English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

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

[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.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I too support Motion G1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I thank the Minister for meeting us this week and for meeting the Music Venue Trust yesterday.

The Minister in the other place told us that the agent of change principle is “already firmly embedded” in national planning policy since 2018, yet the Music Venue Trust intervened in 200 cases in 2024 alone, at a cost of up to £50,000 each, to save grass-roots music venues from closure. If that is what “firmly embedded” looks like, one shudders to think what neglect would produce.

The Minister’s answer is more guidance—updated, strengthened, consistent. But that is precisely what was promised when the principle entered the NPPF in 2018, and again in every consultation since. The guidance says the right thing—it always has. The problem is that guidance is only guidance. Developers know it. They test it, challenge it and too often circumvent it, because they do not have to comply. No amount of strengthened wording changes that; only statute changes that calculus.

The Minister speaks of flexibility for local decision-makers, but flexibility cuts both ways. It means inconsistency: one authority holds the line while another folds under developer pressure. It means venues exhausting their reserves on legal fees to enforce what policy already supposedly guarantees, and it means that venues without access to specialist support do not achieve a remarkable success rate. They simply close—quietly, invisibly and without appearing in any dataset as a planning casualty.

Even the Government’s own Back-Benchers in the other place were unconvinced. Lewis Atkinson, Member of Parliament for Sunderland Central, cited his constituency, where flats remain unbuilt precisely because developers lack the clarity that only statute can provide. The Minister offered him a meeting. One can only hope that the music venue at risk survives long enough to hold it.

Scotland did not offer meetings or updated guidance; Scotland legislated. Disputes there are vanishingly rare because the law is unambiguous and developers comply from the outset. There is no costly negotiation, no charitable fundraising to protect venues, and no protracted back and forth with planning authorities. The Government have had seven years to make guidance work; it has not worked. This amendment does not invent a new principle—the Government themselves have endorsed that principle repeatedly—it simply gives it the legal force it has always lacked so that decision-makers have a firm statutory footing, and developers cannot treat compliance as optional. I support Motion G1.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, my name has not been attached to either of these issues to date, but I give our support to both of them. They are both extremely important and I find myself convinced, having listened to the debate so far on both matters, that the case is sufficient for us to send both matters back to the other place. The issue is primarily about whether guidance is enough or whether one needs to place one’s intentions on a firm statutory footing. We need to put them on to a firm statutory footing—there is so much evidence that things are not working properly in either case and that the Government should think again. In either case, if there is a wish to test the opinion of the House, we would be supportive of it.