English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Brennan of Canton

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, under Motion G1: Amendments 94B and 94C, on the agent of change. I do so with particular reference to music venues. I also thank the Minister for the meeting we had this week.

The principle of the agent of change is not an issue in itself; that is supported on all sides of the House. The question is very much how best it can practically be enabled, and it is clear that the guidance by itself has not worked. The experience of the Music Venue Trust in terms of cases is hugely informing, and points clearly to the distinction made between the Scottish system as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, which is statutory, and the English experience based on guidance. MVT says that the reason why the Scottish system works is that developers know applications will be rejected if they do not abide by agent of change. Response is, therefore, twofold: either applications abide by agent of change first time, which immediately speeds up the process, or if applications do not abide, the council has clear legislation to which to refer when declining the application. This means that organisations such as the Music Venue Trust do not enter a time-consuming back and forth of repeatedly objecting with the council and the developer.

Of the 300 music venues that have closed since 2015, the Music Venue Trust has documented 125 cases of venue closures where planning has been a direct cause of closure, rising to over 175 cases that include that as a contributory factor. But closure itself is not the only factor; as the MVT says, the absence of a clear statutory requirement means that every planning application near a music venue involves protracted negotiation over whether and how agent of change is applied. Venues spend months, sometimes years, in a process that a statutory requirement would resolve at the point of application. Moreover, as the MVT says, with only guidance in place, every time a developer seeks to circumvent the principle, a venue and its supporters must fund the legal and professional costs of enforcement through the planning process—costs that run to approximately £20,000 per case on average, rising to over £50,000 in more complex cases, which are not sustainable for the industry. A statutory provision would avoid this, but it is clear that the statutory solution has much wider support than in the industry itself.

In the just published and excellent Fan-led Review of Live and Electronic Music from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan of Canton, a report for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the fans’ charter states:

“The UK Government should embed the ‘agent of change’ principle in planning legislation in England. Following Scotland’s example, we would like to see the principle strengthened in law across the whole of the UK”.


The Government are saying that they will strengthen the guidance. There is no guarantee that this will work, and at the end of the day guidance is still guidance. We have the luxury of a ready-made template of the Scottish statutory system, proven over seven years to work smoothly, quickly and with minimal dispute. There is really no reason why the Government should not accept this amendment, based on that law, inclusive of that law, other than their aversion to a statutory solution.

I fully support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. If she divides the House, I will support her in the Lobby.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak for the first time on this Bill, and I apologise to the House for doing so rather late in the day. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has just explained why I have not been participating actively before: for the last year or so I have been undertaking a review of live electronic music, commissioned by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the House of Commons. He referred to one of the 50 recommendations in that excellent report, which I commend to noble Lords to study carefully. It is exactly as the noble Earl has just said: that the UK Government should embed the agent of change principle in planning legislation in England, following Scotland’s example. That is a key part of it.

I will just say the following on the Government’s Motion G and the amendment to it in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I pay tribute to my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, who originally introduced the successful Private Member’s Bill many years ago in the House of Commons, which got the ball rolling, shall we say, on the whole agent of change issue around music venues and got it strengthened in guidance. That was a welcome step forward. However, even at the time I remember him saying to me, “This will not be enough; we will need a statutory provision eventually”.

I therefore very much welcome the engagement there has been from my noble friend the Minister, and the fact that the Government have acknowledged that this is not currently working effectively in practice and that it needs strengthening, and made clear commitments to do that within the National Planning Policy Framework. That is an extremely welcome move. However, I still have the view—I would not have said so in the review—that putting the agent of change principle around music venues in the Bill and making it a statutory provision will ultimately need to happen. Without that, there will always be the issues which the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, so effectively outlined for those people operating music venues.

Having said that, I would have preferred any amendment that was put down—I mentioned this to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh—to replicate the Scottish position, which is specifically about noise nuisance caused by music venues. It is not about church bells, cockerels in the morning or living next door to a pig farm; it is about a specific problem that really needs to be dealt with, where an existing music venue produces noise but is operating legally, and a developer decides to move in next door and then expects that existing business to pick up the mitigating costs for any nuisance that might be caused to residents moving into the flats, houses or whatever they are. There is a danger, if you draw this too wide, that that principle will be diluted.

I am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say in response to the debate. It remains my view that this should be a statutory provision, but I am very pleased that the Government are acknowledging that there is a problem, because this is not working currently, and that they have already committed to responding in due course to all the recommendations in my report.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Brennan of Canton

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I have two brief points in answer to things that both the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, and Chris Bryant have said in the last week, and that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has said today. First, when the Government say that the Bill is not the right vehicle for my noble friend Lady Kidron’s amendment, one has to profoundly disagree. Concerns of copyright are integral to the use and access of data; you cannot prise the two things apart. Let us make no mistake: this amendment belongs in the Bill, and the enacted Bill belongs in law.

The second point revolves around the principle of the argument. The Government themselves believe that there is an issue with copyright and that there should be much greater transparency. When Chris Bryant says we need to look at these things in the round and not piecemeal, I agree entirely. If we agree between ourselves that something is right, and that that right is not previously enabled in law, we should pass the law, and the principle will find the solution. We do not legalise things that are criminally wrong because they cannot at the present time be sufficiently policed. Having this in law will speed up the solution. Not having it in law inevitably means that we will drag our feet for who knows how long. That will be to the detriment of the creative industries, as creators such as Elton John know full well and are rightly angry about. We agreed on the principle that this is the right thing to do—make it law.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is in some sadness that I rise again to talk on this matter. I thank Government Ministers for the very positive way in which they have engaged with my noble friends and me to discuss how to make some progress and find some kind of compromise on this matter in the Bill.

I completely accept that the Commons voted overwhelmingly to reject the amendment originally in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which we sent to them last week. As Disraeli said:

“A majority is always the best repartee”,


but it is sad if you simply rely on a majority in order to have your way when others are trying to have their say. I would welcome the Government doing a little bit more listening, because this amendment moves quite a long way towards what the Government are saying.

When the Commons debated this matter last week, a number of us went down to watch in person what the reaction was like in the Chamber. I have to say that there was a considerable amount of disquiet from the Government Benches about the direction of travel and there were a considerable number of interventions on and questions asked of the Minister, Chris Bryant. I thought he was extremely generous in the way he gave way and entertained those questions and interventions from Members of the House of Commons. He said in the course of his remarks,

“we all agree that we should introduce transparency measures”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/5/25; col. 422.]

Those were the words that he uttered on the Floor of the House of Commons. Ministers have said to us elsewhere, and we accept, that you cannot have remuneration without transparency—unless you are an AI company, in which case you do not have to reveal what you are training your models on, even if you use the intellectual property of others. We cannot have a double standard on this matter.

My noble friend the Minister made a point that Ministers and others have made on a number of occasions: we cannot ring-fence ourselves from the rest of the world. That is true—we live in a highly interconnected world—but the whole history of copyright has been about leadership, having high standards and showing why intellectual property is a source of economic growth. This country has shown leadership throughout history in relation to copyright and setting the highest standards to try to drag people up to our level, rather than simply putting up the flag of surrender and going down to the levels of the rest of the world. I fear there is a view that we have to allow AI companies to do anything they want because otherwise they will just go and do it somewhere else. Surely we should show some leadership on this. If anyone did not have the pleasure, as I did, of listening to my noble friend Lord Bragg’s “In Our Time” programme on Radio 4 about the history of copyright, I recommend that they go back and listen to it on BBC Sounds, including the additional conversation that went on afterwards.

My preference, as I made clear last week and have made clear to Ministers, is that if Ministers cannot accept the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, they come back with their own amendment in lieu that at the very least makes sure that Ministers are given a permissive power to require transparency. That can be a “may” instead of a “must”; I know that would not be satisfactory to everybody, but a reasonable concession is needed that provides Ministers with a backstop power that will focus the minds of all concerned on the need to deal with this issue without waiting for a piece of primary legislation—a vehicle that may be some considerable way down the road, even if commitments are made by Ministers.

If these amendments are carried today, I hope the Government will come back with their own amendment in lieu to enable there to be a backstop power, even if it is not exactly the amendment we are considering today. That would go a great way towards providing the level playing field we should have for our creative industries.