fantastic year as City of Culture. It has done an amazing job, and we look forward to that continuing in Bradford and elsewhere around the country.
On commissioners, I note that they are an optional appointment for mayors to support delivery in a specific area of competence. Mayors are able to shape the exact brief of the role, and it would therefore be reasonable, for instance, for a commissioner focused on economic development and regeneration to also lead on a strategy focused on culture and the creative industries.
However, I note the concerns of all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, who is a great champion in this area, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I would be very happy to meet them and discuss this further before we get to Report. I hope that with these reassurances, the noble Earl feels able to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I will be brief. I am grateful for all the support across the Committee that my noble friend Lady Prashar and I have had for our amendments. I am disappointed by the Minister’s initial response. I am very happy to meet her; it is essential that we do so between now and Report.
I will pick up on a couple of points. I am very happy that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, mentioned education, which is so important. We are basically saying that we have an area of competence that has its own identity; it is not covered by anything else. I am not sure whether, for “local infrastructure”—which is the competence in paragraph (a)—the first thing that people will think about are the arts. There is a massive danger that local arts will get forgotten in favour of the commercialised end of the creative industries. That worries me more than anything else.
My noble friend Lady Prashar spoke about social cohesion, which is an important part of this. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, talked out the transformation of cities. This amendment would have a huge effect on cities. Having this as its own area of competence would make a massive difference; it would be a game-changer in how strategic local authorities and the public look at the legislation when it becomes an Act. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(h) rural affairs.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would add “rural affairs” to the list of areas of competence in clause 2 of the Bill.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 7 and 128 in my name. I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for what he said in his earlier remarks.
The English devolution White Paper, published last year, set out the Government’s intentions for this Bill, including the exploration of
“a better route for rural communities to be considered in local policy decision making”.
The specific reference to “rural communities” is key, given that the Bill, as it currently stands, does not have a single reference to “rural”, “landscape” or “farming” in all its 371 pages. With the national focus on meeting housing targets, delivering large-scale infrastructure and supporting the Government’s growth mission, it is essential that rural areas are not forgotten and that rural communities feel that they have a genuine say in the decisions affecting them. It is important to note that 85% of England’s land area is classified as rural, with around 17% of the country’s population living in those areas. Rural areas have context-specific needs and challenges, and we should take this opportunity to ensure that these communities get the fair representation, strategic investment and support that they need to thrive.
Amendment 7 seeks to add “rural affairs” as an area of competence in Clause 2. Adding rural affairs to the list of competences would, in turn, allow mayors to appoint a specific rural affairs commissioner, if they so wish. As it stands, each competence in Clause 2 can be applied differently in rural and urban settings. There is a concern that in strategic authorities that contain both rural and urban communities, the strategic focus for commissioners covering these competences will lead towards the urban, with rural communities being treated as an afterthought.
Adding rural affairs as an area of competence would ensure that a specific rural affairs commissioner can be appointed to cover the range of needs of rural communities. It would also, incidentally, enable mayors to convene meetings with local partners, as set out in Clause 21, on rural affairs, and enable rural affairs to be one of the thematic areas on which neighbouring mayors can request collaboration, as set out in Clause 22. While Amendments 56 and 60, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, have a similar aim of ensuring the appointment of a commissioner with responsibility for rural affairs, my amendment, in keeping with the objectives of the Bill, seeks to enable this to be an option available where necessary, with the decision on whether to appoint one ultimately being made locally. My amendment would also allow rural affairs to become a thematic area to which other functions in the Bill can refer, in addition to the clause on commissioner appointments.
As this Bill draws many provisions from the Greater London Act, there is a need to safeguard and ensure that measures being brought forward are not purely urban-centric in their approach and that different contexts are being considered across strategic areas, including those with significant rural populations. Amendment 128 would provide that method of safeguarding. This proposed new clause would place a duty on strategic authorities and their mayors to have regard to the needs of rural communities when considering whether or how to exercise any of their functions. As a recent report commissioned by the Rural Housing Network noted:
“Bill amendments that place a duty on combined authorities to consider the needs of rural communities would help ensure that rural housing is not overlooked in favour of urban-focused strategies and investment plans, and that accountability mechanisms are available to rural communities and advocates”.
I welcome Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, which would add public and active transport provision to the areas to which strategic authorities and their mayors must have regard. These would be vital inclusions to the duty relating to the needs of rural communities. I further welcome Amendment 260 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington.
Rural areas are important economic drivers for farming, food production and other local businesses, as well as tourism. According to the House of Lords Library, in 2022 predominantly rural areas of England contributed an estimated £315 billion in gross value added to England’s economy, representing 16.2% of England’s total GVA. Historically, investment has been focused on urban areas, ignoring the potential for rural areas to contribute to the local and national economy, inspire inward investment from the private sector and meet essential needs in food production, health and well-being. With their rich ecology and large landscapes, rural areas also present an opportunity to target investment towards significant gains around nature recovery and climate resilience. We cannot miss this opportunity to recognise the value of our rural communities.
Along with well-respected organisations supporting rural communities, including the Rural Housing Network, the Country Land and Business Association and the Rural Services Network, and as was highlighted in briefings by the Royal Town Planning Institute, I believe this Bill should be strengthened through the strategic focus on rural growth in these amendments. Their inclusion would help identify the enabling infrastructure needed to support rural communities and ensure that their needs are considered in recent and upcoming planning reform, as well as this devolution programme. I beg to move.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and thank her for introducing this group of amendments. I will speak to Amendments 52, 56, 60 and 260 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his support for all of them and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for signing Amendment 52.
The noble Baroness has fulfilled the first part of what the Royal Town Planning Institute—I do not think it is any relation to her good self—said in seeking a duty to consider the needs of rural communities. My amendments propose the second thing it asked for: the establishment of rural commissioners where appropriate. This answers the question put by my noble friend Lord Lansley about where in the Bill there is a legal basis to create other commissioners, so my amendments dovetail entirely with those in her name.
It is important to recognise that in the old days, in the first Labour Government to which I was elected— I was not elected; I was elected to the Official Opposition, let me get the facts right, my memory is playing tricks with me—one of their early proposals was to create regional development agencies, I think they were called. The beef or the grief I had with that was that, on paper, North Yorkshire, probably one of the most deeply rural, sparsely populated counties in the country, represented 11% of the population of the RDA. One would hope that one might get 11% of the funding, but we never got anywhere remotely near that.
Also, there used to be a policy of rural proofing. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, chaired a committee that looked into rural issues and focused quite a lot on rural proofing. That policy is still reflected on the Defra website, and there have been updates: the most recent one on this page was 2 December 2022. Rural proofing had a very special role to play. It ensured that every policymaker and legislator, like ourselves —so the Library note would have reflected this, presumably, on earlier Bills—would look at, assess and take into account the effects of proposed policies on rural areas.
Why is this important? Look at delivering a health service. My father was a rural GP; it is very difficult to access GP surgeries. It is even more difficult to access hospitals in rural areas. It was a 50-mile round trip from where I was brought up to the big hospital. Ambulances obviously have further to go. Look at delivering social care. Carers are not paid for the time they spend on the road, which is often not factored in. That is terrible and should be addressed. On education, we have had a terrible problem with school buses since this Government got rid of the rural deprivation grant, I think it was called. York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority is getting the blame for having to revisit the provision of school buses and the taxi service to get children to schools which are more than three miles away from where they live. This policy has taken away the funding by scrapping that grant.
There used to be a rural commission in Defra which looked at all this rural proofing. I have mentioned some of the policy areas, but there are many others. Some 85% of England’s land area is classified as rural and 17% of the country’s population live in these rural areas, yet so often, particularly at local government level where there is an urban/rural mix, this is not reflected. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I had common cause—she will not disagree with me because it is on the record and I am not quoting her because she is not here—as we both opposed the orders for a metro mayor for York and North Yorkshire and I think that she, like me, also opposed the combined authority for North Yorkshire.
I believe that a metro mayor in areas such as Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester—I am being nice to north- west people at the moment—works where there is a concentrated landmass with a big population in that area. It is perfectly justified for those who wish it, but I do not think it works in rural areas. It certainly has not worked politically, because all the rural voters stayed at home and we have ended up with a Labour mayor for York and North Yorkshire, which is not so excellent for those of us who live there. There is a lesson there.
I also believe that districts and boroughs were closer to the people. People knew exactly where the councillors lived and exactly what they were responsible for and felt that they were more accountable. We have also lost overall control. We have a majority of one now on the combined authority. Again, there was a political lesson that I tried to warn my Government about at the time, but it did not go quite as well as I would have expected.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 7 and 128 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. They are supported by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association, and an honorary member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and I was once a rural development commissioner.
These amendments would add rural affairs to the areas of competence for strategic authorities and require those bodies to have regard to the needs of rural communities. As the noble Baroness explained, these amendments would ensure that rural areas are not overlooked in the affairs of mayors and combined authorities in relation to the use and development of land, regeneration, housing, employment, health and well-being. The fact is that rural areas have distinct characteristics, but rural communities are likely to comprise only a small fraction of the total population of a mayoralty or combined authority. The amendments would ensure that the needs of these localities get proper consideration.
I shall illustrate the kind of differences that distinguish a rural area from the rest by reference to the all-important housing matters that affect so many households in these places. They are very likely to be areas of lower incomes and higher house prices relative to the rest of the strategic authority area. The local population also faces extra competition for available accommodation from those commuting from elsewhere, rightsizing retirees and, in many places, second home buyers and those letting on a short-term basis of the Airbnb variety. Yet the amount of social housing is appreciably lower: about 11% for areas classified as rural locations, compared with 17% for the country as a whole. The right to buy has removed a larger proportion of council housing in these areas, and many villages now face a virtual absence of affordable homes for those born and bred in the area or needing to live there for family, caring or occupational reasons. Without affordable homes, rural communities can die. Recently, I chaired the Devon Housing Commission, which made important recommendations in relation to the strategic advantages of combined authorities. It also gave clear warnings of the huge significance of housing pressures for those living in rural areas. Since rural housing schemes are mostly small, they do not trigger the obligation on house- builders to include any affordable accommodation.
Set against these many disadvantages facing rural areas, there are positive opportunities that can uniquely help to address their different circumstances. Rural exception sites allow development that would not be permitted elsewhere. Rural housing enablers can help match social housing providers with landowners. Special grants are available from Defra and Homes England, so on the plus side as well, things are different for rural communities. The danger is that these distinctions are not taken on board by authorities which have very many other matters on their plates. Hence the value of these two amendments in requiring attention to be given specifically to the special aspects, good and bad, facing rural areas, as illustrated by my housing example. These amendments would ensure that these areas get the priority they so clearly deserve and I strongly support them.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady McIntosh, to all of which I have added my name.
First, I must declare my interest in that I still have a family farming interest in Somerset, although I am now retired and live in Cornwall. I must also declare an interest—it is more of a perspective, really—as having been the Prime Minister’s rural advocate under a previous Labour Government. I was charged with representing rural interests in the Blair Government and often reported directly to the Prime Minister himself, especially during the foot and mouth disease outbreak at that time, which caused major problems—both social and economic—for rural areas. At that time, I was also charged with producing an annual rural-proofing report for the Government. Believe me, it was badly needed—and still is, in my view. The Social Mobility Commission recently reported that inter- generational poverty in rural England is now as bad, if not worse, than in our most deprived urban slums.
I might add, just to prove my Cross-Bench credentials, that I was also asked to produce a one-off rural-proofing report for the Conservative Government some 10 years ago. I should say that I had more difficulty with the latter role than the former. No sooner had I produced my 2015 report outlining the important job that the rural affairs section of Defra had to play in the agenda than the department, under Liz Truss—she of sound judgmental fame—virtually closed down the rural affairs section, so the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ceased to be Defra and became just Def.
I am glad to say that those times are now over and the voice of the countryside is once again being heard. Defra still seems to be a slightly shy promoter of the rural voice in MHCLG, the Department for Transport, the Department of Health, the Department for Education and, above all, the Treasury. It needs to be saying again and again, “Hey, what about our agenda? What about those who live in the countryside?” In the same way, such a voice is needed, or is going to be needed, in the new strategic authorities. Mainstreaming rural issues into policy-making and decision-taking is fundamental to enabling all strata of rural society to engage fully with modern life; and to ensuring that rural businesses, which are the lifeblood of these communities, can thrive in even the remotest parts of England. Of course, having a rural voice at the top table—or, at the very least, a duty to consider rural needs in each and every region—is absolutely key to this agenda.
There are more VAT-able businesses per head of population in rural England than in urban England. There are more manufacturing businesses in the countryside than in the towns—per se, not just per head. The percentage of self-employed people in the countryside is also more than in the towns, especially—this is why I am particularly proud of my fellow country folk—among those who are below the poverty line. This proves to me that we country folk desperately want to stand on our own two feet, but we need help to do so; we need help to release that entrepreneurial spirit.
As was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Best, housing problems in most rural areas are worse than in towns. There are few affordable houses left. The houses are more expensive and wages are lower. The houses tend to be less well insulated and heating costs are higher; mains gas, for instance, is rare in rural areas. Of course, the solutions are different there than in the towns, but I will not go into that here.
Training and skills problems are also different. How does a young person get to their class in their college 15 miles away when there is no bus? There might be one at 11 am or once a week on a Tuesday, for instance, but that is of no use to anyone. After college, how do you then get your first job? It is probably 10 miles away or more. It is a rural Catch-22 situation: you cannot get a job without a set of wheels, and you cannot get a set of wheels without income from a job.
Again, there are solutions to these problems, such as Wheels to Work, but the solutions need knowledge and need thinking about, along with a drive to push them through. For that, you need someone at the top table to tell it as it is—someone who is perpetually thinking about rural issues to ensure that the right policies are put in place. We need to try to create local jobs in as many communities as possible. That means improving connectivity, broadband and mobile services, as well as enabling planning policies; again, both of those are large subjects that I will not go into here.
The point is that ordinary life in rural England—shopping, doctors’ visits or even sports for the kids—is immensely hard when the only, but vital, family car has gone to work with the breadwinner. This lack of a car also means that kids at many schools miss out on all the extracurricular activities—football, sports, drama, music, et cetera—because they have to be on that school bus which takes them back to their rural village immediately after lessons are finished.
Also, rural households in poverty experience what academics call a rural premium, with living costs some 14% higher than for their urban counterparts, according to the academics. There is no cheap mains gas, which I have already mentioned, but only Calor gas or electricity; there is only older housing stock with poor insulation; food, clothing and transport costs are consistently higher; and there is limited access to childcare, healthcare and other basic services. All this compounds financial vulnerability. Thus, I say again that you need someone who understands all this, and who can speak up for rural interests when decisions are being taken at the top table.
Another factor which underlines the need for rural focus or a rural commission in these strategic authorities is the desperate shortage of government funding for rural areas. Although it is quite obvious to anyone who thinks about it that it costs more to deliver services to remote and sparse populations, central government funding for rural councils is on average 40% less per head of the population than for urban authorities—yes, 40% less per head. This differential is about to get worse under the so-called fair funding review. Therefore, a rural commissioner, or at the very least a duty to consider rural communities, is desperately needed to find ways of minimising the harm that such urban prejudice imposes on rural people.
This prejudice already results in rural council tax payers, for instance, having to pay on average 20% more per head than their urban cousins. For too long, I have been knocking my head against this concrete wall of prejudice against rural areas—too long to think that there is any chance of actually changing the financial situation. That is why I believe it will require a real rural understanding and focus to come up with the imaginative solutions which are so desperately needed to correct this long-standing imbalance.
It is crucial that mayors should have to appoint a commissioner for rural affairs whenever there is a rural element in their bailiwick. It has to be someone who can promote new jobs and make the necessary links. As I say, I know from experience that such a person can make a big difference to the quality of life for many people, whether it be in business, sport, transport, education, health or housing; or whether it be for the young, old or those in between. The countryside deserves a voice at the top table, and I believe these amendments will provide it.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I support these amendments. I am absolutely fascinated by this debate. For most of my life I have lived in a city, and most of my friends think I am a city slicker. The truth is, however, that I was brought up in a rural community in a fairly remote part of north-east Essex in a rather lovely village called Great Bentley. In the time that has elapsed since I was brought up there over 50 years ago, the village has grown but it has also changed. Over that period, there has been a gradual removal—or a gradual eradication—of local services. There is a doctor and a primary school, but we used to have a very regular bus service, a whole range of small retailers, a chip shop, access to a bank and all the rest of it. Now, however, they have been in retreat and have disappeared.
A few years ago, I chaired a Co-op Party commission on restoring rural services and what we needed to do to reimagine what modern reality would look like, because you cannot just reflect on the past and say that was a glorious time; you have to look to the future in planning services. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made a really powerful argument about rural housing. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a council house in my village, and now very few people in that village have access to social housing. The percentage of the population that has is much reduced, probably 4% or 5%, and there are many people who are excluded from the jobs market because of that fact. We need to address that imbalance.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, as I have attached my name to Amendment 7, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and tabled my own Amendment 129, I will briefly join this very rich debate in which the case for this group of amendments, which sit broadly together, has clearly been made.
I will make a couple of additional points. One was provoked by the historic reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about the foot and mouth epidemic. This struck me, because it is an area on which I do a great deal of work: I do not believe that there is anything in the Bill about biosecurity or animal security. Your Lordships are trying to strengthen the human health elements of the Bill, but I wonder whether the Minister—I understand if she wants to write to me later—could reflect on what role strategic authorities might have in biosecurity and animal or plant diseases. I am thinking now of the situation with the continuing crisis of highly pathogenic avian influenza, known as H5N1, which is still affecting many of our factory farms and is a significant issue in particular areas. Is that something in which the strategic authorities would have a role? That was a question that arose from the debate.
I spoke extensively in the previous group on food production, farming and supporting farmers, so I will not go over the same ground. That is obviously an important part of rural communities, although it is by no means the majority. If we are to get more farmers into local areas and grow the vegetables and fruit that we need, then affordable housing, as was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, is a crucial issue. Wales in particular has done some interesting work looking at ways in which to get producers back on to the land through specific arrangements for housing. There are some interesting areas on which strategic authorities might have the power to act if the Bill is written in the right way.
In essence, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, made the argument for my Amendment 129 entirely. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, set out, this is actually an amendment to her larger amendment; it inserts “public and active transport provision” into the duties to consider the needs of rural communities. The case has already been made; I would just add that we need to be a great deal more aspirational about the possibilities for public and active transport in rural areas.
One of the recent small but significant Green wins was in the bus Bill, when the Government conceded that they would review rural bus services in the coming years. Some have said, “Oh, it is a rural area; there are just no bus services”—that is not an acceptable position. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, many young people in rural areas do not have a licence or cannot afford a car. We also have ageing populations in which increasing numbers of residents are unable to use a car and they need public transport. We also need active transport provision because it is one of the things that will help people to stay healthy.
Thinking about the possibility of aspiration, I recently travelled back from Kyiv by road through Poland and I was astonished at its quality. It went through a deeply rural, farming area with small villages. Beside the main road, there was a brilliant, separated cycle route; it went on and on through this rural area. If Poland can do it, and its distances are greater than ours, surely we can manage that kind of provision, too.
Finally, on active transport, we are talking at the most basic level about making sure that people are able to walk around villages. Very early in my political career, I went to a council by-election in central Bedfordshire, and I was quite astonished coming out of London. It did not surprise me that cycling from the train station was a pretty hairy experience; what did surprise me was that, when I got to the village, I found there was not a single pavement—everyone in this village just had to walk on the road with the cars. It did not have to be that way; it could have been arranged differently. There were lots of old historic buildings, but there could have been provision. Historically, there were footpaths; that is how people used to get around. We should restore footpaths and improve the provision. We need to think about public and active transport being a standard part of provision in rural areas, not something that just cannot be done.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. I have found that some of my views have changed slightly as I have listened to noble Lords. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, seeks to add rural affairs to the list of competences. Given the distinct challenges faced by rural communities, from connectivity to service provision and economic resilience, it is reasonable to ask whether the Bill adequately reflects the needs of communities.
While I was listening to the noble Baroness, I realised that I have concerns that in areas with large urban areas as well as rural areas, those urban areas could take out capacity and investment from the rural areas. When I go back into my history in local government, I remember the regional development agencies that did exactly that. I do not think that Wiltshire got a penny from the regional development agency; all of it went to Bristol and Bath. The Government should look at that to ensure that it does not happen now.
Amendments 52, 56 and 60, in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, relate to the appointment of a commissioner for rural affairs. I thank her for her extensive knowledge of this issue. She is right that rural affairs need to be at the forefront of policy-making, especially in authorities that may be predominantly rural but could be a mixture. However, I harbour some reservations about requiring mayors to appoint commissioners with competence for rural affairs. I believe that rural affairs should be a priority for the mayors themselves—the unitary authorities that make up the commission will, I assume, be both rural and urban—rather than delegating this responsibility to one commissioner.
We should remember that competences are not the same as powers or capabilities. Moreover, allowing mayors to make these appointments may result in the appointment of yes-men for the mayors, rather than individuals who could provide independent, robust scrutiny on behalf of rural communities. While I fully appreciate the intent behind these amendments, I am yet to be convinced that mayoral appointments of rural affairs commissioners will be the right mechanism to ensure that rural voices are heard.
Amendment 128 is also from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon; I thank her for her continued commitment to rural issues. As I have said, it should be a fundamental priority for any authority covering rural areas to consider their particular needs, especially at a time when these communities are being required to absorb substantial housing targets and sprawling solar farms. They deserve a meaningful say if this Bill is really about community empowerment. As I have said, I have a real problem with the mixture of urban and rural, and the issue of the rural voice coming through.
The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, raises the vital question of public and active transport provision in rural areas. Many of us who have been rural leaders over many years have struggled not just with providing that but with its cost and with making it the right type of transport for a particular area. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight the need for infrastructure that is tailored to rural lifestyles and connectivity.
Since I am talking about connectivity, I will turn to another form: technology. When I go back to Norfolk, I can never get anything on my machine or any other machine. There is no IT and no phone connection whatever. Many of our rural areas are like that. There is a two-tier system in this country for technology, but that cannot go on.
Finally, Amendment 260, tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, underscores that the impact of the Bill on rural areas has not yet been fully thought-through. That is the big issue for me. It is entirely reasonable to expect the Government to be transparent about the costs and benefits for rural communities. They have to go back to the drawing board to look at how we can ensure that our rural communities have equal access to the capacity, capabilities and finances that the mayoral authorities will have and that the new unitary councils will be able to use.
I look forward to the Minister’s response on how the Bill can recognise and enshrine the needs of rural communities, which we have heard this evening. At the moment, rural communities are feeling a bit let down by the Government, and this is an absolutely key opportunity to change that.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook. What she said was very important: the Government have to go back to the drawing board on the issue of rural areas. I can imagine an argument that says that it is implicit in all the areas of competence that all those people will take responsibility for rural areas. However, it is my view that that will not be sufficient. In an earlier group, I discussed how the regional development agencies had a role in rural development. It is very important that the Government go back in order to get this right.
I agree with the noble Baroness when she said that it may not be a commissioner who would do this. In my view, doing that requires the knowledge of a council leader from a rural council, because the relevant immediate knowledge is needed. The noble Baroness was absolutely right to ask whether the Government would go back to the drawing board. I hope that, by Report, the list of areas of competence for strategic authorities is revised, so that rural areas are seen to be protected and developed by the structure. Otherwise, there will be public opposition to the strategic authority, for the reasons that the noble Baroness identified in relation to Wiltshire. I have heard that in most RDAs the money goes to the urban areas. That happens—it has often been the case—because the immediate growth can be delivered in an area of high population, whereas the long-term growth in a rural area can be delivered by financial support at a lower pace.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall of Blaisdon and Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for their amendments on rural affairs, and I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate.
I will begin by responding to Amendment 7, tabled by my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon, which seeks to create a distinct area of competence for rural affairs. Strategic authorities cover a range of geographies in England, from highly urbanised areas, such as the West Midlands Combined Authority, to more rural geographies, such as the Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority. Mayors and strategic authorities will be empowered to support all communities within their geography, including rural communities.
It is for this reason that the areas of competence are deliberately broad in their definitions. The topics that they cover are matters which apply to all communities—for example, transport and local infrastructure or housing and strategic planning. We have heard lots of descriptions of why those topics are particularly important in rural areas, but they will be important in different ways to the way that they are important in urban areas. It is right that, at local level, local leaders are empowered to deal with them as appropriate in their area.
Many existing combined and combined county authorities are making use of powers which have not been badged as rural functions to support their rural communities. For example, the mayor of the York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority, David Skaith, is making use of transport functions to build the foundations for a working rural bus franchising model across the area. It aims to deliver a better bus service for areas that currently see only one bus a week—more of that later. Were a specific competence for rural affairs to be included, it could run the risk of encouraging rural areas to be considered in isolation. By that, I mean we do not want rural areas to become a silo that is only one person’s responsibility; we want it to be a responsibility across all those competences. With that in mind, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
I now turn to amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, which seek to ensure that mayors appoint a commissioner where any of their area is classified as a majority or intermediate rural area. I point out to the noble Baroness that, although the structure of the rurality funding in the formula has changed, it has not been taken out; it has been reallocated with the fair funding formula. We have built sparsity considerations into the fair funding formula. The way it has been done has been changed and it has a different name, but we have included consideration of sparsity in that funding formula.
To turn to her amendment, commissioners are an optional appointment for mayors to help bring additional expertise to support delivery in a specific area of competence. Mayors are able to shape the exact brief of the role. It would be reasonable, therefore, that a commissioner focused on economic development and regeneration could lead a strategy focused on the rural economy, for example. As I have outlined, rural matters cross multiple areas of competence. Commissioners will not be precluded from addressing these rural considerations in their work. In practice, it would be possible for a mayor to appoint a commissioner to an area of competence that has a rural relevance in the area, such as environment and climate change, and then give them a locally appropriate title, such as deputy mayor for the environment and rural affairs. These amendments would also mandate the appointment of a commissioner, removing the mayor’s right to choose whether to appoint a commissioner or not.
Amendment 128, tabled by my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon, would require strategic authorities and their mayors, when considering whether or how to exercise any of their functions, to have regard to the needs of rural communities. The Government fully recognise the importance of rural communities and are committed to ensuring that they benefit from devolution.
Mayors already have a strong track record of using their powers to support rural areas. For example, in the north-east, Mayor Kim McGuinness is investing £17 million into the rural economy, supporting farming businesses and rural tourism. The North East Combined Authority has established a dedicated coastal and rural taskforce to ensure that rural and coastal communities are fully represented in investment decisions.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, highlighted housing issues for rural areas. I am very grateful to him for his work on the Devon Housing Commission and his continual advocacy, when I am dealing with housing matters, that I keep considering the needs of rural communities. That has been really helpful.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, spoke about broadband infrastructure in rural areas. I visited colleagues of hers in Cromer recently, who were very keen to stress that among the other issues that coastal communities are facing. It is really important, but the Government’s view is that adding a statutory duty may create unnecessary complexity without delivering additional benefits. We want the benefits to come from the overall structure and empowering our mayors to act in the best interests of their communities.
I turn to the amendment to Amendment 128 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I fully agree that transport is vital to rural communities, but this issue is already well addressed through existing powers and investment. The Bus Services Act 2025 strengthens local leaders’ ability to protect services, and from 2026-27 more than £3 billion will support better bus services, including nearly £700 million per year for local authorities. Importantly, for the first time these allocations take rurality explicitly into account, recognising the higher cost of serving remote areas.
The noble Baroness mentioned biosecurity; I will respond to her in writing on that. She also referred to her earlier remarks on food security. To add to my earlier response, the good food cycle published in July 2025 sets out the Government’s vision to drive better outcomes from the UK food system for growth, health, sustainability and resilience. There are 10 outcomes in that cycle, on healthy and more affordable food, good growth, a sustainable and resilient supply and vibrant food cultures. It has a set of near-term priorities, including securing resilient domestic production, generating growth elsewhere in the food system which supports positive public health and environmental outcomes, and improving food price affordability and access—in particular, targeting costs that lead to food price inflation and supporting those who most need access to healthy, affordable nutrition. I am happy to write to her further on that if it would be helpful.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the Minister for making the special effort to provide that extra response, but that is what Westminster is doing. I am talking about what local authorities and strategic authorities can decide for themselves to do in their local area, not relying on a direction down from Westminster.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I take the point. That project is being supported by the Food Strategy Advisory Board, including extensive engagement across government. I will take back the point that that should include all tiers of local government, as the noble Baroness makes a fair point.
Through rail reform, mayoral strategic authorities will have a statutory role in the design of local rail services and all tiers of local government will benefit under the new Great British Railways business unit model, taking local priorities into account. The noble Baroness also referred to cycleways. I am very proud of where I live because my town was built with 45 kilometres of built-in cycle infrastructure. This is an important opportunity for our new towns as we develop the work of the taskforce. I know the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, will again be interviewing our Secretary of State in the Select Committee tomorrow on these and other matters. Gilston, which is a garden village near Harlow, made provision for a cycleway. We have to think about that. While we agree on the importance of these issues, the amendment is unnecessary because this Bill and other government activities will already enable authorities to secure improvements to rural transport without imposing an additional legal duty.
Finally, Amendment 260 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, would require the Secretary of State to publish an assessment of the impact of the Bill on rural areas before any regulations could be made using the powers in this Bill. Ahead of the introduction of the Bill, my department assessed the impacts of regulatory policies within it on businesses and households, urban and rural. This impact assessment was given a green rating by the Regulatory Policy Committee, indicating that it is fit for purpose. It would not be proportionate to complete another impact assessment solely for rural areas, given that our original assessment applies to those as well.
May I just refer to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron? He referred to the importance of the rural voice being heard across government. I completely agree. The mainstreaming of rural affairs across competences is vital, as is the freedom for mayors to address their local issues in the best way to tackle their local challenges.
In talking about bus services, the noble Lord reminded me of when I did a review of the universal credit system a while back. I was sent to Blandford Forum in Dorset. Some of the people who were working on their skills with the jobcentre had to visit the jobcentre every day. The problem with that was that the bus fare was £9 and there was only a bus to get there, with no bus to get home again; you may have wanted to improve your skills but it was very tricky to do so because, although you could get there, you could not get back home again. That was one of the big flaws in the universal credit system. Of course we want to keep track of people who are trying to develop skills, but there are difficult issues around that in rural areas.
When we discussed London-style bus services across the country—I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, will remember it well from the then levelling-up Bill—it raised the eyebrows of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. My noble friend lives in Cumbria, so London-style bus services are quite a long way from the service she gets in her local area. I understand the issues, but I think that enabling mayors —and their commissioners, if they choose to do it in that way—to address their local issues is the best way to tackle local challenges in these areas. For these reasons, I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. She referred to an impact assessment. We used to use the tried-and-tested method of tabling an amendment to ask for an impact assessment to be prepared. If the department has prepared an impact assessment, would it be possible for the Minister to publish it while this Bill is going through? That would be immensely helpful.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Let me just check with my civil servants so that I do not say something I should not say. I believe that it has been published; I will send the noble Baroness a link to where she can access it.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this short debate and to my noble friend the Minister for her response.
I am of course delighted that mayors are empowered to support every part of their constituency; it must be their aspiration that they do so. It is very good that there are such broad areas of competence. I warmly welcome the great examples from Yorkshire and the north-east cited by my noble friend. However, I firmly believe that this Bill must be, and must be seen to be, relevant to and beneficial for all areas of our country. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out, it is the case for many mayoral areas that, in population terms, such a tiny proportion of their constituents are from rural areas; it would be very easy to overlook their needs.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, spoke about rural-proofing. That is absolutely vital. I wonder whether we could have some discussions before Report on how there can be some sort of rural-proofing in this Bill. Personally, I would favour a duty that could be included in order to ensure that the needs of rural areas will be properly addressed. I recognise that it will be the desire of all mayors to ensure that they are properly representing and addressing the needs of all their constituents, but I fear that that might be very difficult when funding is stretched, as it is bound to be. I would like to see some means of ensuring that the needs of rural areas are properly addressed; perhaps we could discuss that further before Report. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment
Lord Gascoigne
“Establishing a strategic authorityBefore establishing a strategic authority, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the authority is capable of exercising the functions conferred upon it, having regard to its governance arrangements, financial sustainability, administrative capacity, and accountability mechanisms.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause ensures that before any new strategic authority is created that there are capability tests which the existing local authority/ies must pass before the Secretary of State grants additional powers.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in the passage of the Bill. I know we do not have to address it, but I was intending to speak at Second Reading and I had to pull out for personal reasons just beforehand. This is an issue that genuinely interests me. Every time I sit in these meetings or take part in these discussions, it feels like being at Davos or the United Nations, with so many titles and vice-presidents, and I feel a bit left behind not having any myself. I am a bit like my noble friend Lord Norton in that I am merely a bystander in this, someone who is interested. I am a political geek and a taxpayer; those are my interests. Like others, I congratulate the Minister on many belated happy returns for yesterday. I can think of no better way of spending your birthday than with some of your closest friends late at night in the House of Lords.
My Amendment 12 is embryonic. We are in Committee and I am happy to have a discussion; perhaps if the Minister is still feeling jovial from her party, we can continue that joviality and have another discussion. This amendment is simple, yet it would introduce an essential safeguard into the Bill. Given that the Secretary of State ultimately has the power in the Bill to create these new strategic authorities—it lies in his or her hands—this amendment would ensure that they are satisfied that each new authority is capable of doing what is expected of it before it is created. Those capability tests should be grounded and focused, though not exclusively, on four areas: first, governance arrangements, to ensure that it is transparent, able to make decisions and face scrutiny; secondly, financial sustainability, so that it is on a sound financial footing and able to carry out the new powers and deliver; thirdly, administrative capacity, and whether it has the right people, expertise and systems in place; and, finally, accountability mechanisms, to ensure that it has credible systems for scrutiny and democratic oversight. To be clear, I envisage the same sorts of tests applying to both the new mayoral authorities and the new unitary authorities.
Ultimately, I say with respect to the Minister, this is not game playing, a stunt or an effort to stop the Bill. It is grounded in my concern that there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that, before a new authority can exist, it must be ready and able to do what it says it will. The Bill talks about their functions, voting systems and the powers they will have, yet a Bill about empowering the people has nothing about whether the system being invented will be able to, any good at or even capable of delivering better services for the people—not to mention better value for money, though that is in a future group. I am sure the Minister is looking forward to me speaking on it in due course.
I am sure that some will say that this amendment is unnecessary. Those people who object will probably fall into three rough camps. The first will say, “We don’t need to worry. It’s going to be fine. We should take what we’re given; it is what it is and we can’t go around dictating from on high what it should be like on the ground”. But that is exactly what the Bill is doing: we are dictating what the new system should be like. We are saying that there should be a plan in place and how it will work. I think we should make sure that these authorities are capable of standing on their own two feet. Given that one of the arguments for reforming local government is that it is already quite messy and difficult to navigate, we surely do not want to create a system that is even more confusing. Before we hit the “Go” button, there needs to be effort on the ground and in Whitehall to ensure that the new structures in place are robust and coherent. That is not bureaucracy, it is just accountability. One of the many fears I have about the Bill, I am afraid to say, is that if transparency and accountability are not built in from the outset, that will make it harder to understand and hold people’s feet to the fire. These tests do that.
Another argument against this amendment will be that, ultimately, it should be for the people to decide whether the authority is doing a good job or not. I am a genuinely firm believer in democracy: it is precious and unique. Of course the electorate will ultimately be the judge, but that will come only after the changes have happened, years down the track. With so many elections already being delayed because of reorganisation, there will be no checks put in place before changes take place.
Finally, I am sure that some will say that it is not possible to test something that does not exist. However, we can do so, not just in the prep work and the planning of what is intended, but in seeing whether existing local authorities are good at what they are doing already: whether they are late or slow in delivery, whether services are being cut or expanded, their finances, workforce capacity, roadworks, housebuilding—you name it. Before noble Lords feel compelled—this has happened to me before—to defend the honour of local authorities, I pre-empt this by assuring them that I am certainly not blanketly saying that all local councils are not up to it. Equally, I am not saying that Whitehall is perfect—far, far from it. I am merely saying that, before we proceed to create and approve these new authorities, there should be a system to ensure that they will work, including how they will build on, incorporate or tackle issues in the pre-existing authorities.
There is one final area I will touch on, which we have talked about in passing already. I do not want to open this up into a broad debate about local government finance, but it does have read-through here. We all know the challenges and I do not want to dwell on it, but, across the land, capabilities are not uniform. I read some research that showed that councils in the north are twice as likely to be at risk as those in the south. Then there are the associated costs of reorganisation, never mind whether the new entity is going to be any good. Some organisations are already asking whether the current wave of reorganisation will save money or in some circumstances cost even more. Yet this Bill has no requirement to test capability, never mind finances, before those new bodies are created.
This Bill should not be seen as an exercise to create layer upon layer without thinking it through first. This is a serious issue. It is about spending serious sums of money on serious things affecting the lives of many, so it is important that we get it right. Devolution is meant to be about making the system work better, and that is what is driving this amendment. I recognise that many councils will do an enormous amount of work in getting these changes right, but rather than hoping that this version of devolution works and that things do not go wrong for the taxpayer, let us put in a safeguard. Rather than rely on good intentions, let us make the system work from the outset. Trust is not enough. These simple tests, or something like them, would make sure that from the get-go the new system is better, stronger and more capable of delivering improved services for the people. I beg to move.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I acknowledge the constructive intention behind Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne. The desire to ensure that strategic authorities are properly equipped, financially sustainable and governed with integrity is entirely understandable. We have all seen, all too often, the consequences when structures are created without sufficient capacity or clarity of purpose. We do not want that to happen here, and this amendment seeks to guard against it. However—the noble Lord’s heart sinks—while I appreciate that instinct, we cannot support the amendment as drafted.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and I have different perspectives as we come from different backgrounds—him from No. 10 and me from more than 25 years in local government, 16 of them as a directly elected mayor. To us, the amendment seems to reintroduce a centralising veto at precisely the moment when the Bill is meant to be shifting power away from Whitehall. The Secretary of State would become the arbiter of whether an area is “capable”—a term left undefined, and thus open to subjective interpretation. What one Minister might judge as prudent due diligence, another might use as a brake on local ambition. That uncertainty does not sit comfortably with our belief in consent-based, locally driven governance.
We also have to be alive to the practical effects on the ground in the places about which we have spent many long hard hours talking—those most in need of levelling up. They are often those with a much weaker starting capacity. They could find themselves locked out by criteria that they are not yet able to meet, precisely because they have not been granted the devolution tools that would help them grow that capacity. We risk creating a circular trap: you cannot have the powers until you have the capacity, but you cannot build the capacity until you have the powers.
However, we recognise that strong oversight will be necessary with changes of this magnitude. Several amendments in the names of other noble Lords show a strong appetite across the Committee for rigorous oversight, but it must be oversight that does not stray into overprescription or paternalism. I understand why there may be concerns; the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, expressed them well. My spectacles are not rose-coloured—I acknowledge that local government has not always got it right and that there have been failures, some of them cataclysmic—but, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I think that we could also say this about past Governments, Prime Ministers and initiatives.
That said, the amendment springs from a very real concern: the public must have confidence that new strategic authorities will function effectively from day one. On that point, I entirely agree with the noble Lord. There is space—and, indeed, a need—for transparency in how readiness is assessed in order to ensure that governance arrangements are fit for purpose and to avoid the creation of authorities that are destined to struggle. However, in our view, the answer is not to place broad, undefined tests solely in the gift of the Secretary of State. Instead, we might look to more balanced alternatives, such as clear statutory criteria developed with the sector rather than imposed on it. I am sure that the Local Government Association will be keen to work collaboratively on this; we could even look at greater parliamentary scrutiny rather than ministerial discretion. There is room for a serious discussion on this matter—I hope that we can hold that with the Minister.
The amendment addresses a genuine risk but, in our view, the mechanism it proposes risks undermining the very local autonomy that the Bill is meant to strengthen. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good by setting hurdles that, in some areas, those who would benefit the most will struggle to clear. I genuinely look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne goes to the heart of what effective devolution requires: capability. As he set out so clearly, it is simply not enough to create new strategic or unitary authorities in the abstract and hope that they will succeed. We can and should look at the performance of existing local authorities—including their financial resilience, their workforce capacity, the pressures they face and the services they currently deliver—to understand whether the foundations are in place for a new body to take on, in some cases, even greater responsibilities.
My noble friend was right to say that this is not about criticising local government wholesale—many councils are doing extraordinary work under immense strain—but capability is not uniform across the country. The financial challenges facing local authorities are well known. Reorganisation carries costs, and there is a real debate around whether it always delivers the efficiencies or improvements that are promised.
Against that background, it is entirely reasonable that we should expect a clear and transparent test of readiness before new strategic authorities are created. That is precisely what Amendment 12 would provide. It proposes that, before any strategic authority or unitary authority is established, the Secretary of State “must be satisfied” that it has the governance, financial resilience, administrative capacity and accountability mechanisms that are necessary to exercise the functions conferred upon it. These are not burdensome hurdles; they are basic safeguards to ensure that a new authority is set up to succeed, not set up to struggle.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for this amendment, which seeks to ensure that new strategic authorities have the capability to take on additional powers. I recognise the noble Lord’s intention to ensure that all strategic authorities are strong and effective in delivering their devolved responsibilities; of course, that is a goal that this Government share. However, this amendment would create an express separate requirement on the Secretary of State, adding complexity to the process of establishing new strategic authorities—much of that burden was described by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill—that, in my view, potentially risks their autonomy without providing an equivalent benefit.
I assure the noble Lord that the Government are building on the capability and capacity of new strategic authorities to ensure that they can deliver the new devolution framework. Let me give him a little detail around how that is working. The Government support the improvement of strategic authority capability by funding the Local Government Association to deliver a sector support programme, which is available to both strategic and local authorities; that includes training for both officers and elected leaders, support in attracting new talent, and guidance on topics such as good governance and assurance. We will continue to review that offer to make sure that it remains fit for purpose.
The Government are also seeking to facilitate greater take-up of secondments by civil servants into strategic authorities to ensure that those authorities benefit from the widest range of capability available. We are keen to support areas establishing strategic authorities to get on to a firm footing and to be best equipped to start delivering improved outcomes for all local communities. We are doing this through the provision of a checklist that sets out the key requirements they will need, information sessions with a number of key government departments and a series of master classes for areas on a number of different topics, such as developing a local constitution and risk management. As an example, when a new combined authority or combined county authority is established, there is a year-long transition period when public transport functions remain exercisable by the constituent councils while the new authority creates an effective transport team.
We are very aware of the issues raised by the noble Lord, but I hope that he agrees with me and that my reassurances are sufficient for him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister, as ever.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, got me going: she talked about her rose-tinted glasses and I had visions of the infamous Rose Garden treaty. I thought that this would be a new version of the Tory-Lib Dem alliance, but she dashed my hopes there and then.
I appreciate the Minister’s point. I think she mentioned “levelling up”, but this amendment is to try to give effect to levelling up. It is not to lock people out; it is to make sure that levelling up is delivered for them. I think that there is possibly somewhere where we can meet there.
As ever, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott for her genuine support. I am pleased to hear from the Minister’s remarks that there is some work to be done. I would like to have further discussion, perhaps with the LGA, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said. There may be something that we could work on, or at least tip our hats to—I do not know. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Shipley
“Devolution of powers within strategic authority areas(1) A strategic authority may devolve to any local authority within its area any power which it holds.(2) In carrying out any action under subsection (1), a strategic authority must—(a) consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level, and(b) where it considers that to be the case, act so as to enable such devolution.(3) Each local authority within the area of a strategic authority must—(a) consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level, and(b) where it considers that to be the case, act so as to enable such devolution.(4) Within the period of one year beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, a strategic authority must publish a plan setting out how the strategic authority and its member local authorities intend to carry out their duties under subsections (2) and (3) (a “Community Empowerment Plan”).(5) A Community Empowerment Plan must set out how the strategic authority and local authorities within its area will consult local communities on the exercise of those powers which are not devolved to lower-tier bodies.(6) A strategic authority must review a Community Empowerment Plan at least once during the period of four years beginning with the day on which the Plan is published.(7) In carrying out any function under this section, a strategic authority must ensure effective collaboration with any local authority or other body to which it has devolved powers.(8) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument make further provision about the powers of a strategic authority in circumstances where the strategic authority considers there to have been a serious failure or breach of duty in relation to a power devolved to a more local level.(9) Regulations made under subsection (8) are subject to the affirmative procedure.”
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for signing my amendment. When I spoke earlier this afternoon, I said that there was a need to ensure that we do not encourage upwards mission creep in this Bill. This amendment seeks to provide statutory help to prevent that happening and to deliver greater empowerment for local communities.
I accept at the outset that there is an inherent tension in devolution policy between scale and geography. Strategic authorities will be large and will have to cover large areas, yet community empowerment will be on a much smaller scale. I submit that the Government’s commitment to empowering local communities will need some statutory backing, so I propose that we embed the principle of subsidiarity in the Bill. I propose that we embed a legal duty of subsidiarity across the whole of devolved English local government, including town and parish councils.
Further, I suggest that we need to legislate to give local and combined authorities the legal powers that they need to devolve their own responsibilities further. They would also need a statutory duty to collaborate on and publish community empowerment plans setting out how they plan to fulfil their duty; local communities and local councils should have the right to challenge both the content and implementation of these plans.
My amendment says:
“A strategic authority may devolve to any local authority within its area any power which it holds”.
This may sound quite revolutionary to some but, actually, it is at the heart of devolving power and this Bill is about devolution.
Secondly, the amendment says that the strategic authority must act in a way to enable such devolution to take place. Each local authority in a strategic authority area would, in turn, have to
“consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level, and … where it considers that to be the case, act so as to enable such devolution”.
I then propose:
“Within the period of one year beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, a strategic authority must publish a plan setting out how the strategic authority and its member local authorities intend to carry out their duties under”
the community empowerment plan. I also propose that that plan
“must set out how the strategic authority and local authorities … will consult … on the exercise of those powers which are not devolved to lower-tier bodies”.
Further, my amendment states:
“A strategic authority must review a Community Empowerment Plan at least once during the period of four years beginning with the day on which the Plan is published… In carrying out any function under this section, a strategic authority must ensure effective collaboration with any local authority or other body to which it has devolved powers”.
Then there is the issue of what the regulations should contain to ensure that this measure works well, but I hope the Minister understands that there is a major issue of principle here in terms of devolution. If this Bill is truly about devolution, as the Minister told us earlier today it was, in what way are we going to make sure that strategic authorities do not suck powers upwards but, rather, pass down powers to local authorities, which will, in turn, devolve powers to town and parish councils?
I hope the Minister will be open to thinking about how this must be done. There are so many statements in the Bill and Explanatory Notes about the importance of community empowerment, yet I do not see the means of that actually being delivered in the Bill, hence my proposal on how this might be done. It also requires that the Government just have to make sure that it happens. I beg to move.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I commend him on drafting what I think is a terribly important amendment, as he has just outlined.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said this might sound revolutionary. Well, I think it is revolutionary, and it would mean reversing the entire direction of travel of English governance over the past decades, which has seen power and resources increasingly concentrated in the centre. I said in the earlier group how much that has disillusioned the public and left people feeling like they are not in control of their own communities and lives. This amendment could point the Bill in the direction it is supposed to be heading in, but it is not currently heading in that direction when you look at it.
I confess that this is at the absolute centre of green political philosophy and thinking. Decisions should be made at the most local level possible and referred upwards only when absolutely necessary. That is the foundation of green political thinking and, in my view, the foundation of democracy.
There is so much in this Bill that I was reflecting on when the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, was talking about the problem with commissioners and appointed commissioners. Although I was arguing for a rural commissioner, if we are to have appointed commissioners, I entirely agree with the noble Baroness. There is a huge democratic deficit right across the Bill.
In many cases, we are talking about town and parish councils. We are in a situation where we need to think about creating more town and parish councils where they do not exist. Far too often, we see a traditional historic market town with a town or parish council, but also a big council estate on the edge of town which is not parochial. This is the kind of structure that we need to get power down to the people.
This amendment is really giving us a route forward in that sense. It is important to focus, crucially, on providing a direction to the strategic authorities. It returns to a point that we were discussing on a previous group about giving them direction, but is a direction to be democratic and that is something that I will absolutely defend. For instance, proposed new subsection (2)(a) has to
“consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level”,
and, where it considers that to be the case, it must act. That really is the crucial part of this Bill.
I note that the “Community Empowerment Plan” in proposed new subsection (4) of this amendment picks up what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, was talking about in the second group. If there is one thing about this amendment, however, it is saying, “Do as I say, not as I do”. That is what Westminster would be saying by including this in the Bill, but this could be a model for Westminster to guide its own actions in future, as well as those of strategic local authorities.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendment. For me, it is a little too revolutionary, but I think the idea behind it—to enable strategic authorities to further devolve any powers that they are given—is correct. I do not think they need any more powers to do that, but they do need encouragement. I believe the amendment is well intentioned, particularly in response to the Bill that seems to be doing the opposite, as the noble Lord said: it is moving all the powers up. I do, however, have concerns about the amendment and how it would work in practice.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for Amendment 13, which seeks to ensure that power is moved away from central government—we all agree with that—to strategic and local authorities. The amendment would place a new statutory duty on strategic and local authorities to
“consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level”
of government. Should the strategic authority or local authority believe that to be the case, they must
“act so as to enable such devolution”.
I am afraid that this amendment runs counter to the spirit and purpose of the Bill, and risks creating a patchwork of powers across England, with strategic authorities and local authorities holding different sets of powers depending on where they are in England. We believe that allowing different tiers and areas to hold different responsibilities would blur accountability, make it harder for the public to understand who is responsible for what, and weaken value-for-money assurance for investment by increasing duplication and misalignment. The amendment also risks devolving powers to bodies without the capacity to deliver them effectively—which is part of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott; people need to be willing to accept the duties—and could impose disproportionate and impractical consultation burdens on strategic authorities.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I do not want to give the idea that the parish and town councils across this country would not be able to do it. Some will, but some will not. I know town councils and parishes that run better services than district councils ever did.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I was highlighting the fact that the noble Baroness spoke about the willingness to adopt services, which I believe is important.
The devolution framework is designed to eliminate risk by ensuring that mayors and strategic authorities are given a consistent and coherent set of functions, to ensure that strategic authorities can make strategic decisions and deliver policies that span multiple local authority areas. It is important that all tiers of local government work together in the interests of their local communities. That is why local authorities are embedded within the decision-making structures of combined authorities and combined county authorities as full constituent and voting members. A blanket requirement for a strategic authority to meet tiers of local government is a significant administrative burden; for example, in North Yorkshire alone, there are 412 parish and town councils. There is nothing wrong with expecting mayors and local authority leaders to communicate with them, but imposing that approach could place a considerable cost of consultation on them and potentially crowd out the time they need for their core strategic responsibilities.
I take the noble Baroness’s point about town and parish councils. We are introducing a system of neighbourhood governance, and it is important that we have our debates on that when the time comes. We will, I am sure, debate the role of town and parish councils, but including them in the Bill would have indicated to them that the Bill will have some impact on them that it is not intended for the Bill to have. I totally recognise the work that our town and parish councils do around the country: it is important and I know that we will have those discussions when we get to those elements of the Bill.
On Amendment 13, it is important that we do not interrupt the Government’s intention to give a consistent and coherent set of functions to strategic authorities and that their work dovetails with what our local authorities are doing. I hope that that has reassured the noble Lord and that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, I want to clarify one of the statements she made. This is a devolution Bill. She implied that she wants clarity that all functions are done at the same level across the country. To my mind, the whole purpose of devolution is that you do it at the level that is most appropriate. That may be very different, for instance, in Yorkshire compared with Stevenage. My noble friends from Yorkshire and Lancashire have disappeared, so I cannot refer to them. It may be that there is a brilliant parish council that can take on more responsibility—my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook mentioned Salisbury—whereas, in another area, we may say, “Well, no, that’s better done at the unitary or strategic level”. Devolution is about that local determination of how services are delivered at the best level for the best results for residents. I want to make sure that the Minister was not implying that that is not the case.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We have set out clearly in the Bill—with the competences, for example—where we see strategic responsibilities lying and where local council leaders will be responsible for the services they deliver. As we go through the local government reorganisation process, we will have unitary authorities across the country delivering those services. What we do not want to do is muddy the waters by saying that there will be some areas that have different strategic powers from others. That is why we have set out the competences in the Bill.
It is not about what you deliver at local level because the strategic competences allow that to be flexible across different geographies and demographics. It is about ensuring that the strategic level is delivered by the combined authority and local services are delivered by the local authority. I do not think it would be helpful to muddy those waters by having the picture be different across the country.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, the Minister asked whether I was satisfied by her responses; I am actually more worried now than when I started. I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, has just said.
I will give an example of where the Government are heading for great difficulty. Let us take the area of competence for transport and local infrastructure. “Local” is not defined—I think my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire will come back on the issue of definition at a later stage. I understand that strategic transport and major capital infrastructure, such as on a new railway line, is a strategic matter for a strategic authority, but I hope that transport and local infrastructure does not mean that every traffic-calming scheme in every residential road of a local authority has to be signed off by the mayor. I am keen for the Minister to be clear about what these terms mean because the Bill is not clear.
I jokingly referred to the powers I am proposing being revolutionary. They are very different, but they are an attempt to get everyone to understand that if you have a devolution Bill and think it is about devolution, it has to be devolution from the strategic authority where the mayor and the authority think their powers could go to local government. That debate has to be had. It is not, as the Minister said, about ending up with a patchwork of powers. Of course there will be differences in local areas. That is a positive, not a negative thing. Let us not call it a “patchwork” because that means that Whitehall and Ministers want to run 56 million people in England. In the end, having a standard system that everybody must fit into will not work. It will be a cause of great difficulty.
I am encouraged by some of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said—that there are correct things in it, there are principles and it is well intended. The test of successful devolution is a willingness to devolve power from yourself rather than demanding it to yourself. The test is for the strategic authority to say, “We think the powers we have in this area could well be carried out by a local authority, so let’s talk about it”, and say to the local authority, “You in turn must decide whether you need to undertake these powers directly or can devolve them to others, including town and parish councils”. I do not believe that the Government will ever succeed with community empowerment plans unless they empower communities. This Bill is not doing that.
Paragraph 16 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill says:
“The Bill will introduce a requirement on all local authorities in England to establish effective neighbourhood governance, to move decision making closer to residents, empowering ward councillors to address the issues most important to their communities at a local level”.
What it does not say is that that would not include the planning process or a whole set of services that local people might want to have some say in. The Government cannot make statements like that without then delivering the means to increase community empowerment. I will not give up on my Amendment 13. True devolutionists must follow their desire to give power to others to use in a country of 56 million people. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Janke
“(3A) Before laying regulations to designate a single foundation strategic authority under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult all levels of local government in the affected area.(3B) Consultation under subsection (3A) must include consideration of—(a) the proposed geographic area, functions, and powers of the foundation strategic authority,(b) the governance arrangements of the authority, including membership, representation, and accountability to constituent local authorities, and(c) the financial implications of the designation, including funding arrangements, transitional costs, and the impact on existing local authority budgets.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult all levels of local government in the affected area before making regulations to designate a single foundation strategic authority.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, in echoing my colleague’s comments reflecting on the previous debate, it sounds as though today we are agreeing on uniformity rather than devolution. The Bill gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers to merge, restructure or abolish councils without parliamentary oversight and local consent—all apparently in the name of devolution. A top-down authoritarian approach replaces local choice with a central direction from Whitehall. A single model is to be imposed across England regardless of geography, identity or local preference. It shifts real power away from local councils and into large strategic authorities headed up by regional mayors, with reduced numbers of local councillors serving larger areas and populations.
Civil servants in Whitehall carving up maps is not a process that encourages local participation and people having real powers, as devolution implies. In fact, it is the very opposite of devolution. When its results become apparent, they will fuel further distrust and anger, as local people will find that they have even less chance to influence decisions affecting their lives or opportunities to participate in the governance of their local area. Mayors do not have the confidence of the population all over the country, so imposing a universal model is asking for local dissent. In my area of Bristol, there was a referendum that decisively rejected continuing with an elected mayor, so this actually imposes something on an area that is contrary to what the local population said.
We had some talk about regional assemblies. Having served on the South West Regional Assembly, I dispute that all the RDA money goes into Bristol, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott—Councillor Scott—said, but that is something that we can perhaps talk about afterwards. Having looked at housing plans for the whole of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and more, I can tell the noble Baroness that rural affairs were very high on that agenda.
This amendment seeks to restore the requirements of full local consultation on the substantive changes being proposed, including the geographical area, functions and powers of the new authorities, and governance arrangements including membership representation and accountability. Consultation is also to include funding arrangements, transitional costs and where they will be borne, and the impact on existing local government funding. It is essential for there to be transparency and accountability on funding, and that local obligations and responsibilities are fully funded, with councils enabled to do the job for which they were elected.
It seems deeply ironic that an unelected Chamber such as ours should be party to removing powers and accountability from local communities and riding roughshod over local democracy. This amendment goes some way to restoring the rightful importance of local leadership, local consent and local participation.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I speak on this group of amendments concerning Clause 3, which addresses the creation of single foundation strategic authorities. The amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook are probing in nature, and we have also given notice of our intention to oppose Clause 3 standing part of the Bill.
At the heart of our concerns is the familiar theme that we have returned to throughout the Bill, and I suspect we will again—the balance of power between central government and local communities. Too often the Bill grants the Secretary of State sweeping powers to create, reshape or direct local government structures with minimal checks, consultation and accountability. That is not the model of devolution that we believe in.
I also ask the Minister for clarification on the role of single foundation strategic authorities. Will all unitary and counties not in a combined authority be offered the opportunity to be a single foundation strategic authority? What powers and funding will they be given and how does this compare to combined authorities, mayoral and foundation mayoral authorities? Where will a single foundation strategic authority fit in the landscape? Could it be forced into a combined authority?
Amendment 14 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, is sensible and necessary. It would require the Secretary of State to consult all levels of local government in an affected area before designating a single foundation strategic authority. Indeed, I would go further. Consultation should involve not only local authorities but local residents. If we are serious about localism and empowering communities, rather than simply rearranging governance structures, the voices of the people who live and work in those areas must be heard.
Amendment 15 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook probes whether the affirmative procedure alone is sufficient scrutiny for the Secretary of State’s powers under this clause. Given the scale of the decisions being taken and the potential impact on local governance and accountability, it is legitimate to question whether Parliament should have a more substantial role in overseeing these powers.
Throughout this Bill we have systematically sought to remove or constrain the Secretary of State’s ability to create new authorities or confer new powers without proper consultation or local consent. Clause 3 as drafted continues the pattern of centralisation. For that reason, we have tabled an amendment opposing the question that Clause 3 stands part of the Bill. We believe that the Government must provide far greater clarity about how and when these powers will be used and what safeguards will be in place.
As I said earlier, this is a theme that we will return to later in the Bill. For now, I hope the Minister will reflect on the strong arguments made today for a more genuinely localist approach, one that respects local government, involves local residents and ensures that decisions about local government are not taken unilaterally by the Secretary of State.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Janke, for their amendments on single foundation strategic authorities. Clause 3 provides a power for the Secretary State to designate a single unitary council or county council that is not covered by an existing strategic authority as a single foundation strategic authority. Any future designation of a single foundation strategic authority will be subject to the consent of the council involved. For this reason, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, is not a necessary requirement.
I appreciate the intention behind the proposal. However, it would not be proportionate to impose an additional requirement to consult every level of local government within the proposed area of the single foundation strategic authority. The principal body affected by the designation will be the old unitary county council and no designation can be made without the consent of the relevant council.
The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, probes whether Clause 3 should be included in the Bill. Clause 3 is vital to ensuring that the Bill delivers on its ambition to ensure that everywhere in England can benefit from devolution. The Government recognise that non-mayoral devolution to single local authorities can serve as an important foundational step, allowing areas to see early benefits from devolution, while considering all options for unlocking deeper devolution by working with neighbouring local authorities in combined authorities and combined county authorities, over the longer term.
The second amendment in the group, Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, probes whether the affirmative procedure is appropriate for the Secretary of State’s power to designate a council as a single foundation strategic authority. I should reassure the Committee that this is in line with the long-established practice whereby secondary legislation is used to establish new institutions and to implement agreed devolution agreements within areas.
In addition, the use of the affirmative procedure ensures that no designation can be made without the approval of both Houses. As I said, we want local authority designations to be done at the local level; that is the provision, I believe. However, the Government recognise that, in rare cases, non-mayoral devolution can serve as an important first step. To access further functions available at the mayoral tier, single councils will need to work across a wider geography.
I will let the noble Lord know about the issue of funding in due course in writing, if that is okay. Establishing those single foundation strategic authorities will accelerate the transfer of powers out of Whitehall to local government so that local leaders have a greater say over decisions in those areas.
With these reassurances, I ask the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Janke, to withdraw or not press their amendments.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The Minister said that the affirmative procedure had to go through both Houses; I understand that. We have set up unitary authorities through secondary legislation up until now, and this Bill has never been needed. However, I am not quite sure what happens with a local authority that does not want this. Is there a power through the affirmative procedure for the Secretary of State to insist that a local authority, which does not want to become a single foundation authority for whatever reason, will have to do it? Will that go through the affirmative procedure or not?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
The Government have made our intention very clear: we want to see unitary authorities established across the country. We want that initiative to come from local areas themselves. Some areas may be more comfortable going into the single foundation authority first, before they take the step to go into a combined authority; that is what the provision in the Bill is about. We want to make sure that there are unitary authorities across the country. In extreme circumstances, I believe, the Secretary of State has a power to make sure that it does happen, but that would be very much a power of last resort; we would not want to use it unless there could be no agreement any other way.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
The Minister kindly said that she would write to me about funding, but I had two other related questions. First, will all authorities be able to say, “I want to be a foundation authority”, or is that going to be limited in some way? Secondly, if you are a single foundation strategic authority, could you still be forced into a combined authority at a later date?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
For most local authorities—I have spoken to a great number of them over the past few months—the attraction of taking your unitary authority and going into a combined authority is the ability to have the greater powers that that level of devolution will accrue to the area and the communities for which you are responsible. I think that it will be the exception rather than the rule that people will want to be a single foundation authority, but they may be more comfortable with using that as a first step then working it out for themselves. This has happened to a certain extent through the whole devolution programme. Where people are in a unitary authority, they will look around them to see which of the surrounding authorities work best in terms of their economy and public services, as well as which model makes more sense to their local community, before they decide which way to go; if they wish to take some time to do that, the Bill makes provision for that.
Baroness Janke (LD)
I thank the Minister for her comments. I do, however, feel that there is a distinct lack of local input into the proposals in this Bill; that is one of the symptoms of the approach the Government are taking. They seem to be taking the view that they have decided what will be imposed on the country and are not particularly concerned about what local people think about it. I point to the regional assemblies, where they did the same thing and incurred huge hostility and a lack of trust from local people—not least in arguments about geography and local differences that took up quite a lot of government time and energy.
I think what the Government are trying to introduce here is uniformity, rather than devolution, and they will find an unwilling reception for their attempt to impose uniformity. People do not want mayors, who are very often seen as the outpost for central government; they also do not want local change imposed from Whitehall. I wish the Government luck with the Bill. Local government reform is a very sensitive business and maybe if Sir Humphrey were here, he would be saying that the Government are being very courageous. However, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment for the present.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
Before we move on, I note that the last group is quite a large one. We are due to finish in half an hour, so I would hate to think that we would have to break off half way through the group. I am in the noble Baroness’s hands—where would she like to go with it?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
It looks like a huge group, but that is only because of the scheduling. Most of the amendments are about the first part of the schedule, so I think we should get it done.
Schedule 1: Establishment, expansion and functions of combined authorities and CCAs
Amendment 16
Lord Jamieson
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, and other amendments tabled Baroness Scott of Bybrook, remove the ability of the Secretary of State to create, or make certain changes to the governance or composition of, combined authorities without the consent of the councils involved.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, and my noble friend Lady Scott have stolen my first line about the size of this group; that is largely down to the structure of the Bill, which has numerous schedules. Consequently, we have tabled a vast number of amendments to make a relatively simple change.
I thank all noble Lords who tabled amendments on these issues. They are not merely technical adjustments; they are amendments that go to the heart of our concerns about the true purpose and direction of the Bill and the sweeping powers that the Secretary of State is taking in it. As my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook has made clear, we on these Benches firmly believe that devolution must be locally led, rooted in local identities and local democracy, and not imposed by central government. Genuine community empowerment cannot be handed down by central diktat, which imposes structures that override locally elected representatives and residents. If devolution is imposed from Whitehall, it ceases to be devolution in any meaningful sense.
The amendments we have tabled seek to ensure that the Secretary of State cannot exercise powers affecting the governance, composition or boundaries of local authorities without their explicit consent. That consent is not an administrative hurdle; it is a democratic safeguard. Such changes must be based on local identities and local wishes to truly reflect the meaning of community. They should not be abstract or managerial plans drawn up at a distance in Whitehall, however well intentioned.
Communities are not interchangeable units on a map. They have histories, relationships and ways of working that cannot simply be redrawn by statutory instrument. Any restructuring must have a demonstrative benefit for local people, not just for the administrative convenience of central government. Crucially, it is local councils, through elected councillors accountable to their residents, who are best placed to judge what will or will not work for their area. This is a particular concern given the Government’s decision to cancel local elections this year, denying the vote to potentially 4 million people. I look forward to hearing other noble Lords’ thoughts on these timely issues and the other amendments in this group.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group: Amendments 21 and 24. My noble friends on the Front Bench have pretty much all the other amendments, with the exception of Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It is a pity that she cannot be here, but I join in sending her our very best wishes and look forward to her return to the Committee.
Amendments 21 and 24 are in the same area of where proposals can be brought forward for the establishment of new combined authorities. Before I go on, I could have tabled—I neglected to table—two further amendments about county combined authorities in exactly the same terms as Amendments 21 and 24, which relate to combined authorities. Therefore, perhaps the arguments I am making on combined authorities can be taken as read-across.
The purpose of my Amendments 21 and 24 is to challenge the process by which the Secretary of State would make a decision on a proposal for a combined authority or a combined county authority that is brought forward by the constituent councils in an area. As things stand under the existing legislation, which was set up in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act but, for the purposes of combined authorities, is in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009—LuRA 2023 has the same for combined county authorities—the way it works is that those proposals come forward for an area and are subjected to tests.
I am interested, in terms of how the tests are currently applied, in whether they are likely to improve
“the economic, social or environmental wellbeing of some or all of the people of the area”.
Additionally, I suggest that the proposal should be required to include the purposes that are intended to be achieved by the establishment of this combined authority or combined county authority. The Secretary of State would have to look at and assess—these are the tests—whether those improvements in economic, social and environmental well-being as well as the purposes included in the proposal are likely to be met.
To me, these are two elements of the test of whether a proposal coming forward from an area should be accepted. The first is an objective test: will it improve the well-being in the area in various ways? The second is more subjective but none the less purposive: the people in this area and the constituent councils have said why they want to have this authority, so the Secretary of State should look at those purposes and say whether they are likely to be met. In this Bill, the question put to a relevant proposal—what purposes are you trying to achieve?—is simply swept away. There is no requirement for such a proposal to have those purposes any more.
Amendment 21 would remove the requirement to have purposes so that they cannot form part of a subsequent test. The test that is to be applied would no longer be the test of economic, social or environmental well-being, which is an objective test related to the benefit to the people living in that area, and would be replaced by a statutory test: is it appropriate to make the order in relation to the area, having regard to the need to secure effective and convenient local government in relation to the areas of competence? In those words, “convenient” leaps out in particular. It makes one think that what my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook was just saying about the desirability of having conformity is what is actually driving these decisions now, rather than, “What is going to happen to benefit the people who live in this area?”, which should be the objective test.
That question did not escape the notice of the Lords Constitution Committee. In its 16th report, published on 13 January, it stated:
“We draw this provision to the attention of the House. It should satisfy itself that it is content to grant the Secretary of State this power within Schedule 1 to subject the new arrangements for a combined authority to such a broad and potentially subjective test”.
Of course, in the text at which the committee looked, what the committee means by “broad and potentially subjective” is, by implication, a bureaucratic test—“Is it convenient for us to have a combined authority?”—whereas what we have at the moment, which is what the committee is referring to, is, in essence, a test of the benefit. It is intended to be able to be determined more objectively, and it is certainly more relevant to the people who live in an area whether a combined authority is or is not in their interests.
When we go on with this Bill, I hope that the Government will in each of these respects think whether the statutory test should have perhaps both the bureaucratic element of whether it is convenient and the objective element of whether it can demonstrate that it will bring benefit to the people who live in this area.
My noble friends have two amendments in this group, Amendments 22 and 36, the purpose of which, as far as I can see, is to remove the power for the Secretary of State to direct the establishment of combined authorities and county combined authorities. It seems to me that although the Minister said this is an exceptional power, there is a risk that once this power is available—again, because it will be convenient to do so—we will be instructed to have combined authorities according to the Secretary of State’s proposals rather than the ones brought forward from within the area itself.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am very happy with the amendments spoken to so far, so I will not repeat what has been said. Amendment 28 in the name of my noble friend Lady Pinnock relates to whether the Secretary of State determines local boundaries and whether decisions on local authority boundaries within a combined authority area are a matter for central or local government. In the spirit of this Bill, which is about devolution, I can see no reason why central government has to be involved. It ought to be a matter for local councils to decide on. Perhaps the Minister might explain why my noble friend Lady Pinnock has got this wrong; it seems to me that she has got this right.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
There were a lot of amendments in this group, but we whipped through it very quickly, so I thank noble Lords. The amendments in the group tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, seek collectively to remove the Secretary of State’s new powers to direct the creation or expansion of a combined authority or combined county authority or to provide for a mayor. The Government have been clear that devolution can deliver growth, unlock investment and deliver the change the public want to see, led by local leaders who know their areas best. That is why we want to see more parts of England benefit from devolution.
As I have said, I have been involved in local government for a very long time. We have tinkered around with this issue for a very long time indeed, and it is time we provided some certainty and stability. Our engagement to date with councils across England has demonstrated the appetite for devolution within local government. I have spoken to many of them and visited many areas that do not currently have those devolution arrangements.
Devolution, of course, should be locally led wherever possible, and the Government remain committed to working in partnership with local government to deliver that vision. At the same time, we have been clear that we cannot accept proposals that would block other areas accessing devolution—that would be very difficult for those areas—or risk creating devolution islands. The backstop mechanism in the Bill will allow the Government to establish strategic authorities in areas where local leaders have not been able to agree on how to access devolved powers. That will ensure that all of England can benefit from devolution and nowhere is left behind.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, we have had an interesting day debating the Bill. I think there is universal agreement across the Committee that devolution is desirable and that local areas having genuinely devolved powers and being able to deliver for their residents would be a good thing and would deliver better outcomes. However, it is essential that they are part of forming that process and area. The Minister said that the Government believe that devolution can deliver great benefit when led by local leaders who know their areas best. I cannot do anything other than agree with that, but we then talk about a backstop that gives the Secretary of State immense powers to impose solutions on people, and that is the area that we are all concerned about. That is why we proposed these amendments to ensure that that is not done for administrative convenience.
As my noble friend Lord Lansley said, there was a test in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that very clearly stated that there must be a clear benefit to devolution and that the area seeking devolution must establish why it is doing it, and it was judged on the basis of whether it would deliver it. That has gone, and, as my noble friend Lord Lansley said, the test now seems to be whether it is administratively convenient. We are not here to do administratively convenient things. We are here to deliver real devolution at a local level, determined by local residents, local councils and local leaders. That is our overarching concern. It is all very well for the Minister to say that this is a backstop arrangement so that we do not have islands or things such as that. While I may have some sympathy about that potential issue, we are giving sweeping powers to the Secretary of State to impose. That is the reason for our amendments.
I look forward to hearing from the Minister as we progress through this Bill how we will ensure that that local voice, the voice of residents, councils and councillors, is heard and is not swept under the carpet, so to speak, on the theme of administrative convenience and diktat from Whitehall. With warning that we will come back to this, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.