English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Absolutely. We are very clear that with powers come responsibility and accountability. We are strengthening scrutiny powers for local government, and we will continue to look at ways in which we can strengthen scrutiny and accountability powers for mayors. We are absolutely clear that we have got to devolve power, but alongside that it is really important that local people can hold to account the institutions we are creating and building.

Since the Bill left this Chamber after Second Reading, the Government have made a modest number of amendments to ensure that it will operate as intended. To be clear, we have not introduced significant new policy; rather, we have responded to concerns raised by Members in the best traditions of parliamentary scrutiny. I am therefore confident that we are bringing a better Bill back on Report.

Today’s debate is concerned with parts 1 and 2 of the Bill, on strategic authorities and their powers, duties and functions. Many of our amendments are minor and technical, and I will therefore focus on explaining the more substantive changes we made in Committee and the further amendments we have brought forward on Report that relate to these parts of the Bill.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

It is the Government’s clear intention to devolve powers, but in the reorganisation of local government, the Government are taking sweeping powers to determine the outcome of any reorganisation—in Essex, for example. Will the Minister undertake to listen to the consultation and to reflect the consultation responses in the decision that the Government take? Currently in the Bill, there is no obligation on them to do so.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

We are very clear that the process of local government reorganisation should be driven by local areas. That is why we are going through a process in which local areas are coming up with proposals, and consulting constituent authorities and their communities. We will then make a decision based on those proposals.

It is very clear that this Bill is about devolution. Yes, there is a backstop power, but it is not one that we intend to use; it will be used only in extreme cases. The process of local government reorganisation is proceeding at the moment, and all areas in that process are engaging. Proposals are coming forward, and we will make decisions based on those proposals.

At the heart of the reorganisation is an objective: to have local authorities that are more sustainable and that can deliver for their local people. That is the central purpose of reorganisation, and it is something that we are absolutely committed to delivering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

May I begin by welcoming the Minister to her place? We spent a long time together on the Bill Committee, working cross-party, along with many other Members on both sides of the House. They included the Statler and Waldorf of the Committee, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and the hon. Member for Banbury (Sean Woodcock), whose heckling of me throughout the sittings was very welcome. [Hon. Members: “More!”] A number of Members are saying “More!” from a sedentary position.

The Minister was bombarded with what I would argue are excellent amendments tabled by Members from all parts of the House, but I think she has been taking a leaf from the book of her colleague the Minister for Housing and Planning. Much of her response to amendments tabled by me—and by the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and, indeed, some of her own colleagues who wanted to see movement from the Government—was that she would “reflect”. She would reflect in order to make the Bill better, and she would reflect on whether she could make it better by accepting amendments tabled by Members on both sides of the House. Instead, she has reflected on nothing. Instead, she has brought us a Bill to which she has tabled a small number of amendments that the Government want, but any other amendments tabled by other parties have been completely ignored.

Just to show how unprepared the Government were today, let me point out that most of the Committee stage was taken up with discussion of Government amendments, because this Bill from a Government who wanted to govern in the interests of the people was so riddled with holes that they spent most of the time discussing their own proposals, rather than those of the Opposition.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Today the Government put forward 23 of their own amendments, which meant that the Minister allowed less than a minute for each one in her speech. That includes two new schedules. Moreover, we have still not seen a great deal of the regulation that will flow from the Bill, even in draft form. Is this Bill ready, in any way?

[Paul Holmes]

The answer is clearly no, because otherwise it would not have had as many holes as it had in Committee, and it would not have as many holes as it has today. If it were a Bill from a Government who genuinely sought cross-party co-operation on what could be a very exciting programme of devolution for local authorities and people throughout the country, the Minister and the Government would have looked more seriously at some of the excellent amendments and new clauses tabled by Members from all parts of the House, although not by the Minister’s own Back Benchers.

I am a big fan of the Minister, but when I intervened on her earlier, she showed some anger, which is not typical of her. She tried to object when I said that as a result of her local government reorganisation programme, councils across the country will be forced to reorganise, even if they do not want to. There is a backstop that the Minister said she did not want to use, but when she winds up the debate, I ask her to confirm what she refused to confirm in Committee—that if local authorities do not want to reorganise, she will force them to do so. It is about time the Government came clean about that, so that local authority leaders throughout the country know what they will have to deal with, and know that they will have a gun against their head and will be forced to reorganise, rather than getting on with delivering efficient services, as they try to daily.

[Paul Holmes]

My right hon. Friend absolutely knows her constituency. We have tried to ensure, both today and in Committee, that local authority leaders can choose who they work with. They should not be forced to do things by a Minister behind a desk in Whitehall, but that is what this Minister and this Department are doing. It is shameful. It is not what Members on both sides of the House want, and it is not what local authority leaders want—and they know best. I ask the Minister to look at that compulsion again.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Paul Holmes]

Very briefly.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am most grateful; my hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous.

I commend the Minister for being on top of her brief, but I did not have a chance to raise this question, which is directly relevant to the point that my hon. Friend is making. The regulations have not been written to show how the neighbourhood panels, or whatever they are called, will be created, but the Bill contains sweeping powers to direct how those neighbourhoods should be constructed. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we believe in devolution, this should be left to the local authorities to determine, rather than its being determined by Ministers?

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct, and, indeed, in the Bill, there are plenty of other examples—which we discussed in Committee—of the Government not genuinely devolving to mayors, local authorities and combined authorities powers that they would actually quite like, but giving them the powers that they want them to have, while taking other powers away. That is not true devolution, and the Government should look again at delivering true devolution throughout the United Kingdom.