English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

If we are serious about devolving power, it is right that mayors get proper choices about which roads and what movements they want to prioritise. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, has made his case with me, and we are all really aiming at the same thing, which is to improve public transport services. With my repeated thanks for the amendments on pavement parking, I support the ambitions of the Government in those areas.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am beginning to feel slightly left out. I have not been the beneficiary of a large amount of correspondence from the Minister in the way other noble Lords scattered around the Chamber appear to have been. I do not have the advantage of his support and the wording that he might have supplied to help me make my speech.

I was very interested in the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and I look forward to hearing the Government’s response to them. I also had a great deal of sympathy with the remarks made by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

I will just pause for a personal recollection about the Highway Code. Back in, I think, 1973 or 1974, I was part of the team representing my school, which was triumphant in the West Midlands competition on mastery of the Highway Code. It was a sort of quiz and we had to train for it, but it was sponsored by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. To this day, I still have a very detailed recollection of the contents of the Highway Code as it stood in 1974. The most devastating consequence of this afternoon’s debate is that I have learned only today, from my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, that it has become a very much larger document and that it is available only online. I have been living by the 1974 version very satisfactorily ever since.

But my noble friend makes a very serious point and she illustrates a degree of confusion and delay on the part of the Government. The uninsured losses that have been accumulating in the motor insurance system have fallen to the expense of responsible motorists, who pay their insurance. They are paying for all these uninsured losses and the Government will have to deal with that. If the Minister is not in a position to do so today, I agree with my noble friend that the Government will need to return to it urgently—certainly in the next parliamentary Session.

I do not object to the government amendments on pavement parking; I broadly welcome them. I find most attractive that they very properly make it a local decision, including on the exemptions required. It is very unlikely that there will be a blanket ban on pavement parking in any part of the country—there will have to be some exemptions in certain areas—but these matters should be decided locally and sensitively in consultation with residents.

That brings me to my Amendments 104 and 105, where I am motivated by a similar consideration of the sensitivities of local residents. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for indicating his support for these two amendments. Through this Bill, the Government are creating a key route network that I imagine is not unlike the red route network in London, but applied to other great conurbations. Unfortunately, there is no restriction on the roads in which that network could be created.

The purpose of my amendment, which we debated in Committee, is to prevent that network being created on residential and minor roads, in essence. The way that I have done that—and it is a slightly rough measure—is to confine the key route network to

“classified numbered roads carrying strategic motor traffic”.

I realise that some of those roads may also be residential in character, but at least they are major roads at the moment, so the residents know where they stand. People need to be protected from the thought that their possibly quiet residential road could become an extension to an urban motorway, with very little say on their own part. The purpose here is to protect those people, and I think the Government could easily agree to this, because it is most unlikely that they would want those consequences to arise, and this would be a way of protecting from them. I give the Minister notice that, unless he is very accommodating on this point, I will test the opinion of the House.

Finally, my Amendment 103—again debated in Committee—would leave out Clause 27. The history of this clause is that, when the Greater London Authority was created, the Mayor of London was given the power to dispose of non-operational land belonging to TfL, but only with the approval of the Secretary of State. There would have to be permission from the Secretary of State before the disposal should take place. The effect of the Bill is to remove that requirement and to leave it entirely to the Mayor of London.

I emphasise that the comments I am making have no relationship to the current, or any other, incumbent. The remarks I am making arise because, since the Greater London Authority Act was passed, the mayor has had housing responsibilities added to his portfolio. Those responsibilities did not exist in 1999; I think it was the Localism Act 2011 that added them, but it was around that time that housing responsibilities were added. There is now, irrespective of the personality of the incumbent, an institutional conflict built into the mayoralty about the best use of land under his disposal: would it be for transport purposes or housing purposes? Depending on the political pressures on him at a particular time, poor judgment might be exercised in deciding on the disposal of that land.

The effect of my amendment in removing Clause 27 would be simply to maintain the status quo: the mayor may order to TfL to, or may on behalf of TfL, dispose of TfL land, as currently, but he would require, as currently, the approval of the Secretary of State. That is an important point for ensuring the proper integrity and responsibility over any decisions to do with the disposal of land given the potentially conflicting roles that the Mayor of London has in this regard.

I think this has been a very useful debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, since, at least in my case, it will be for the first time.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Shipley and Lord Bassam, and the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Pidgeon and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their amendments, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley for his contribution. I say in response to him that this Government are very much in favour of mobility, but it has to be subject to appropriate regulation. I would also be delighted to supply the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with scripts for his future speeches in response to Bills such as this; my only condition is that he reads them as I give them to him. I will try not to shower him with more correspondence than he needs.

Government Amendments 245 and 265, on pavement parking, will enable the safe use of the pavement by all pedestrians, especially people with mobility or sight impairments and those with prams, pushchairs or luggage. On 8 January, my department published the response to the 2020 public consultation on pavement parking. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Blunkett for tabling an amendment in Committee on this subject, and I am sorry that he is unable to be in his place today, but I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Bassam has so clearly echoed his views.

Amendment 265 enables the Secretary of State to make regulations to create a coherent and adaptable framework under which English local transport authorities could prohibit parking motor vehicles on pavements and verges in their areas. The prohibition introduced by regulations will be subject to civil enforcement. The regulations under the new clause will address matters including how local transport authorities will exercise the power to prohibit pavement parking, which vehicles would be excluded, permissible exemptions for parking on the pavement in a prohibited area, and the governance by which local transport authorities decide to implement a prohibition, among others.

These regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure so that Parliament can examine and approve the detailed regulatory framework before it takes effect. In the meantime, we plan to give local authorities powers later this year to issue penalty charge notices for vehicles parked in a way that unnecessarily obstructs the footway. This can be achieved through secondary legislation.

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Amendment 103 was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. As he knows, transport in London is devolved, with the mayor responsible for managing the capital’s transport network. It is right, in line with the wider purpose of the Bill, that the mayor should be empowered to consent to operational land disposal applications from TfL. Both the Government and the mayor recognise the need to balance transport, housing and wider strategic considerations, and this clause rightly places responsibility for making that balanced judgment with the mayor, who is accountable for those decisions in London. This goes to the heart of what devolution is intended to achieve, and the Government reject the proposition that somehow the mayor is incapable of making a decision about the best use of land currently under TfL control that might be used for housing.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It was not my suggestion that the mayor needed to be supervised: it was the suggestion of the Labour Party drafters of the 1999 GLA Act, which I am simply standing up for. So reject it by all means, but do not cast that upon me.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I say to the noble Lord that the successors of those people have changed their minds, so it is about time that he did, too. We have had the experience of three mayors, over 25 years, and there is no evidence that they have been incapable of taking these decisions. In 1999, there had not been a mayor, but the mayoralty has self-evidently been very successful.

We discussed Amendments 104 and 105 in Committee and I said that the powers in the Bill were based on the principle of devolution: that is, it should be for places to consider what is right for them. We plan to use the existing powers available to us in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act and the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act to provide concise guidance on the designation of key route networks, as well as on the use of the associated power of direction. This will assist combined authorities and combined county authorities in considering factors that should be important in designating a key route network road, including traffic levels, public transport—especially buses—and links to key employment or development sites. That balance will help places in their consideration of important factors on designating roads, as well as respecting principles of devolution and the fact that such choices are ultimately local. We intend to produce such guidance very shortly.

There are strong reasons why roads that are not classified numbered roads could be key routes under certain circumstances. They might well be roads with high levels of bus and public transport use, or linked to locally important employment or development sites. In both cases, the number of people carried, as well as numbers of vehicles, might be important in the designation. I hope that the commitment I have given to produce guidance on designating a key route network and using the associated power of direction will reassure the noble Lord that we have considered the reasons behind his amendment. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his helpful intervention on that and for our recent discussions.

Amendments 107 to 113 relate to the duty to provide reports on traffic levels. I understand the noble Baroness’s desire to align duties with others in particular geographies, in this case with local transport plans. Any duty to make reports on traffic should be accompanied by meaningful powers to affect such reports directly. There should not be a duty to make a report without any power to affect it, but that is why there are changes elsewhere in this schedule to give mayors of combined and combined county authorities powers to direct highway authorities in the use of their powers on key route network roads. That aligns with the geography on which they will produce these reports. In contrast, these amendments would give combined and combined county authorities duties to make reports on traffic on non-key route network roads, but without any direct control of the traffic on them. As was noted in a similar amendment in the other place and discussed in Committee, this proposal is duplicative. Principal councils already have a duty to make such reports for local roads in their area and, as the highway authority with the relevant powers, are best placed to influence traffic levels on those roads.

Amendments 114 and 115 refer to local transport planning. Close working between strategic authorities and constituent councils is vital to support a successful local transport network. Clause 29 supports this close working by requiring the constituent council to implement the strategic authority’s policies set out in the local transport plan and to have regard to the proposals in the plan. This clause extends an existing duty placed on some existing constituent councils and aims to standardise arrangements for all constituent councils. The clause is intended to maintain a balance, encouraging close collaboration between strategic authorities and constituent councils, without giving the strategic authority excessive control over how councils manage their local highway network. These amendments would undermine this balance by requiring constituent councils to implement rather than have regard to proposals in a local transport plan, giving strategic authorities indirect powers over how constituent councils manage local roads.

Amendment 116 refers to reviewing and updating local transport plans. Adopting a local transport plan is a key strategic decision for non-mayoral strategic authorities. For existing non-mayoral strategic authorities, all constituent councils have to agree to adopt the local transport plan. This approach is in line with the Government’s commitment in the English devolution White Paper to ensure that all strategic decisions for non-mayoral strategic authorities would have the support of all constituent councils. Under existing legislation, it is up to local transport authorities to keep their local transport plans under review and amend them to reflect local transport circumstances. The Government will produce updated guidance for local transport authorities on local transport plans. This will provide advice about when authorities should review and update their plans, and the mandatory intention of the amendment is therefore not needed.

Amendment 117 would remove the word “workplace” from the framework. Extending the levy-introducing power to spaces other than workplaces would be a significant extension, and not necessarily a desirable one. The aim of workplace parking levies is primarily to reduce congestion, which is greatest at peak commuting times. Furthermore, the definition of parking spaces to which this framework applies is set out clearly, so this part of the amendment would not have its desired effect. The amendment would also add strategic authorities to the list of bodies that can introduce a workplace parking levy.

I touched on this in Committee, in response to an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton. As I said then, I am aware of calls for a greater role for strategic authorities and their mayors. The Nottingham scheme has been a success, and it is understandable that strategic authorities would like to play a greater role here. However, I know that a number of local traffic authorities are considering introducing schemes and we need to consider carefully the impacts of any changes on existing plans.

Finally, this amendment would add the local transport plan to the definition of local transport policies, which a workplace parking levy must support, under the Transport Act 2000. As I know the Minister set out in the other place, the 2000 Act already defines local transport policies with reference to the local transport plan, so this change is unnecessary.

Amendment 118 would have no effect, I am afraid. Local authorities outside London already have powers under Section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to direct surplus parking revenue towards highway improvement projects. These include maintenance under certain circumstances within the meaning of Section 62 of the Highways Act 1980.

I turn to the environmental improvement element of the amendment. Adapting the highway to future resilience needs is an established part of highways maintenance best practice and is therefore already included under the Act. Likewise, improvements to the natural environment within a highways context support pollution reduction and are also included. The definitions in the Act are already broad enough and do not need to be expanded further. I therefore ask all noble Lords not to press their amendments, and I beg to move the amendments in my name.

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Tabled by

[Lord Moylan]

104: Schedule 9, page 159, line 28, at end insert—
“(1C) The key route network must consist only of classified numbered roads carrying strategic motor traffic.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that the highways or proposed highways that constitute the KRN are genuinely strategic.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I heard the comments of the Minister in relation to guidance to be issued and, with that, I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 104 not moved.