English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. We must ensure that any spatial development strategy underlines and works with the principles of the Environmental Improvement Plan and the upcoming land use framework, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out. Particularly regarding the latter, it makes no sense to have two systems dealing with how we use our land pulling in different directions—which is the risk here. We have these central government legally binding environmental targets, so we need to use the Bill to ensure that this new devolved governance structure means that each tool is deployed in an effective but consistent manner. Consistency is key here.

Bluntly, I do not see how we can halt biodiversity loss, let alone restore it, without giving authorities the duty to work towards meeting these targets. A recently published global biodiversity assessment highlighted the threats to the UK’s national security and prosperity from biodiversity loss and really stressed the importance of delivering the 30by30. This is a very tall target at the best of times, but if we have the devolved Governments pulling in different directions on this, there is no chance that we will reach anywhere near it. We are a long way off right now—at 7%—so have an awfully long way to go in the next seven years.

This amendment would mean that authorities think about nature recovery, soil, water and land use from the outset, rather than as something to be dealt with at a later stage. We had a long-standing debate on this in the planning Bill. This is often where the delays are, caused by nature and environmental considerations. If we consider the environment strategically before we get into this whole planning process, I hope many of those delays and debates will go away, so we do not have them. This will reduce conflicts and create more consistency in how we achieve our environmental targets. It is a very good amendment and it has my strong support. I see it as essential but also proportionate.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Spatial development strategies are a really big opportunity and much to be welcomed. We have long needed a spatial view at that sort of level, so we have to get this right because there is a lot that they can deliver.

However, to be frank, if spatial development strategies do not play a key role in delivering things such as the Environmental Improvement Plan statutory targets, I am not entirely sure how government will get those statutory targets delivered, because the land is fundamental to delivering those targets. The question really is: if there is not some strong guidance that the spatial development strategies must play a role in delivering the Environmental Improvement Plan statutory targets, how will government ensure that these targets are met? Is it envisaged that there will be guidance rather than something in the Bill?

We should not underestimate the importance of the environment for growth. I remember years ago, when some of the big drug companies were thinking about where they were going to put production facilities, they came to the conclusion that England’s green and pleasant land was a pretty good place to come. Not only was there a reasonably stable economy in those days, but there were also excellent places for the people they would have to attract—potentially from other countries but also from other parts of the UK—to come and work for them. They were also potentially attractive places for those businesses to come and pursue sustainability and growth as part of their global strategies. Therefore, a pleasant, productive environment not only provides security against climate shocks, flooding, heat and all those things if done on a big enough scale; it is also an attractive place for businesses to come because they can get good staff who want to come and live in pleasant places. That is a crucial element that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out.

I have stood up and talked about the land use framework many times; I do go on about its importance. For me, it has two major importances. First, it brings a degree of rationality to considerations and discussions about competing land uses, which is absolutely what regional—spatial—development strategies ought to be doing as well, so they are very complementary. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, pointed out, the land use framework is also a means of reducing conflict.

We all too often see development being delayed because there is local or county-level antipathy by the public to what is being proposed. A land use framework approach is a way of getting that dialogue going across multiple land uses—including land for climate, biodiversity and other environmental management, and land for development—that can introduce a note of calmness, conciliation, balance and rationality to the debate. The land use framework is important and the big problem right now of course is its timing. We have been a very long time waiting for it. My understanding, and the Minister can perhaps confirm this, is that it is in a good enough shape for write-round, but we hear that it may well be delayed.

The reality is that we are up against a hard deadline. The hard deadline for me—and this is a purely personal view, not the view of my party, I am sure—is that we are going to have a rough time in the elections in May and there could well be all sorts of reshuffles emanating from that. The last thing that any of us wants is for a brand-new set of Ministers to be appointed as a result of a reshuffle, or even a few Ministers to be appointed as a result of a reshuffle, who quite rightly, in the case of something as important as the land use framework, will want to delay and have a look at it themselves to make sure that they understand it and that they are behind it. That could cause even more delay, so if we do not get it agreed and published by late April, we could be stuffed—I think that is the technical term. Perhaps we could persuade the Minister to tell us what it would take to get this announced by April.

There is one further requirement that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, does not cover, which is the whole issue of local nature recovery strategies. Those noble Lords who have played a role in local nature recovery strategy development and approval will realise just how much sweat and blood has been magnificently used at a county level to produce these agreed strategies. They are very much another brick in the wall of the rational approach to land use. There has been a huge amount of engagement of local authorities, communities and NGOs at the county level to get these strategies going. They are incredibly valuable, because they have been a meeting ground for all these competing land use bodies. One has to ask: what is the point of a local nature recovery strategy if it does not play a role and does not figure in the spatial development strategy? Can the Minister assure us that local nature recovery strategies will be material in local development strategies? If so, why not put it the Bill? Depending on her answer, I may have to egg on the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to add that into consideration on Report.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to support my noble friend Lord Lansley’s amendments, but can I probe the Minister, for when she responds, about what happens in London? In London, all 33 boroughs—or 32 plus the City, if you want to be pedantic—would all have their own local plans, and out of those local plans would come all our different plans. Then, of course, you have the London Plan, which potentially trumps—I am going to take on board some of the language just used, but I think “trumps” probably is the best phrase to use—what is done locally. Not only can it contradict what is done locally, which has quite often cost an awful lot of money, time, sweat, tears and everything else, but in addition to that it creates uncertainty. When the Minister responds, perhaps she could think about the London scenario, please.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 241B is in my name, and I strongly support Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

The devolution Bill creates these large, powerful strategic authorities whose decisions on planning, housing, transport and infrastructure will shape England’s carbon emissions, climate resilience and natural environment for decades to come. Once they are in place, these six new mayoral districts and combined authorities will be responsible for the strategic oversight of 75% of England’s landscape, so huge swathes of the landscape will be under these authorities. Despite this, as it currently stands, the Bill contains no clear mechanism to ensure that these authorities will contribute to the UK’s legally binding climate and nature targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. Both have clear, unambiguous delivery targets to which we have agreed—they are in our law.

These targets are spatially constrained and require both strategic oversight and the consideration of competing land uses. Currently, however, they sit under the Secretary of State only. Without even a mention of a duty to deliver on these targets in the devolution Bill, I believe that there is a high degree of risk that they will be undeployed, or at least deployed unevenly. This is a real risk; it is particularly important given the shifting political priorities and how they can deprioritise action. As the system stands, the Secretary of State-level duty for our Climate Change Act and Environment Act targets does not automatically filter down, be it to a local government, a regulator or a non-departmental public body.

I am sure that the Minister will say that local authorities have a “duty to conserve biodiversity”, under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, which was strengthened by the Environment Act 2021 and requires an authority to consider what it can do to conserve and enhance biodiversity. This is of course correct, but it is rooted in guidance—that lovely word to which I keep coming back—that can, and I am sure will, be changed. That then leaves it up to the individual authority as to whether it will or will not further the objective. What happens if we have an elected mayor who does not agree with net-zero policies or is someone who sees nature as a luxury that we can no longer afford? What will be their guidance on these strategic decisions to their commissioners, if we even have commissioners appointed for climate and nature, since this is far from guaranteed under the Bill as it is currently constructed?

My Amendment 241B would require strategic, mayoral or local authorities to take all reasonable steps to contribute to our net-zero target and the targets under Sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act, and to adapt to the risks set out in the climate change risk assessment report. It is hardly as if we are starting from a good place. We have only to look at the papers or the reports coming through from the Office for Environmental Protection and the Climate Change Committee, which are loudly ringing the alarm bells to say that we are nowhere near delivering on our targets in the Climate Change Act or the Environment Act. Without any firm duty on mayoral authorities to deliver, I fear that we will move further and further away from these targets.

I put it to the Committee and the Minister that we cannot rely on whatever provisions we currently have or the fact that we have national targets. We need to embed the targets in everyday decision-making—in local decision-making on the ground by council officials and elected members, as much as anyone. We can say that councils already do this. That may be the case, but it is too little and not quickly enough. If we look at the climate scorecards produced by Climate Emergency UK, which has assessed councils’ progress on a variety of climate and nature issues, they demonstrate this clearly: we are not moving quickly enough and we are seeing the consequences of this day in, day out. Species numbers are going down, landscapes are being lost and we are seeing flooding as a result of a lack of joined-up thinking on nature-based solutions.

At worst, without a duty such as this one, we could have authorities pulling in a completely direction from what Ministers or the Secretary of State expect or desire. I would hope that, from a legal standpoint, Ministers would want to be seen to be doing everything within their power to meet those targets by empowering the new strategic authorities with a responsibility to contribute. Just because an individual council decides that it does not want to progress further towards these targets—or, worse, that it actively wants to make them harder, if particular mayors come in with that role—it does not mean that we should just roll over and accept it. These issues absolutely transcend borders and affect us all. They are not within these mayoral authorities; they are much broader than that.

We have been happy to give local authorities other statutory duties; social care is the obvious big one but there are many others. It is welcome to see the new health improvement and health inequalities duties coming through. My amendment asks that the same statutory duties be given on the environment and climate change. On this critical matter, we must align local government with national government. This point was made succinctly in Dan Corry’s review for the Government last year, which covered Defra’s regulatory landscape for driving both economic growth and nature recovery. In it he said:

“A stronger and clearer link is needed between targets and plans set nationally and the activity being carried out to protect the environment and support development locally”.


That is exactly what this amendment tries to do.

With the biggest shake-up of local government in generations, if we fail to give a duty to do what we can to address two of our most critical threats—nature loss and climate change—what are we doing, really? I see this as very important.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 241B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have added my name. I also support Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, which was moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. In fact, I think she probably has the slightly better amendment, if truth be told; I may go into that later.

I am sure that the Minister is detecting a pattern here. A number of public authorities have already had similar duties for the achievement of various legally binding environmental targets laid on them either in legislation or by agreement with Ministers in subsequent guidance. Recent examples include Great British Energy, Skills England, the Crown Estate, Ofwat and the GLA. This is particularly important for these strategic authorities because they have key functions in housing, strategic spatial planning, economic development, regeneration and health improvement. If you think about it, the achievement of these environmental targets is part of the fundamental underpinning of the delivery of growth, economic development, regeneration and health improvement. Conversely, the achievement of the national environmental targets will be possible only if there is effective local and regional action. Without explicit provisions in the Bill, there will be a structural gap between national environmental commitments and these important, new, local decision-making bodies.

Having this duty would ensure clarity, consistency and legal certainty, which would certainly benefit not only authorities themselves but business and investors. So it is not surprising that the proposed duty is supported by businesses across relevant sectors, the LGA, the District Councils’ Network, London Councils, ADEPT, the majority of UK100’s members and a number of council leaders and Cabinet members. There is widespread support for this duty being applied.

Another point is that, as has been said already, the national environment and climate change targets are pretty stretching; the Office for Environmental Protection and the Climate Change Committee are already expressing concern that the Government are not on track to meet them. If the Government are to have any chance at all of achieving the statutory targets, all relevant public bodies need to do their bit—especially strategic authorities. Simply listing the areas of competence for the strategic authorities is not enough. These bodies need a duty; it has to be something that they must do, not a competence that they may carry out in a variety of ways.

Amendment 192, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is particularly elegant. It would apply a sort of triple lock, if I can use that expression. Apart from the duty, it would introduce a requirement that the authority must not only exercise the duty in carrying out its functions but think about how all the decisions it makes fit in with the duty; that is the genuine spirit of the integration of environment and climate change requirements into all decision-making, which has long been talked about as a principle but, alas, is not really happening as yet.

The most cunning thing about Amendment 192 is that it goes on to say that each authority will have guidance from the Secretary of State, and that the guidance will be “clear” and “measurable”. That is a pretty neat combination; it is better than our amendment, I think, and therefore I would endorse it beyond ours.

In both amendments, the duties would apply not only to strategic authorities but to mayors and local authorities. It is important that all these local decision-making bodies are singing from the same hymn sheet. Since the GLA was set up with climate and biodiversity duties from the very beginning, I ask the Minister whether the Government will agree to do the same for strategic authorities, mayors and the reformed local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses and the noble Lord for their comments on this group. It places me in a bit of a dilemma, because I have a lot of sympathy for the objects of these amendments: we agree that the environment is important, and we like community wealth building and so forth.

I refer back to my comments on the previous group. I have a big issue with placing duties on a local or strategic authority without the means and resources for them. This is very much a half-amendment, because it would place the duty without the means to deliver it. I think the noble Baroness commented that the LGA backs this, but the LGA actually said

“local authorities need statutory duties and powers, sufficient funding, and robust support to lead on climate action”,

which is a lot more than just having the duty. So, to progress on these, we need to recognise that you cannot just place a duty. I say that quite seriously because, when I was running my council, around 85% of our expenditure was on statutory duties and we had very little room for manoeuvre on any choice-based things. Given the pressures on adult social care, SEND and so forth, I am sure that if I redid the numbers now, that figure would be way over 90%, and we end up compromising on statutory duties. So I am very wary of placing lots of statutory duties without providing the means to deliver them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about support. I am 100% behind providing support to do something, but that is not quite the same as saying, “You must have a duty as well as support”.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Quite a lot of local authorities are doing well on this. Many of the things that they are delivering do not require additional funding but are about making the right decisions on their day-to-day routine responsibilities for planning, regeneration, growth, urban development and all sorts of things. They are making these decisions in a way that is good for the environment, climate change, biodiversity, air quality, people and sustainability, rather than making them without thinking about these things. So a duty is not a huge imposition; it is about a mindset, not a set of expenses.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I beg to disagree. Once you place a duty on an authority, all its decision-making needs to have that in mind. The authority can be challenged for not doing X, and X could involve significant expenditure, or it could be something that it has very little power over. To take a local example, my local council has a statutory duty on pollution in certain areas, such as Ampthill, which is just down the road from me, but it does not have the ability to stop cars going into Ampthill, and they are the cause of the pollution. So you end up with these dilemmas, and that needs thinking through. That is why I am wary. I do not disagree with the thrust of what the noble Baroness is trying to do, but we need to do it in a practical and deliverable way. All good councils will try to seek to do the right thing wherever they can.

As certain Peers have alluded to, in the future there may be somebody who might not be as keen as some of us are on the environment, well-being or anything else. That brings me to my second point: I am a huge believer in democracy. We have a very serious question to ask ourselves: do we believe in democracy? That means local decision-making and devolution, and, at times, it may mean that people do not do what we would choose to be our priority. That is a dilemma that we face and have to accept. If you believe in democracy and devolution, you cannot always seek to bind the hand of people to do what you want, because that is not devolution and democracy but centralisation and state control, which may be the right thing—

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 239, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I will be brief, given the stage of the evening we are at. She gave me a good lead line there in talking about Incredible Edible. A friend of mine founded that movement, which does what this amendment would enable more widely—namely, help identify and release temporary land currently unwanted by local authorities to local community groups to grow their own food, with all the benefits that the noble Baroness pointed out.

The two elements of this are: first, that there needs to be a list of temporarily unused land; and, secondly, that community groups interested in growing food need to be prompted. The most important thing is that there is a simple, low-risk standard contract for a meanwhile use lease. In many cases, landowners and local authorities were nervous about the risks of taking on a temporary use lease and surrounded it with lots of complicated legal negotiation, which meant that community groups fell out of the loop. I very much support the noble Baroness in this.

Incredible edible is an incredible organisation, and it has grown to more than 100 groups across the country. This proposition would avoid it having to be argued every time by every single community group, and would produce a standard way forward that makes it much simpler. I support the noble Baroness in that.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I just want to intervene on what the noble Baroness was saying about the importance of councils being able to take it up, by just making a quick reference to one of our most innovative gardens, which was on the new King’s Cross site. It was in skips. Every time the development there moved around, we picked up the skips and moved the garden. It can be done that simply.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I finish by saying that I also support the amendments so ably put forward by the noble Baronesses, Lady Freeman and Lady Bennett, about bringing forward the third leg of the three-legged stool that is supposed to be sustainability. It is difficult to sit on a two-legged stool; why is the environment missing when the economic and social elements are there?

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of all nine amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to which I have added my name. They do two things, and are both modest in scope and significant in effect.

First, Amendment 233 gives a practical definition to the phrase “cultural interests” by setting out clear and familiar examples, such as we heard, including

“music venues, recording studios, theatres, rehearsal spaces, visual artists’ studios and other creative spaces”.

As it stands, the term “cultural interests” is vague and open to interpretation, as the noble Earl said. This amendment would remove that ambiguity, provide certainty for local authorities when making listing decisions and reflect the lived reality of how culture is made and sustained at a local level.

Secondly, the remaining amendments address a question of status. At present, cultural assets sit awkwardly beneath the heading of social assets and are implicitly treated as being of lesser importance than sporting assets. Yet within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport itself, culture and sport are regarded as equal partners. The Bill as drafted sends the opposite message by inserting “cultural” alongside “economic” throughout the relevant provisions of Schedule 29. These amendments would place cultural assets on an equal footing with sporting assets, reflecting their shared significance to community life, local identity and local economies.

If we accept that principle—that assets of genuine value to communities deserve explicit recognition and protection—the same logic would extend beyond culture. That is why I support Amendment 225, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon, to which I have also added my name, and why I am sympathetic to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which pursue the same objective for environmental assets. These amendments would extend the community right to buy to include assets that further the environmental well-being of local communities, alongside the economic and social benefits, provided that the land is not, as we have heard, allocated for other purposes in the local development plan.

Environmental assets may not host performances or exhibitions, but they are no less vital to the identity and well-being of a place. I am thinking of the green fields that provide breathing space between developments, the woodland that offers respite from urban density, the riverside walk that connects neighbourhoods or the community orchard that brings residents together across generations. These are the lungs and ligaments of our communities. If a theatre deserves protection as a community asset, so too does the green space that gives a neighbourhood its character and its calm.

I am also sympathetic to the probing amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, which ask important questions about the robustness of the designation framework itself. Should recent use, as well as current use, be considered when determining whether an asset qualifies? Is the automatic expiry of listings after five years appropriate, or does it leave valued assets vulnerable? Should buildings designated as assets of community value be protected from permitted development and demolition? These are sensible and searching questions. If we are to take community empowerment seriously, we must ensure that the criteria for designation are broad enough to capture what communities value and that the protections, once granted, are robust enough to be meaningful. Yet even the best definitions and the strongest protections will achieve little without the means to act.