English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Shephard of Northwold Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)]

My Lords, we on this side oppose many aspects of the Bill, but that is not because we oppose the principles of devolution and greater local accountability; we strongly support both principles. In 2010, the only area of England with a devolution settlement was Greater London. Since then, Conservative Governments have introduced a number of devolution deals with local authorities, which now cover 64% of England. On this side, we have always believed that local people should be able to hold to account those who deliver local services.

This Bill seeks to standardise and restructure English devolution by creating strategic authorities with mayors across the country. But rather than putting more power into the hands of local people, as my noble friend Lady Scott has said, it gives the Secretary of State significant new powers at the centre—for example, creating new strategic authorities, adding councils to them or providing a mayor—without the consent of local councils. The Government will have the power to force two-tier council areas to become unitary authorities. Five new powers will allow legislation to be amended by statutory instrument without the agreement of local councils.

There will have to be close parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill in this House and in the other place. We need to examine the principles and procedures contained in it because of the great importance, to the whole population, of the services for which the new strategic authorities and mayors will be responsible. As has been briefly mentioned, those services include: transport and infrastructure; skills and employment support; housing, economic development and regeneration; environment and climate change; health and well-being—where social care is I do not know and I hope light may be cast on that—public safety; and the functions of police and crime commissioners. All these are extremely important policy areas that are close to local people.

Obviously, and despite disagreements and misgivings, it has been equally important at local level in the areas with mayoral elections announced for 2026—Norfolk and Suffolk, Essex, Hampshire and Solent—to prepare for the changes to come. Much work has been done. Mayoral candidates have been chosen; they are already campaigning. In some places, staff have been interviewed for the new authorities. Imagine, therefore, the disbelief with which local council leaders received phone calls from the Minister in the other place a few days ago to inform them that the local mayoral elections had been cancelled and would take place in 2028. No one was more shocked than the former Minister for Local Government in the other place, Jim McMahon MP, who said:

“Local leaders across the political spectrum have worked in good faith. They have put aside self-interest and differences, and they did everything asked of them to secure a better settlement for the people they represent. They reasonably expected the Government to do the same … The Government have a moral and a legal obligation to honour their side of the bargain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/25; cols. 1166-67.]


I agree with those words. Some 5.4 million registered voters live in the areas affected by the changes and Norfolk, where I live, is one of them. In Norfolk, there are fears that the uncertainty caused by the delay will affect investment in large infrastructure projects and stifle growth in the local economy. There is also the question of uncertainty in all the policy areas that will be covered by the new strategic authorities. What are they meant to do? They cannot plan because they do not know what will happen. It is extraordinary.

Why have the Government taken this shock decision to delay the mayoral elections, after all they have said about the importance of devolved powers? They claim that the necessary local government reorganisation is not yet in place. That argument is rejected in all the affected areas. We are certainly 90% there in Norfolk. There have been critics who say that the Government have calculated that they might have more success in the mayoral elections under the new supplementary vote system they intend to introduce for mayors, which is not yet in place. Others claim—I am not claiming this, but there have been headlines—that the Government are running scared, given the current opinion polls. Whatever the reason, many of us in this House value and respect local government. I believe that the Minister does too. I look forward to her reply to this debate.