English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Pack and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Committee stage
Thursday 5th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to two amendments in this group: Amendments 256 and 264. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, has added his name to them, for which I thank him.

Both of these amendments attempt to tackle, though in slightly different ways, the problem of law/not law to which the noble Lord just referred. It is about that accumulation of sludge on the statute book of legislation that has been passed by Parliament but never commenced. That is a problem for two reasons. One is that, in a way, it undermines Parliament’s role because, when legislation is passed by Parliament, it is meant to become law. It is not meant to be simply a menu for future Ministers to pick and mix from as they wish, with commencement orders whenever they fancy. If Parliament has made the decision that something should be law, we should be able to have confidence that it will become law.

There is also a more practical problem: the huge complexity of the statute book, which flows from having this mix of legislation that has been passed and commenced, passed but only partially commenced and passed but not commenced. This is a problem because it builds up incrementally. Indeed, that is partly why the problem exists. At every individual level and every individual stage where we add a little more sludge to the system, it is easy to say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter this time. It’s not really that important”—but it accumulates.

I will give a little example of the scale. The House of Lords Library very kindly pulled together a list for me of all of the Acts relevant to local government in England that have been passed since 1960 but have not yet been fully commenced. Bear in mind that some of these Acts were passed by Parliament before several Members of the House of Lords had even been born, yet 44 such Acts have never yet been fully commenced.

In these two amendments, I try to take two different angles on the problem. Amendment 256 is a probing amendment picking out four examples of legislation that passed a significant time ago but has not yet been commenced. If parts of that legislation have been hanging around for so long and never been commenced, perhaps we should do a little tidying-up and take the opportunity of this Bill to clear out some of those leftovers from the statute book.

The other amendment, Amendment 264, seeks to tackle this problem from a slightly different angle. It is in the nature of closing the stable door after the horses have bolted, because the statute book already has that complexity, but, as we keep on—to extend the analogy, perhaps to breaking point—adding new horses to the stable with a continuous flow of legislation, would it not be better to at least stop making things worse by ensuring that we have confidence that a piece of legislation will be fully implemented, at some point? Five years in the future, it provides a generous backstop to say that, whatever Parliament decides to pass overall, we will be sure that it comes into force at a particular date in the future.

I very much hope that the Minister will reflect on the fact that there are some areas of law where the Government absolutely understand and value having a neat and clear statute book. We have a regular rolling programme for consolidation of the rules of procedure for various parts of the legal system, which is hugely beneficial, but we should be a little more ambitious and not simply restrict the benefits of neat and tidy parts of the statute book to those where it has always been done; we should perhaps be a little imaginative in starting to extend some of those benefits to a greater part of the statute book. I very much hope that the Minister will, in due course, show some desire to expand the level of neatness and clarity in the statute book.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is not the first time I have found myself getting in the way of the last part of a Bill, usually in talking about territorial extent. The last train that would get me to Saltaire tonight leaves King’s Cross just after 7 pm, so I will try my best to be brief.

This is about terminology but also about honesty. My amendments would provide some tighter definitions of “local”, “community” and “neighbourhood”. Having seen the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, tabled on “parish”, perhaps I should have also included one on that. I note that his definition of a parish council includes anything that may have the same population as Greenland. The intended ideal size for a “local authority”, which this takes us to, is about the same as the population of Luxembourg. That is not really local government and it certainly is not local democracy.

I grew up believing that all politics is local, and that citizen engagement is a fundamental part of what politics should be about. This would take politics away from the local community and neighbourhood representative model, with references to community groups that are not representative but are entirely self-formed from civil society. I would not only regret that but think it a deep step back away from the principle of democratic self-government.

I know from my early experience with the Labour Party in Manchester that there are many within Labour who regard the relationship between the party and local people as one in which Labour delivers services and the local people are supposed to be grateful for them. The Liberal approach to democracy is one in which we work with people, and we expect and encourage citizens to be engaged in local and community politics.

This is a Bill that abuses the terms “community”, “neighbourhood”, “parish” and “local”. It sets up sub-regional strategic authorities and reduces the number of local elections and councillors. If I understood the answers to the Question yesterday, it is intended that, following this legislation, the next thing will be to reduce the number of local councils and borough councils in the Greater London Authority so that we have local authorities in London that are roughly the size of Luxembourg.

I regret this; as I have sat through Committee on this Bill I have found the whole Bill deeply distasteful and weakening of our democracy—but there we are. However, I wish that the Government would at least be a little tighter in their use of these important terms than they have been, and those are the intentions of my amendments.