English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Danny Beales and Allison Gardner

Report stage
Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Danny Beales]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution and wholeheartedly agree. We should be guided by the principle of subsidiarity. Power should be given and exercised as locally as possible. Clearly, some powers have to be exercised in this place, at national level, and also at regional level it makes sense to act, and the mayor rightly has the ability to co-ordinate our transport system in London. We do not want multiple decisions about transport infrastructure such as our tube network.

[Dr Gardner]

I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), but he had on his feet for over 20 minutes and I decided to give him a break. However, I want to raise that issue now. Much has been made about the conflict of planning—local planning going right to the boundaries, creating issues for infrastructure planning, which often sits at the wider unitary level. Devolution and wider strategic authority oversight, including greater planning oversight, will help to address some of the challenges and stresses we can face. Is that something my hon. Friend sees in the London boroughs?

[Danny Beales]

That is almost certainly true. There are strategic issues that need to be considered, and whether they are strategic powers for planning or licensing, as we are discussing in some of the amendments, there is the need for a greater role for regional mayors and authorities. It is right that local communities can respond to local issues, but there is a need for guiding infrastructure decisions on things such as heating networks, energy networks and data centre networks, and co-ordinating them at regional level makes a great deal of sense. Despite the need for greater decision making at a local and regional level, we still live in one of the most centralised political systems in the western world.

Our communities must be able to meet the challenges that they face, and that is why I welcome the raft of new powers in the Bill and the Government amendments. They will drive growth and provide opportunities to respond to new local challenges, now and in the future.

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[Danny Beales]

My hon. Friend describes perfectly the impacts that we see. Even in outer London and Hillingdon, we see the impact of the short-term let sector. We see it near Heathrow, which is very proximate to my constituency.

New clause 31 would enable differential charging. It does not mandate what the charges would be, or that one charge would apply to all sectors, so there would be the potential to charge the informal short-term let sector more per night or day than the formal stay sector.

[Dr Gardner]

I am quite interested in what my hon. Friend says about the differential approach. As a councillor, I know that Stoke-on-Trent is not necessarily known for its tourism industry, although that is absolutely a failure on the part of the country and of everybody, because we have great tourism attractions in Stoke. I have seen that when we have Airbnbs on family estates, and different people come and go, it creates an awful lot of unrest, antisocial behaviour and real concern about the revolving door of different people, which upsets local residents. [Interruption.] My apologies. Does he agree that the proposed approach would be of benefit?

[Danny Beales]

I certainly agree. The costs that result from the visitor economy are not adequately met by the tax revenue for local authorities or mayoral authorities.