English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Andy MacNae Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

I enormously welcome this Bill. It is a thoroughly rare thing for a Government to seek to actively give up power, but this Government understand that we are going to deliver an economy that works for everyone, with a new way of governing that shifts powers away from Westminster once and for all. At its heart, this Bill is about putting power back in the hands of communities, recognising that decisions should be made by those who know their communities best and who are fully accountable for the consequences of those decisions.

For somewhere like Lancashire, this Bill is a great opportunity to address the fundamental issues that have held us back for so long. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) explained the dysfunctional nature of Lancashire eloquently, but I will recap: we have 12 district councils, two unitaries, a county council, and a police and crime commissioner. This confusing two-tier structure—hollowed out by austerity, with little accountability and remote, fragmented decision making—sits in stark contrast with the clarity of leadership and devolved resources of our neighbouring city regions. We have had to watch Manchester, Liverpool and West Yorkshire forge ahead while we have been stuck in the slow lane.

This lived reality is the status quo that the Conservatives—including the shadow Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place—have sought to defend and maintain, but this Bill gives us a chance to change all that. It is a chance to take back control and empower our communities, and a chance to rebuild local government—to make it more effective and to save money that can be reinvested in local services. It is a chance to bring in resources that can turbocharge growth and deliver on our potential. I urge Lancashire leaders to work together with a sense of urgency in order to grasp this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

But there is an additional challenge. Even with clear determination from local leaders, it will be at least two years until Lancashire has a mayor and a restructured combined authority. It is likely to take much longer before we have the sort of capacity and capability that is already in place in the likes of Liverpool and Manchester. In that time, those city regions will move further ahead. The risk is that Lancashire will fall further behind, yet as the new Lancashire growth plan shows, there is a bright future for the county if we have the tools to create it. The plan identifies 12 transformational projects that will be game changers for us, ranging from transport infrastructure to world-class innovation zones. Overall, the proposed project pipeline has the potential to attract over £20 billion of additional investment to our county, but as things stand these are just bold ideas and possibilities. Taking them to the stage where they are fully worked-up, investable proposals requires the sort of capacity and capability that Lancashire no longer has.

That is in contrast with our neighbouring city regions, which have been able to use devolved resources to have full business cases and shovel-ready projects ready and waiting for the green light. We can see the result, with the vast majority of infrastructure pipeline projects located within strategic mayoral authorities. The stark contrast between the investment in established mayoral authorities and in areas like Lancashire, which is just starting the devolution process, risks embedding inequality in our regions. Places like Lancashire cannot wait until the devolved authorities are in place. To stop inequality taking root, we need support now to ensure that we can progress our transformational projects and deliver on our growth potential.

The recent Green Book review rather fortunately recognises this issue and helpfully identifies some ways of addressing it, including expanding the Treasury’s better business case programme, progressing the National Wealth Fund’s strategic partnership programme and, crucially, secondments from central Government to the regions. That is exactly what we need in Lancashire so that we can start to deliver on our growth plan, with our projects taking their place in the infrastructure pipeline.

Although I strongly welcome the Bill and call again on councils to come together to seize the opportunities it offers, I ask the Government to work with Lancashire MPs and local leaders to ensure that Lancashire receives the up-front support we need to start to catch up with our neighbours and to play our full and rightful role in delivering growth and prosperity for all our communities.