English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Freyberg and Lord Brennan of Canton

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.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Freyberg and Lord Brennan of Canton

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I, too, have an aversion to ping-pong, having spent 23 years in the House of Commons and having been a Minister—and having experienced it overnight, with people having to sleep in their offices. Often, it became more “pong” than “ping”, after that extended period of time.

In this instance, there is a lot of justification for your Lordships’ House insisting on the Government taking another look and perhaps coming forward with their own compromise, which many noble Lords have called for. I very much welcome the tone taken by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons, who spoke at the Dispatch Box himself on that occasion to admit that errors may have been made in issuing the consultation and in the position taken by the Government then, which may have triggered a lot of the debate we are having on the Bill.

Although he is also a Gwent boy, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who said that this is a terrible Bill. It is not a terrible Bill, but it does have a massive lacuna: the issue of AI and its impact on creators and their livelihoods. It is a matter of livelihoods, of people paying their rent, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said.

I also welcome the tone of and comments made by my noble friend the Minister in her opening remarks. I welcome what she said about enforcement, economic impact assessments and committing to bring forward a report in six rather than nine months. Those are all welcome additional commitments that we have not necessarily heard before. However, she felt that not adding these amendments or something similar to the Bill would give greater certainty, and here, I disagree with her. She said that creative industries and the tech industries want certainty. In my view, certainty would be provided if we accepted today’s amendment, or indeed the previous amendments the noble Baroness has proposed, because they give greater certainty to everyone that copyright will be enforced in this country and that the means to enforce it will be available through greater transparency.

Last Thursday, some of us in this place—I refer to my declaration of interests, including as a member of the Ivors Academy—went along to the Ivor Novello awards, which celebrates the great songwriters and composers of this country. Ivor Novello, whose original name was Ivor Davies, was born in my old constituency of Cardiff West, and there is a plaque on the very street around the corner from my house indicating where he was born. The Ivor Novello awards are a reminder that we are world leaders in creativity, as other noble Lords have said, and that we are net exporters of that creativity. Our great creativity is a foreign currency earner for this country, and we should not get into bed with anyone who seeks to undermine that.

The amendment being put forward by the noble Baroness is a modest amendment—some might say too modest, compared to what could be done if the Government came forward with their own in lieu. But that is exactly what the Government should do: they should make their case, rather than invoking financial privilege on every occasion. Although it is the Commons’ right to do that, in my view the argument should be made. If this is the wrong pathway, why is it the wrong pathway? Transparency is what is needed, and it is needed now.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I declare my interest as an artist member of DACS. In the United States, a revealing battle is under way, not only about competing with China but about whose interests AI regulation should serve. Thirty-one US states have passed AI laws. They understand that transparency does not stifle innovation; it enables it by providing certainty and accountability. So fierce is federal resistance that House Republicans now seek to roll back state AI laws entirely, imposing a decade-long moratorium. AI experts call this an abdication of responsibility, yet the states persist, introducing 550 new Bills this year alone.

We face the same choice. For years, we condemned China’s intellectual property theft, the foundation of its economic rise. Now, we permit Silicon Valley the same privilege. The Government’s wait-and-see prevarication is inexplicable. This amendment demands transparency alone: no new law, no regulatory burden, simply the right to know when your work is taken. This amendment grants the Government complete discretion over enforcement and preserves their consultation. It demands only visibility. This is a test of whether we uphold the rule of law in the age of AI by giving creators the simple right to see who is taking their work. I therefore urge the House to support this amendment.