English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

I shall speak also to Amendment 212 in my name. I should say at the outset that, unless the Minister can give a very convincing response about the rights of a local authority and local people to adopt a committee system if they want to in their governance structure, I am minded to divide the House. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who spoke on the value of a committee system in Committee. It has proved very popular and successful in Sheffield, and in other places. Basically, my case is that it is for local people to decide the governance structure that they should have, as indeed they have done very successfully in Sheffield.

The Bill, as I keep repeating, is about devolution and community empowerment. So, I ask the Minister: why can a community and its local authority not decide for themselves their own model of local democracy? It is surely for the people who pay taxes to that authority to make a decision about the governance structure that runs their local area. That is a quite fundamental issue for me. It is not for central Governments to make those decisions; it is for local people.

I was very surprised when I first read—well, each time I read—the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’s Explanatory Notes. In paragraph 98 on page 23, I found the argument very surprising. It is, in essence, a set of assertions by the Government that:

“The committee system is a less effective form of governance for local authorities, particularly the larger, unitary councils. It suffers from more opaque and potentially siloed decision making, a lack of clear leadership and accountability, with decisions taking longer to be arrived at”.


At previous stages of the Bill, I have asked the Minister for the evidence base on which that statement in paragraph 98 has been written. Where is the research that tells us that about a committee system, which is apparently very successful in a number of places—notably Sheffield, where the people decided to reintroduce a committee system? How does anyone know in London that a committee system is a less effective form of governance? Is it not for local people to make that decision? Anyway, might the Government consider that the quality of decision-making where the decision has been reached by a committee might be better than where it has been taken within the leader and cabinet model, when many fewer people are involved in it?

For those who may be less familiar with the number of committees I am talking about, I should say that these are committees on housing, the environment, social care, economic development, transport, and so on. It is about whether you have a number of people, cross-party, working on a specific area of governance, or whether you have individuals making decisions.

I think we get more considered decisions from a committee structure. The scrutiny system that underpins the leader and cabinet model comes after the event—it comments afterwards on whether something is successful—but a committee is assessing policy proposals before they have been agreed. Since the committee system was invented under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, it has shown its effectiveness in bringing councillors of different parties together and engaging all elected councillors in the decision-making processes of their local authority.

If anyone has any doubt as to whether a committee system is a good thing, we just need to look at ourselves: we operate a committee system when a Bill goes through your Lordships’ House. Imagine what it would be like if there had not been a Committee for this or any other Bill. I submit that having a committee structure can lead to better decisions. I accept that it can be slower—sometimes, too many people may be felt to get involved in an issue—but I think democracy is enhanced when that happens. I also believe that the quality of decisions by a committee is generally better. At its heart, it is not for central government to control the decisions of local areas on the governance model that they prefer. We have to trust the people better than the Government seem to want to do. For that reason, I beg to move.

[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—

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 247. My noble friend Lady Bennett supported the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on this amendment. I will speak also to Amendments 255 and 257. I am grateful to the Minister for the time she took to meet me following Committee; that was very generous. However, I am much less grateful about the fact that what I asked for is still missing from the Government’s Bill. I had hoped that that discussion might lead to some movement on the issue of environmental interests, but they are still missing from the legal definition of assets of community value.

In Committee and again at our meeting, the Minister expressed a concern that including environmental assets could turn this scheme into something of a proxy part of the planning system. I want to address that directly, because it reflects a complete misunderstanding of what these amendments would do. Assets of community value give communities a fair chance to come together and buy a valued asset if it comes up for sale. They are not a backdoor planning system, they do not grant a right to veto development and they do not override local plans. That is already true for social and economic interests. No one suggests that allowing a community to buy a pub, shop or community centre turns this scheme into a proxy for regulating the economy or blocking development, so why is the environment treated differently?

This is where the Government’s position gets very difficult to follow. On the one hand, Ministers say that environmental assets—woodlands, allotments, green spaces—can already be nominated where they further social or economic well-being; on the other hand, they stop allowing communities to refer explicitly to environmental interests in the same way. I do not think that communities think like that. They do not say, “We value this woodland only for its social benefit”, or, “We want to retrofit this community building only for economic reasons”. In practice, we pursue social, economic and environmental goals together, just as every part of our planning system already recognises. However, as the Bill stands, a community could nominate a woodland but would not be able to properly articulate the environmental outcomes that they want to protect or enhance; they could seek to acquire a community centre but could not refer to plans to improve energy efficiency or biodiversity as part of their case. That weakens their chance to make a credible case.

The Government’s answer remains that this may be addressed in statutory guidance, but guidance is not law: it can be changed and it carries less weight. As the Committee debate showed, this risks embedding the very confusion that we are trying to resolve—the confusion between the asset itself and the interests it serves.

Finally, I return to the broader principle. Everywhere else in policy—planning law, national frameworks and sustainable development—we recognise that social, economic and environmental goals belong together. The Bill, in many respects, seeks to devolve power and to trust communities, but in this one area it holds back. Leaving environmental interests out of statute is not being neutral; it is a signal that they matter less, which does not surprise me coming from this Government, because that is what we have seen again and again on environmental issues. It risks missed opportunities and poorer outcomes for communities.

I thank my colleagues on the other Benches, the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyburg, for supporting these two amendments. I hope that they will say something in support. I reserve the right to ask the House to vote on this, because, quite honestly, it is a principle that the Government have missed completely. As a Green, that distresses me hugely.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my amendments in this group, concerned with cultural assets of community value—the same amendments I tabled in Committee. I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Freyberg for these amendments. I have done so primarily to allow me to thank the Minister for the encouraging reply she gave in Committee that such assets will be explicitly recognised in statutory guidelines. The Minister has kindly invited feedback on that guidance, and my noble friend Lord Freyberg and I have drawn up a more comprehensive list of categories of possible cultural assets than we have discussed, in the hope that this may be of practical use. I have forwarded this in a letter to the Minister over the weekend, so she may not yet have had time to have a look at it. It is a longer list than the examples contained in my Amendment 262, which then would be cited in the Bill. In the interest of completeness, it contains perhaps some unusual examples, but it may be the unusual that a local community wishes to maintain.

One outstanding concern which occurred to us in drawing up this list is about potentially moveable cultural assets, such as archives or furnishings, or even a single object of cultural value; of course, this will be a particular concern for heritage sites. It may be a question of whether or not such assets are integral to the property in which they are housed. This is not something we have previously discussed, but I hope nevertheless that this dimension might be acknowledged within the guidance, so I ask the Minister to consider that specific point. Of course, with historic buildings of national significance, one would hope that other measures come into play, and the conscious inclusion of cultural assets within the scheme should not negate responsibility to others, particularly that which local councils ought to have with regard to many of our cultural assets. However, the great thing about the scheme as it stands is that it is about people power. The local people are often the first to recognise an asset’s importance. In that sense, the scheme is not a replacement for, but an important additional part of, the armoury.

The rest of my amendments raise the status of cultural assets within the legislation; they are not less important. I still protest against cultural being treated as a subset of social and being less important rather than equal to sporting assets within the legislation as it stands, but I am not going to press this at this stage. Rather, I will congratulate the Minister and her team on the clear progress that has been made, ensuring that cultural assets will be much more widely recognised as potential candidates for this scheme.

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On the point about Pride in Place, made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, it would probably be more helpful if I wrote to her setting out the detail of how the areas subject to Pride in Place funding have been chosen, and about the schemes available for areas that may not come into the Pride in Place category. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to withdraw her amendment, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Hoey, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, not to press theirs.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Before the Minister sits down, are the Government actually saying that environmental assets, environmental benefits, are secondary to social and economic ones and that they are not all intertwined? I cannot believe such blindness on such an important issue.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

No, I am saying that if an asset is of value to the community for environmental purposes, that would fit in with the economic and social purposes we have set out.

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[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with the powerful speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Banner, and my noble friend Lord Grabiner. I just want to emphasise two points on Amendment 248, to which I have added my name. The first point I want to emphasise is that the law already provides that, if the local authority complies with the statutory requirements and properly advertises the sale, then the purchaser takes free from the trust—that is Section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972. There is no question of the trust being sacrosanct in law. The only question to which this amendment is directed is what should happen if there has been a failure by the local authority properly to advertise the trust.

The second point I want to emphasise is that, if the local authority fails properly to advertise the sale, any interested person is perfectly entitled to bring a judicial review to challenge the sale within a short time period—normally three months but reduced to six weeks in the planning context. The vice of the present law, as stated by the Supreme Court, is that the purchaser in good faith remains bound by the trust, even though it is not responsible for the failure of the local authority to advertise and even though no legal challenge has been brought within the applicable time limits. The whole purpose of time limits in public law is to ensure that, after the expiry of the time limits, people can go about their business and can develop land in their interests and of course in the public interest. That is the context.

The noble Lord, Lord Banner, if I heard him correctly, said that in the interests of politeness he would not comment on the amendments to his Amendment 248. I am less polite than my friend the noble Lord, Lord Banner—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

We know that.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for confirming that she knows that already. I will comment, I hope politely, on Amendment 248D in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson spoke. They wish to insert a precondition to the application of these new provisions for statutory trust discharge orders. The precondition is that the Secretary of State must first undertake a review of the availability of open spaces in this country, publish a report, lay the report before both Houses of Parliament—no doubt there would then be a debate—and then have regard to the outcome of the review.

This will cause very substantial delay in the application of the new statutory trust discharge orders, and it will cause substantial delay—years of delay—despite us all agreeing, I think, that these new orders are needed urgently. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, expressly accepted that these new provisions are urgently needed. If he accepts that they are urgently needed, it makes no sense at all to delay their application for many years.

In any event, I suggest to noble Lords that to await such a review would be especially inappropriate because the review would be general. Amendment 248D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, would require a review of the availability of open spaces in the United Kingdom. By contrast, proposed new Section 128D(10), from the noble Lord, Lord Banner, specifies that the qualifying condition F is whether,

“it is in the public interest for the relevant land”—

I emphasise “relevant land”—

“to be freed from the trusts by virtue of the order”.

I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, that it makes no sense for a general review to hold up decisions on specific land which raise entirely distinct issues.

Indeed, that amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, is also unnecessary. If there are concerns about the availability of open spaces in the locality of the relevant land, the Secretary of State would be perfectly entitled to take that into account in deciding, under proposed new Section 218D(10) and (11), whether it is in the public interest for the relevant land to be freed from the trusts.

Like my noble friend Lord Grabiner, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has withdrawn, by my counting—it is perhaps an approximation—39 of the amendments he proposed to Amendment 248. The noble Lord suggests that this is all being rushed, and the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, addressed that point. I add that we have been over this ground since last September; there is nothing new about this. Many of us spoke on amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill earlier this Session, in support of or in opposition to an earlier amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Banner, which had a similar objective. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, said on 15 September last year—and again today—referring to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Banner:

“The Government agree with the intent behind this amendment”.—[Official Report, 15/9/25; col. 1985.]


We have all known that since last September. The Minister said that,

“this issue needs to be given wider consideration to identify a balanced solution that takes into account legal safeguards and addresses the practical challenges faced by developers”.—[Official Report, 15/9/25; cols. 1985-86.]

That has taken place. Here we are today and it is high time that we resolve this issue.

Amendment 248 sets out a fair, transparent and practical means of addressing the problem; it requires an application by the landowner, detailed advertising and consideration by the Secretary of State, who has broad discretion in whether it is in the public interest for the relevant land to be freed from the trust. That is the appropriate way forward and that is why I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Banner.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I swore some months ago that I would never support another Tory amendment, but here I am supporting the two amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Borwick. He has the Green vote this evening, such as it is. This is mainly to justify my still being here at two hours past my bedtime. I regret that he is leaving and hope that the Minister will perhaps see this as a gift to a hereditary who will be much missed.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, we completely understand the thinking behind these amendments and the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, around minimum taxi requirements and the Equality Act. We sense his frustration, and that of other Members of this House, at how long these changes are taking.

Let us be very clear that “taxis” in this amendment refers to hackney carriages—known more commonly, certainly to those of us in London, as black cabs. They are less than one in five of the whole taxi and private hire network. In cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester, they is already 100% accessibility, but, as we have heard, the picture elsewhere is less uniform and in many parts of the country the network is completely provided by private hire vehicles. So this amendment, as we have heard, would not address the wider network that serves most of the country and areas outside of big cities, which is a real issue.

It is important that every region has the right balance of vehicles available to meet local needs and demands, and that will of course change over time. We welcome plans to ensure that each licensing area will bring forward an inclusive service plan. We welcome the new national standards, which are important, and, we hope, in the not too distant future, as we talked about earlier, new legislation covering taxis and private hire too. Once we start getting that together, this issue will be tackled in a far more comprehensive way than is set out in this amendment.

We absolutely believe that we need an accessible taxi and private hire service, available to you wherever you live, so that you can get out and enjoy your life, and live your life fully. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, will consider this carefully and work with the Minister to find a way forward that works for disabled passengers across the country, not just in those areas where black taxis exist and are available. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.