Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but am encouraged to do so by the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, because I agree with it.

If you give my former colleagues in Whitehall and their political masters an opportunity to be more specific, they will do so by being more prescriptive and will constrain—we should avoid that. However, my former colleagues are a touch cleverer than that, as the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and I well know, because they will also be looking to win back some of the powers that they are in danger of losing by including in other legislation greater constraints and more prescriptive requirements. If I look at some of the draft legislation that is about to make its way through this House, I can see evidence of that already happening. I am concerned about that, partly because I have not seen, over the last 20 or 30 years, that the Department for Communities and Local Government—or for the environment, or whatever it has been called—has been very good at ensuring that, in other parts of government, devolution happens. I fear that on this occasion, too, that will be the case and we will debate this Bill at great length, but other Bills and other parts of government will seek to prevent real devolution from happening.

If we are going to monitor what is happening on devolution, let us do it not only in respect of this Bill but across the legislative piece. Let us ask those questions about every Bill that comes to this House. We were talking earlier in Questions about having a family test. Let us start thinking about having a devolution test, which we apply to every single piece of legislation that comes before the House.