English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Jonathan Brash Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

English devolution is a mess. It is a postcode patchwork of opaque systems, varying powers and unclear lines of accountability. That is not just an historical failure, but profoundly dangerous, because when the public cannot navigate their democracy or do not know who holds the pen on planning, transport, housing or skills, they understandably disengage. Accountability is lost, and in that vacuum politicians can get away with anything.

I will give the House one clear example: in Hartlepool, the Tees Valley Mayor has imposed a mayoral development corporation with very little consultation—certainly not with the public. Planning powers were stripped from the council for large areas of the town, supposedly to be exercised by an appointed board. We fought hard to secure some form of democratic representation on that board, yet of its 14 members, only four hold elected office and only one is there because they have elected office. In any event, the mayor quickly outsourced the majority of those powers to a private company in Manchester, so people who have never walked our streets are now making the majority of the decisions shaping them.

[Andrew Cooper]

Does my hon. Friend agree that mayoral development corporations need to be brought under the remit of the new local audit offices that are proposed in the Bill, placing the power to audit them beyond reasonable doubt?

[Mr Brash]

I agree that far greater powers are required to hold mayoral development corporations to account, and that may be one way of doing it.

The changes are not just about planning powers: publicly owned assets are being transferred from the council and other public bodies. When Labour councillors demanded that those assets, which include Hartlepool’s civic centre, would be returned to public ownership if they were not developed or if the corporation was wound up, that demand was refused. When we asked whether the council could resist this change, the advice was stark: we could not, there was no veto and it could not be stopped by the council. When the council voted against a mayoral development corporation just down the road in Middlesbrough, it was imposed on the town anyway.

Let me be clear that I am not opposed to the principle of development corporations. I was willing to support the one in Hartlepool in the spirit of cross-party co-operation, but the outcome has become confused, with zero accountability and residents left unclear about who to turn to, especially as more and more houses in multiple occupation pop up across our town centre, put there by an unelected, unaccountable company. This is not power in the hands of the people.

Devolution was supposed to mean decisions made closer to communities, but too often the reality is the opposite: power hoarded and pushed further away from the very neighbourhoods that are supposed to be empowered. That is why I support the We’re Right Here campaign, which asks that power does not stop at the mayor’s office but flows to the people themselves. It is championed by Hartlepool’s own community leader, Sacha Bedding. It is a way forward and I hope that Ministers are listening. We must ensure that there is accountability for mayors. They can be the vehicle for delivering for the public, but the power itself can lie only in one place: with the people.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

That brings us to the Front-Bench spokespeople. I call David Simmonds.