Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Bach Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I hope I have already made clear that I do not think any of the money that has been spent is wasted. The work will go ahead on local government reorganisation and on devolution. When I did the engagement meetings on this, it was really interesting to hear stories from around the country of councils, which had not spoken to each other in 20 years or more, sitting down and working together. We have really appreciated that. It has been a good way of bringing councils and councillors together to work on this jointly, and we have no intention of rowing back on it. The money spent is not down the drain, nor has it been wasted; the money will be used in the future programme.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Government’s policy in this area; it is a brave policy and one I think the Opposition parties have behaved shockingly badly about over the last few months. Today is a difficult day; I feel it is difficult as well. But it needs to be said that this Government have support for the prospect of proper devolution. How can that take place without some local government reform? The two obviously go together. It is nonsense and just not right to say there is no relationship between them—there has to be.

I want to ask my noble friend about the cities that lost out so badly during the last local government reorganisation so they have become much too small, not natural in the slightest way and incapable of managing to get the necessary funding to be able to build the even more necessary houses and generate growth. Is it still the Government’s policy to make sure that those cities—including my own city of Leicester—have that extra space and are expanded in the way that is intended?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. I do not think it is helpful for me to comment on individual areas. However, he is right to point to the focus on growth. There were three main focuses that we looked at: the potential for growth and making sure we could achieve that across the country; ensuring that the key services delivered by local government are protected and supported going forward, including those for vulnerable people; and the issue of community identity which the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned.

Wherever we looked at those issues, there were different opinions in different areas, which is why we stuck very firmly to the criteria we set ourselves. The growth criteria came in the first criteria, and we looked at all of the proposals before us in respect of that. But we must not make any bones about the fact that we need to change things to get the growth we want to see. That involves making sure local government is enabled to drive that growth forward in the way it is organised, and that we have the devolution so that people who are taking decisions about growth, the economy and key services in their local areas are in that local area and have some skin in the game in relation to the decisions being taken.