English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendments 141, 146 and 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and Amendment 147 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to all of which I have added my name.

Taken together, these amendments recognise that culture does not operate in isolation but as an interconnected ecosystem with different parts depending on one another, as the noble Earl has said. That is why Amendments 141 and 146 would strengthen the place of culture in planning and strategic decision-making, while Amendment 147 rightly promotes a more systemic approach across the culture sector.

While I do not wish to repeat the arguments that I made at length during the passage of the planning Bill on the agent of change principle—this is another recycled amendment from that Bill—I want to underline the central point here and echo much of what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, namely that the agent of change principle is now widely accepted. Few would argue that new residential or commercial developments should be able to externalise their impacts on existing cultural venues, forcing those venues to absorb the cost of mitigation or, too often, close altogether. The Government have acknowledged this and announced their intention to implement agent of change through policy. However, the difficulty is that policy alone, whether in planning guidance or licensing frameworks, has consistently proved insufficient. Non-statutory approaches are applied unevenly, interpreted narrowly and too easily overridden when competing pressures arise. Guidance can be ignored, policy can be diluted, and, without a clear, legislative footing, enforcement becomes discretionary rather than expected. For cultural venues operating on tight margins, that uncertainty is, in itself, deeply damaging.

If the Government accept that the agent of change is necessary at all, and their own statements suggest that they do, it surely follows that it must be implemented in a form that is effective, durable and legally robust. That is precisely what Amendment 222 seeks to do. It would not create a new principle but give statutory force to an existing one, moving us from aspiration to assurance. For that reason, and for the coherence it brings alongside Amendments 141, 146 and 147, I strongly support Amendment 222 and urge the Government to look favourably upon it.

[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister knows, I wholly welcome the Bill, and I am delighted to hear Preston and Manchester being cited as examples of good practice, because, as the Committee knows, the north-west was my region. However, I rise to support the principle that local growth plans should include provision for cultural venues, especially live grass-roots venues.

If we look to music and the recent success that we have had at the Grammys, we see young women from disadvantaged backgrounds who came through the BRIT School, a free school, and worked in local live venues. If we look to the recent UK success at the BAFTAs and the Oscars, we see young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been able to come through theatres and other live performance spaces, as the noble Earl said. We have, for instance, wonderful scripts, workshopped by local young people in local spaces, that then have huge success.

I particularly want to talk about youth theatre. People will be aware of the success of Liverpool’s Everyman Youth Theatre—I will stop talking about the north-west in a minute. I was born in Coventry. I have to say that youth theatre and youth education, which was provided in a joined-up way by the youth service at that point, gave me a pathway forward, and it gave a lot of my contemporaries an opportunity to have a way forward, as well as hope and participation, when a lot of our fathers were being made redundant from car factories in Coventry. I therefore hope that my noble friend will consider including in local growth plans the provision of live cultural venues and the development of local cultural plans.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, the four amendments in this group should be supported in principle. We had a lengthy discussion on cultural and heritage issues last week during earlier Committee days considering the Bill.

Amendment 147, on cultural ecosystem plans, really matters. I support this amendment because it is the means whereby clarity will be produced about who in the mayoral and local authorities is responsible for what, particularly the funding of local cultural assets and support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 165A. One in three eligible disabled people are still waiting for approved community equipment; one in five wait more than two months and 74% of delayed hospital discharges are linked to equipment delays. This amendment would include wheelchair and community equipment provision in the list of general health determinants that authorities need to have regard to as a cause of health inequality. I hope that my noble friend can include this important equality provision for disabled people, which is both economically and socially relevant.

Debate on Amendment 158 adjourned.