English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

[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

Election Law

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend Lady Brown’s question about automatic registration, and following on from questions about young people, can my noble friend give me the assurance that at least young people voting for the first time aged 16-plus could be automatically registered? We know that voting is habit-forming and that we need participation in our democracy in order to give it strength.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As I explained, we are doing our best to look at all forms of identification and how that might impact on voter registration. We want to be as broad-minded as we can. I will expand a little more. The secondary curriculum will also build on the introduction of civic citizenship at key stages 1 and 2 so that we can make sure that, at both primary and secondary age, pupils are getting an essential grounding in all the topics they need. We need to work on making sure that young people are not disfranchised because of the ID systems we use for voting. So we are putting our minds to it and will bring forward new steps in the elections Bill.