English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I speak today with some fear in my soul because, unusually for a Liberal Democrat, I have very little grounding in local government—or, as one of my colleagues said to me, “not yet”. So, fearing that candidate selection with my arm jacked up behind my back will follow, I will say one or two things about the Bill in front of us.

One thing on which I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, is that most people do not understand local government. But I disagree with another. I did a little service for the RFU a few years ago explaining local government planning issues and it was quite clear that most of the people involved did not know the difference between a district council and a county council. They had no knowledge of it, because they were a group of people who were committed to a bit of the public service—in this case sport—and who went training, played, manned their committees and even went to work and had love lives. They did not have time to understand the structure of local government and did not realise that until they bumped into it when something was going wrong and said, “Oh, do we have to do that?” The Local Government Association helped me with that.

We then went and spoke to other sports and—guess what—it was the same there. These local structures, which are often designed on historical county lines, have been there for a long time and have ignored the changes in local government whenever they could, have not spoken to each other because they are doing their own thing in their own time. Local governments, often run on local political structures by local volunteers, have exactly the same problems—they do not meet very often and until something goes wrong. Will the Minister undertake to make sure that, when these local government changes come through, there is an active programme of integrating them with these large voluntary groups across the country? Sports should be one of the first, but it goes through. How do they interact? By local transport. If you do not have a bus stop, you do not have a junior team because they do not have cars. That is a problem you will have when you are explaining to somebody who wants to move their club outside the area to a wonderful new site. The developer who has offered you the sun probably cannot offer you a bus service. All these things have to be explained and integrated. If we are going to make these changes, please can the Minister go in and talk to these groups? That should also catch other cultural groups who should be mentioned in this.

What is the relationship between these bodies and public health? Establishing an exercise habit for reasons other than the fact you are told to by your doctor is a very good way of keeping going. You are also involved in the cultural interactions of a group, which is very good for mental health as well. It is also an informal job market and something that allows you to meet people outside your normal group, which helps understanding. Why do we not help them more? These are self-sustaining groups that are probably struggling to get by. Government, particularly local government, really should be reaching out. Please can we do that? This Bill is an opportunity to start doing this. Try to reach out and find out what is going on. We could expand on this into minute detail, but I am at the edge of absurdity here, so I will stop very soon.

What are the Government going to do to reach voluntary groups? Sporting groups would be a good place to start, but they are not the end of it. How will the changes happen? How will you reach out and change their lives for the better? If you do not, the wall of ignorance that exists—it is not even a wall; it is a pit that you fall into—is there. These bodies do not interact; they have their own politics and agendas. They do not have time to get in touch with yours on a casual basis. You need to form bridges in a regional structure. Even unitary authorities might be a good way to start.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Addington]

158: Clause 44, page 44, line 27, after the first “to” insert “the level of public access to fitness, sports and recreational facilities within the authority’s area, and”

[Lord Addington (LD)]

That is a challenge that the Committee should probably face more often.

The amendment calls on the function here of strategic authorities. It talks about sport and recreation and comes under the heading of health. There is a general consensus that exercise is the wonder drug. If you make your body exercise correctly, it has huge health benefits, physically and psychologically. This is about making sure that the strategic authorities allow these activities to take place. When I drafted this amendment, I was thinking about it on two levels. One was grass-roots sports—that is, are you allowing organised sport to take place and are you providing enough pitches for your football and rugby teams, and so on? Are you allowing enough recreational spaces for people to be able to take part in sport?

I look at the rest of the group, and I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, is the only person to mention physical activity in her amendments, so I may be ploughing a lonely furrow—but I hope that it is not an inappropriate one. Unless we know that this is being taken on board and something is being done about it, it will get forgotten. Much of the structure here, especially in grass-roots sports, is under pressure anyway. The school structure is largely in individual academies, and public parks are difficult and expensive to maintain, if you want a flat, even surface to run around on. Very few sports do not have that basic requirement. It means keeping them drained and at least clean enough for you to go on them without risking injury or illness. It is a big ask.

Most noble Lords here are much more experienced in local government than me, but we do not do things like tennis courts that well and they are easy to cut. Can the Government give us some idea of what they are going to do here to make sure these facilities are kept available? They are preventative health, they maintain your health and they are a community asset. I have not even started to talk about sports centres and swimming pools—maybe we will take those as read—but what is the Government’s activity here and with how much seriousness do we address this? Sport is often regarded as not being important or anything to do with public health. That is the way it can seem to many of us, but it is actually a key component.

I have spoken enough so, bearing in mind the words of the Government Whip on this, I will curtail my comments here and beg to move.