English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak at this stage of the Bill and I welcome the Minister to her place. Just when she thought she was going to have a quiet life, another Bill comes along.

We heard earlier that the purpose of the Bill is to transfer power out of Whitehall by giving local leaders the tools to deliver growth, fix the foundations of local government and empower communities. How precisely will this work in rural communities?

I spoke against the orders for the combined authority and the mayor for York and North Yorkshire and I think that my concerns have been proven right. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I shared similar views at the time. The population of North Yorkshire and York combined is 768,000. The area is too big geographically but not big enough numerically to make this worthwhile. For the last five years, I was in the most rural part of the constituency that I represented. If I drove 200 miles in one day, I would barely touch the sides of the constituency. How a mayor is expected to get round, meet people and represent that area is a challenge for anybody and I wish him well.

[A noble Lord]

Or her.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

It is a him.

I believe that democracy is grass-roots, certainly in rural areas. The building blocks are parish councils, districts, boroughs and counties. It is very confusing. I was three times subject to Boundary Commission reviews in my parliamentary career—once as a European MP and twice as an MP. When we keep meddling and making more mysteries to local government, as we are doing in this Bill, it discourages people from going out to vote, because they do not know which area of government or which authority they are living in. We were promised that, if we got rid of the districts and boroughs in North Yorkshire, we would save money. We then had a metro mayor imposed on us, and most of the rural dwellers stayed at home. Politically, it was not a riotous success for us in North Yorkshire. We lost our overall majority. So it is going to be a challenge as successive elections take place. The lowest turnout was for the police commissioner election—something that was imported from the States. It might work well there, but it certainly did not work well in rural parts of North Yorkshire.

I share common cause with noble Lords who have spoken in favour of rural commissioners. There is a great case for saying that in deeply rural areas we must have a rural commissioner in place. Better still, could we go back to having rural-proofing of all policy across the piece? That would help very much. I look forward to working with the Minister and others in the House when we move to Committee to make the Bill work in this regard.

When it comes to funding, if I have understood correctly, there is going to be a levy for transport. How are the Government going to square the extra responsibilities on combined authorities, particularly when it comes to solar farms and battery storage plants, both of which are highly flammable? If the fire service has to attend to these, it will put an extra call and extra resource implications on them. I would be interested to know how the Government expect to fund this if it cannot be met out of general funding at this time.

There are areas which I support. I support the provisions on out-of-area services. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, did the House and the country a great service by showing how that was part of how grooming gangs were able to target their victims. It is not just in Wolverhampton and Manchester. There are problems right across North Yorkshire and the north-east. I think there are still problems with Uber and it is right and proper that these services should be brought under the Bill.

I am grateful to Guide Dogs for its briefing. There is still the issue that about 58% of guide dog owners are reportedly turned away by taxi or private hire vehicles, despite this being a criminal offence. Will the Government address this as part of the Bill to make sure that there is a better understanding? I am very proud that it was a Conservative Government under my noble friend Lord Hague who introduced what became the Disability Discrimination Act, which made enormous strides in this field. I hope this issue can be addressed as part of this Bill.

The Bill sounds excellent in theory. How it will be delivered in practice, particularly in rural areas, will be a real challenge. I am a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. There is a key issue to be addressed of funding drainage boards where they do exist to make sure that they have the means to do their excellent work in keeping us all safe from floods.

I welcome the Bill as it stands but hope to improve it and to reintroduce the agent of change principle, this time successfully.