English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, as a councillor on Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire, which is a large unitary authority with both a metro mayor and a combined authority, I have both an interest to declare and experience to share.

This has been a great debate to be part of and to listen to, because the passion for local governance and local democratic government has been apparent throughout the afternoon. Many issues have been raised that are important locally, such as cattle grids—who knew?—and taxi and private hire licensing, which is vital for safeguarding. We have heard about different parts of the country, from Cornwall and even Devon to Lincolnshire, Norfolk, the West Midlands and now Yorkshire.

This has been an important debate, but it has had rather a mixed response from various Members across the House. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches are completely in favour of the principle of devolution. It is fundamental to our values, as is community empowerment, which should naturally flow from devolution. Unfortunately, the Bill being debated neither encompasses real devolution nor, unfortunately, empowers communities. We on these Benches will strongly support proposals that enable either or both.

At the heart of the chasm that exists between the Liberal Democrat and the Government’s approach to devolution is an understanding of the essential purpose of local government. Successive Governments have viewed local government as simply a necessary local service delivery function. Perhaps that notion has its beginnings in the statement made by Sir Keith Joseph, when he was a Cabinet Minister in the early Thatcher Government, that local government should outsource all its service delivery, and the council would therefore only need to meet once a year to agree the contracts. Since then, there has been a persistent trend of central government viewing the purpose of local government through that lens.

Nearly 20 years ago, the Lyons report into local government expressed a more positive purpose for local government as being one of place shaping in order to use powers and influence to promote the well-being of a community. Lyons said that that approach was crucial to improving satisfaction through greater local choice and flexibility. It is that wider, more inclusive place-shaping role that we on these Benches support. It follows the long line of great local government reformers and indeed the Localism Act 2011, which introduced the concept of subsidiarity.

It is in that context that Liberal Democrats challenge the basis of the Bill. We support a strategic authority, but it should have greater democratic accountability and not be at the expense of local decisions made locally, where they belong. During this debate, there have been many contributions on Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill, which establish strategic authorities and the role of mayors. Strategic authorities have an important role to play in place shaping, as we have heard, and both Manchester and the West Midlands have been trailblazers in doing that, but what is not acceptable to those of us who cherish local democratic decision-making is the powers given to a single person over a large area with minimal accountability, minimal community engagement and little involvement of elected local councillors.

The Mayor of West Yorkshire, for example, serves 2.5 million people, and the combined authority consists of, in effect, the five council leaders. Under the Bill, the mayor will have very wide powers to determine a strategy for land use, for example, that will have a significant impact on local communities who will have been denied a genuine opportunity to have their voice heard. Where is the community empowerment in that? Where is the local accountability and local democratic decision-making?

My noble friend Lord Pack has rightly criticised the change to the mayoral electoral system. A supplementary vote fails the test of enabling the candidate with the widest support to be elected. Why has this system been chosen when others, which are more effective at ensuring the election of a candidate with the widest support, have been rejected?

A further undermining of transparency is the power the Bill provides for a mayor to appoint up to seven unelected commissioners. As it stands, this enables a mayor to appoint their mates to these roles—as has apparently already happened in some mayoral authorities, including one not far from where I live. At the very least, there need to be requirements in the Bill for an open process of appointment through a selection panel.

The extension of mayoral powers is far remote from the notion of community empowerment. For example, the potential for civil enforcement powers to be undertaken by the mayor removes them from local involvement. Further, the power of a mayor to take a planning decision away from the local planning authority is at complete odds with local democracy. I have read nothing in the Bill that explains how a strategic planning decision will be defined. Perhaps the Minister can explain that.

Part 3 is a further attack on local democracy and accountability as it provides powers to the Secretary of State to merge councils into unitary ones. What is not sufficiently discussed is that the key criteria for a unitary council is to be its population. The number of people will determine the geography of the new unitary councils, not whether places coexist and work well with each other, or whether it is the will of the people. Forced amalgamations fail. The council on which I served is a prime example. Even after 50 years, there are regular heartfelt calls for its abolition, because it forced together the great towns of Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley, when they do not have much in common. That is the danger of forcing councils together in this way.

Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that there are elements of the Bill that are welcome, such as the creation of the local audit office. That is a very important move. Since the Audit Commission was abolished, there has been a lack of oversight and guidance for local audit, so I welcome that clause. Clause 58 is important, because it gives a nod towards neighbourhood governance, although there is no clarity about what that might mean. In any case, Clause 58 provides a power for the Secretary of State, for crying out loud, to make the decision on what constitutes a neighbourhood unit.

If we really believe in devolution, neighbourhood governance should be decided by the local council area, not the Secretary of State. If there is one thing that I hope the Minister will help us to change, it is that. That is at the heart of what devolution should be: local people determining what neighbourhood governance should look like and what the area should be, not the Secretary of State, who surely has better things to decide on. That is just one example of a ministerial power to override local decisions, which are unfortunately peppered throughout the Bill.

This is not real devolution. There is no fiscal devolution in the Bill either, which, as many Members have said in their contributions, makes devolution a rather empty promise, given that mayors will probably have to compete for resources from the Treasury.

At its best, local government is greater than the sum of its parts. It is what matters most to the daily lives of people. The plea from these Benches is for the Government to start appreciating the power of vibrant, well-funded local government that enhances the lives of the people who live there and the place in which they live. During the next stages of the Bill, we on these Benches will challenge the Government to look through a local lens and provide real devolution and real community empowerment.