English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Allison Gardner and Lewis Cocking

Report stage
Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lewis Cocking]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point with which I have great sympathy. We have to try to take different communities together, but we should not compare the rural county of Hertfordshire with a significant number of large towns that are not interlinked naturally by roads and railways or by people’s jobs. Lots of my constituents work in London and would never, or hardly ever, make the journey of about an hour along the A414 to Watford or Hemel Hempstead. The situation is very different. I can understand how devolution works when there is a single city centre and why in some respects it works in our towns and city regions where there is a single space, but I do not understand how it will work in practice when there are a number of towns all of the same size.

[Dr Gardner]

In Staffordshire, which is quite rural—I have Stoke-on-Trent city centre in my constituency—we have that shared interlinking, and it is very important to the development of north Staffordshire. Staffordshire Moorlands council has shared services with High Peak in Derbyshire. Much of Stoke-on-Trent city council service provision is in the neighbouring town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and likewise with Stafford borough, which uses Cannock Chase services. Shared and interlinked services exist in rural areas and can work together.

[Lewis Cocking]

I was talking about the physical aspects of the transport currently in place, and the transport in Hertfordshire makes it very difficult for such interlinking services. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point around shared services of councils. The Government have said on a number of occasions that they have brought forward this community empowerment Bill and devolution in order to make councils more efficient and save loads of money. I do not believe it will save lots of money, for the reasons the hon. Lady has rightly pointed out: many councils already have those shared services. There are lots of councils with shared planning departments or shared audit, and indeed combined authorities also have shared back-office functions.