Charities: Banking Services

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

That does not sound right to me. I do not know the answer to that question, but I will make sure my noble friend Lord Pitt-Watson writes to the noble Viscount.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I want to take up the issue of debanking, not just in the charity sector but in independent journalism. I do not know whether the Minister knows about the Canary, an independent journalism outlet that Lloyds Bank has debanked, meaning that it did not have access to substantial amounts of money to pay staff. Does the Minister think that fair and ethical in an open society where we value a free press?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I am not familiar with that case, but if it is as the noble Lord suggests—and I have no reason to doubt that—that is a serious concern, and I am sure the FCA would want to know more about it.

Local Plans (Burial Space) Bill [HL]

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, we often hear that death is one of the few certainties in life, yet the question of where people may be laid to rest is all too often treated as an afterthought in our planning system. This Bill seeks to address that omission through a simple but important principle: every community should plan responsibly for the burial needs of its population.

At present, local authorities have powers to provide cemeteries, but they are under no statutory duty to ensure that sufficient burial space exists. In many areas, burial provision depends on a patchwork of local authority cemeteries, faith organisations and private providers, with no strategic assessment of long-term demand. The result is that, in some parts of England, burial capacity is becoming increasingly constrained, placing pressure on bereaved families and on the communities they serve.

The Bill does not seek to dictate where burial grounds should be located; nor does it impose unrealistic obligations on local authorities. Instead, it asks local planning authorities to do what they already do for housing, schools, transport and green infrastructure: assess future need, incorporate that assessment into their local plans, and publish a long-term strategy for meeting any shortfall in burial capacity. Planning is about looking ahead. We routinely plan decades into the future for homes, employment, land and public services. It seems only right that we should also plan for the final resting places that communities will inevitably require.

The urgency of this matter was recognised independently by the Law Commission in its comprehensive review of burial and cremation law. The commission concluded that England and Wales face growing pressures on burial capacity, particularly in urban areas. It described the existing legal framework as “fragmented and outdated”. It observed that many burial authorities are approaching capacity and that, outside London, councils generally have no powers to reuse old graves as a means of managing demand.

We can already see the consequences. Councils including Birmingham, Leicester, Slough and Luton, as well as several London boroughs, have all warned of diminishing burial capacity. I have seen at first hand the situation in Birmingham, Dewsbury and Kirklees, as well as in my home city of Sheffield. Although national surveys have found that around one in four local authorities has 10 years or less of burial space remaining, around one in six has less than five.

This issue has been particularly significant for many faith communities. For Muslims and Jews, for example, burial is a religious obligation, and cremation is not an acceptable alternative. Many Christian denominations also continue to place great importance on burial. Although the Bill has obvious benefits for those faith communities, it is not a sectarian measure. It is about ensuring that every family, whatever its belief or tradition, has access to a dignified burial within a reasonable distance of its community. Without forward planning, families may increasingly find themselves having to arrange burial many miles from where their loved ones lived, worked and worshipped. That creates unnecessary emotional distress at a time when people are already coping with bereavement.

The Bill also supports better land use planning. By requiring burial needs to be considered as part of a local planning process, it enables authorities to identify suitable land well in advance, rather than responding to shortages through emergency or piecemeal decisions. Early planning allows burial provisions to be balanced alongside competing demands for housing, environmental protection and other essential infrastructure.

Some may question whether these plans will place an additional burden on local authorities, and I recognise those concerns. However, the duties proposed are proportionate and aligned with existing planning processes. The Bill will not require every authority to provide a cemetery; rather, it will require authorities to understand local need, assess existing capacity and explain how any future demand will be met. Those are reasonable expectations for any effective planning system.

Others may argue that changing burial practices or increased cremation rates will reduce demand. While those trends are relevant, they are far from universal. Significant sections of our population continue to require burials, and demographic growth in many areas means that demand is likely to continue for decades. Ignoring the issue today will simply pass a greater problem to future generations.

This is a modest Bill but it addresses a genuine gap in our planning framework. It promotes foresight, rather than crisis management; supports local decision-making, rather than centralised prescription; and helps ensure that communities can continue to meet one of humanity’s oldest and most fundamental needs with dignity and respect. I hope that, whatever our views on planning policies are more broadly, noble Lords will agree that preparing responsibly for the future is one of the core purposes of local government. The Bill will help ensure that burial provision is no longer overlooked in that process. I therefore commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank everyone for their constructive comments. During the debate, my phone has been quite busy, particularly on the question of the attendance or not of the Lords spiritual. I have actually had a message from them, which I would like to share with your Lordships’ House. It says, “We apologise for this because it is ordination season and the majority of Lords spiritual are in their dioceses or ordaining new clergy. However, this does not reflect their lack of interest; actually they are very supportive of the Bill itself and welcome an opportunity to discuss taking it forward”.

Similarly, my colleagues at the South Yorkshire Muslim Burial Trust are watching, as are many others. Clearly, as we have heard, this issue goes across communities and faiths and, as we also heard, this Bill is serious. We have talked about all being in the waiting room. The fact is that we hope many of us will still be there to make sure that we see the change that this Bill requires.

Clearly, there may be disagreement between us on how we get to the destination, but it is clear from the debate, whether from the comments of the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, the noble Lords, Lord Brooke and Lord Jamieson, or the Minister, that we have all acknowledged there is an issue. There is a problem: how do we deal with it? As I said, it was the luck of the draw: I put my faith in that lottery and my name came out with this Bill. I know that other noble Lords, particularly the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, have talked about this issue in the past, and I look forward to getting into further debate in Committee.

During the debate, we heard £24,000 being charged for a burial plot. It is a huge issue, as that is way beyond the means of most average residents, and we have got to look at the supply side. Clearly, there are opportunities here: as I said in my speech, if we are planning for homes, businesses, schools et cetera, thought has to be given to how we deal with burials now. It is better if we do it by long-term planning rather than knee-jerk reactions when trying to find space. Clearly, this challenges London, as there are clearly land issues here. That is why I said that not every local authority has to have its own provisions. It is about asking how we deal with the need that is there.

As we heard from one of our contributors, death and taxes are a given in life and I really welcome the opportunity to present this Bill to your Lordships’ House.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

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

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I want briefly to speak in favour of my noble friend Lord Shipley’s amendment. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said about how the committee system does not necessarily work.

I want to share the Sheffield experience with the noble Baroness. In Sheffield, when we had a strong leader model, the leader picked her cabinet, and we ended up with 10 people deciding for the entire city. There were 84 councillors and 10 people chosen by the leader. There was one occasion—I think my noble friend Lord Scriven will remember this—where, in one ward, all three councillors were part of the cabinet and large swathes of the city had no say. What we ended up with—I hope noble Lords go and Google this—was the Sheffield tree fiasco, where even the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who is not in his place, came up and could not see what was going on. That was a result of the groupthink that existed within that strong leader model.

Let me tell your Lordships what the situation is at the moment in Sheffield. There is no party in overall control. You would think that would be chaos, but it is not. It is made up of nine councillors drawn from all political parties representing different parts of the city, who all sit on a particular committee. There is a leader of the council—at the moment, he is a Labour councillor. All the committee chairs sit on what we call a strategy and resources committee. Therefore, all councillors have a say. We do not have the ludicrous situation where the scrutiny boards, as previously under a strong leader model, are picked by the same leader who is in charge of the cabinet. It was a ruling group which had all the cabinet positions and the scrutiny positions. That is why we ended up with bad decision-making.

It is why I say: let local people decide. If this Bill is about community empowerment, let them decide. People in Bristol and Sheffield have decided to go for a different model. I referred to Birmingham on a previous occasion and how it had a strong leader model but was not able to make the difficult decisions that Sheffield most recently has, despite no party being in overall control and moving to a committee system. We have not been in the financial crisis that the likes of Birmingham have been in.

What I am saying is that different models can work, but let us trust local residents. Let central government loosen a bit of control and let local people decide. Given what is written on the tin of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, why are we not empowering communities? At the moment, it feels disempowering. Therefore, I hope the Minister will address the issue of the Sheffield experience.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion F1 and particularly Clauses 37 and 91. Large parts of England—about 20% or one-fifth—will be unparished when the Government have finished vandalising our councils with LGR—the historic county boroughs, cathedral cities such as Norwich and Oxford, coastal communities such as Great Yarmouth, Hastings or Eastbourne, and new towns such as Stevenage, where the noble Baroness served with distinction as leader for many years. I note my noble friend Lady Maclean is not in her place, so I will save her from saying that the town of Redditch, which she represented with distinction, is wholly unparished—save for little Feckenham in the south-west of that new town.

When Labour is done, these places will not have a properly constituted, legally incorporated and democratically legitimised local council to mow the park, heat the baths and run the carnival, complete with a proper mayor, wearing red robes and a tricorn hat, with ribbon-cutting, convening powers. Through Clause 60, what the Government have in mind for these unparished areas is a system where out-of-town patsies are parachuted in to play politics in toothless talking shops with no resources, because there is nothing left in the precept once social care has feasted on it.

I read with astonishment this morning what the Minister wrote to us in proposing Amendment 37A, which will allow town and parish councillors to attend those meetings. Does she not see the problem here? In those places, there are not going to be any town or parish councillors—that is the point. By what alchemy will she conjure up councillors from thin air to attend these meetings? It is just magical thinking. That is why Amendment 37A is worthless: you cannot send people who do not exist.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support every word that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said. This amendment is also in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley. I point out the title of the Bill we are debating: the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. So many of its clauses actually remove responsibility from lower parts of our governing system. I really urge the Government to see clearly that this would be a sensible move.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, particularly given my noble friend Lord Shipley’s comments on Sheffield. I found it ironic that in Committee we were talking about not allowing others to have a committee when we in your Lordships’ House have Committee stages.

As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, the title of the Bill is about community empowerment. I am about to finish my 20-odd years on Sheffield City Council in the next fortnight, having joined in 2004. When I and my good friend—my noble friend Lord Scriven, who is sitting next to me—took control of the council in 2008, it was under a strong leader model. I remember my noble friend saying that a test of whether we have been successful is to ask: do we have the same amount of power when leaving as we had when we inherited the role? That was because we were about devolving powers. At that time, we set up a committee system to devolve down to what we called community assemblies. That was about devolving power down to a local level and taking it out of our hands: my noble friend Lord Scriven was the council leader and I was the cabinet member for parks, the countryside et cetera. We genuinely believed that local decision-making was far better.

Looking at this Bill, I am surprised that we think we should centralise power and that Whitehall should tell all councils that there is only one governance model. If we do that, I think we will end up in the situation that Sheffield was in. Since the Committee debate in the Lords, a plaque has gone up at Sheffield City Council:

“In recognition of the courageous campaigners who saved thousands of street trees from wrongful felling by Sheffield City Council, and as a reminder to all that such failures in leadership must never happen again”.


That happened under a strong leader model. Out of 84 councillors, just 10 people picked by the leader at the time—

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Not me.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

Not my noble friend Lord Scriven; it was the leader at the time. They basically rammed through decisions to fell healthy street trees. It took thousands upon thousands of signatures for an inquiry to ultimately find that they went wrong.

It was said that there was scrutiny, but the problem was, as we heard earlier from my noble friend Lord Shipley and others, that scrutiny looks at decisions already made. When you have such a powerful executive on a council, the scrutiny boards were often chaired by the same ruling group. If you wanted to keep that job, you were never going to take on your leader.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in opposing Clause 59. As an opponent of centralised control of all sorts, I feel that, if we are talking about democracy, it really ought to mean what it says. Centralised control of any sort is, for me, not democracy.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to speak at Second Reading but I want to speak to the proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to abolish Clause 59 and Schedule 27. I do this as someone who has lived in Sheffield and who still represents the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on the council. We were actually on different sides of the argument when that referendum was held in May 2021, when 90,000 people—65% of those who voted in Sheffield—voted to change from the strong leader model. The Liberal Democrats brought that in during the Blair years, because that is what we were told to do.

I find it ironic that we are discussing the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill but we are now dictating the governance arrangements that communities will have. I really do not see how you can stack that up. If communities want to move away from a governance arrangement, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, that can be a simple vote in council or it could be the route that the It’s Our City! community organisation took in Sheffield, which was to collect 25,000 signatures and trigger a referendum. I normally say to councillors that if communities are collecting 20,000-odd signatures, it is best to change your mind, otherwise you are going to get the vote that we had in Sheffield.

I urge the Minister to realise that if you can get the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and me on the same page, having for many years thrown rocks at each other in Sheffield, you seriously need to listen. Although you might favour the strong leader model, if you genuinely believe in community empowerment then let the people decide. If they ultimately want a leader-and-cabinet model, they will vote for it and support it through their local councils. Let us not have this top-down diktat. That is why, on these rare occasions, noble Lords can find me and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on the same page.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Mohammed of Tinsley for speaking. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in particular. I strongly support the stand part notices on Clause 59 and Schedule 27. The reason has been explained. This is a devolution Bill about community empowerment, but the Government are removing the right of local people to decide for themselves what system of governance they want.

We have this devolution Bill, but the Government decide the form of local governance and say that there will not be a committee system. Where are we now? We are in Parliament, operating as a Committee. I have spoken on this issue many times in recent years. The reason why I believe that we should encourage committee systems is that they decentralise power but, more importantly, they enable scrutiny to take place at the point of decision-making. All too often, scrutiny in local government takes place after the decision. We will debate this further on our eighth day in Committee but I think that this is a fundamental right. I just want to keep the right of a community to create the structure that it wants. That right lies in the Localism Act 2011.

I very much hope that we will come back to this issue on Report. However, there are rumours that we may not get a Report stage and may end up in wash-up prior to Prorogation, because there are not many weeks left. We have a further day in Committee on 5 March and we have to leave an interval to reach Report. Can the Minister tell us whether we are going to have a Report stage? Also, if we are going to have a Report stage, I hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, will bring this back, because that would give us the power to say to the Government, “You have to think again on this issue. Do not tell local people in all local authorities what model they are required to adopt”.

In the Explanatory Notes, there are explanations for why the Government are undertaking this, but, frankly, they are spurious. They claim that there is evidence, but I do not know what the evidence is. In the end, why do we not just trust local people to make decisions? Otherwise, 56 million people in England will continue to be run out of London and Whitehall.

Housing Associations: Financial Assistance

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

We intend to get this programme running as quickly as possible. That is why we have provided £2 billion of funding in advance of that settlement—so that we could kick-start the programme and get it going straight away. The rest of the programme will be open for bidding very shortly, so that local authorities can apply to bid for that fund. To answer the noble Lord’s question about London, 30% of the housing in that programme will be in London.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, a recent report by the social housing ombudsman highlighted repairs as a major problem. So my question to the Government and the Minister is: what will they do to fill the skills gap that we badly need to fill to maintain and improve our existing social housing, as well as the new builds?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite right that we need to address the skills gap, both for the purposes of building new homes and for repair and maintenance. Some of the new skills are needed to retrofit homes for net zero. We have put aside £600 million over the next four years to train 60,000 skilled tradespeople—engineers, brickies, sparkies and chippies—working with our colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills England to make sure that we get our young people into those well-paid, high-skilled jobs. We are funding additional placements and setting up technical excellence colleges, foundation apprenticeships and skills boot camps. What we are trying to do—I have seen the effectiveness of this as I have visited further education colleges around the country—is get some of the skilled people who are now reaching the end of their careers to come back to train our young people and enthuse them about those careers.