English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Evans of Guisborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Guisborough (Con)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest, in that I am a contributor to the Local Government Pension Scheme. Sadly, I am not able to take any money out of it as yet, but I know that it is in good hands.

I am particularly pleased to follow the contribution by my noble friend Lord Borwick, whose wife, Victoria, I served with on the London Assembly for two terms. She was a wonderful deputy mayor of London and set a very high standard for the rest of us to follow. I particularly agreed with my noble friend’s comments on disabled access to taxis. If he brings forward that amendment, I would be delighted to support it and help it, because it is about time.

I agreed with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, had to say about out-of-area licensing. While I was in London, I visited cab drivers and would go out with them to see some of the challenges they faced around London. I was often dismayed to see the number of out-of-area plates from towns around London that were plying in the centre of town, seemingly with no enforcement, even though we knew that the standard they had to pass was far lower than the London cab standard. That was in the days before the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, made her report on the grooming gangs, which makes that type of licensing only even more urgent. I am pleased to see the Government bring that forward.

It is 25 years since the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, and I arrived at Romney House, just down the road from here, to take up our role as founder members of the London Assembly, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. I will confine most of my other comments to London issues, because that is the area I know a bit about. I was pleased to hear the Minister talk about the London-wide licensing strategy, which was added to the Bill at a fairly late stage. I note that, in the other place, Dame Meg Hillier, another former colleague of mine now representing Hackney South and Shoreditch, had some very technical questions to raise about the licensing strategy. I will be interested to see how it develops as the legislation moves forward.

I have some questions about London-wide entertainment and alcohol licensing, largely on the basis of why it is being done, why it was asked for, what the objectives are and how we will be able to judge whether this trial is successful before it is rolled out to the rest of the country. Local communities guard their decisions on licensing fiercely. There needs to be a very obvious benefit for taking them away or making that decision at a higher level further up the ladder.

I join the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, in her comments on the assembly’s powers and, perhaps, improving them. I suspect many people here will not know that there has been no occasion at any time in the 25 years that the assembly has existed when the assembly or its committees have been able to amend or overturn the mayor’s budgets or strategic powers, despite the fact that that power was put into the legislation. That is because those committees and the assembly require a two-thirds majority to do that. Linked with proportional representation, that is almost mathematically impossible.

There has only ever been one term in which that might have happened, which was the second term of Ken Livingstone’s office, when the Labour Party was reduced to seven assembly members, which was not enough to provide a one-third blocking number. On that occasion, a number of deals were done with colleagues in the Green Party: I think the mayor’s conversion to green policies was dragged along partly by the political necessity of having to get his budget through. Perhaps the solution to that is to allow the assembly and its committees to amend the budget by simple majority rather than by a two-thirds majority. An amendment to that effect was introduced by Peter Fortune, the honourable Member in the other place who represents Bromley and Biggin Hill, another former assembly member. I think it was defeated, but we might see it again here.

I also believe that another look at the way the assembly is described in legislation may be overdue. The assembly has been in existence now for 25 years. In that time, the population of London has increased by over 1 million people. That is an increase in the size of the population of London of over 10%. Yet the assembly is still made up of 25 members: it has not grown to reflect that. The reason is that the legislation says that the assembly should be made up of 25 members, so some legislative change is required to enable a boundary review to take place. Perhaps the Minister will consider that, while we are going over London matters. It has been an asymmetric growth in numbers. Two particular constituencies in London—North East, which covers the Lea Valley, and City and East, which covers the Barking Riverside development—have grown much faster than others and therefore the people in those constituencies are possibly underrepresented.

I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Porter, who mentioned “Yes Minister”. There has been a lot of discussion about the title of this legislation. I dug the quote out from the first episode of “Yes Minister”. Sir Humphrey Appleby’s advice to Ministers on drafting legislation was, “Dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does much less harm there than on the statute books”. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that that is not the case.