English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will be quite brief and will make a point of principle to start with. If something is important enough to be an additional area of competence, it should have a dedicated commissioner to go with it, which is in line with what the Government have done so far. I say that at the outset.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has given us an intriguing, rather creative amendment in terms of flexibility, but I have a couple of concerns. I know that the noble Lord is an enlightened individual arts-wise, who I am sure would like to see—like me—the arts, culture and heritage thrive in the new strategic areas. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, and I pointed out last week in the debate on my Amendment 6, not all councils are quite so enlightened. Even if every mayor was conscientious enough today to ensure that their strategic authority did everything it could for the arts, culture and heritage—I say this simply as an example of an area of concern rather than competence—there is no guarantee that those who follow would have the same commitment unless there was a statutory commitment. This is very much in line with what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, was saying earlier. I very much support Amendment 51A in her name, and the other amendments that she proposed as well.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly support the amendments in this group that seek to remove the cap on the number of commissioners and the appointment of special advisers. In doing so, I restate my support for Amendments 6, 10 and 51 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, to add the arts and culture as an area of competence, which would allow a modest increase in the number of commissioners from seven to eight.

I fully recognise that the Government wish to maintain a coherent and settled devolution framework, to limit additional costs that such appointments would incur and to exercise caution around unelected roles. Here I entirely take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to those numerous and very important questions.

I also accept the argument that further powers may be pursued within the existing areas of competence. That said, the question here is one of governance rather than architecture. A small degree of flexibility in the commissional model, as the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Bach, have argued for, would allow mayors to organise their leadership teams and their advisers in ways that reflect local priorities and circumstances without altering the framework itself.

Different regions face very different challenges: a dense metropolitan authority and a largely rural combined county authority may reasonably require different internal arrangements. For those reasons, I generally support these amendments and the flexibility they seek to introduce.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate. I thank all noble Lords who have participated. It does appear to be the first one today where we are not quite in agreement on things. I assure my noble friend Lord Trenchard that we share his concerns about appointing unelected commissioners to roles that have real political power. However, before I go on to that, this raises an important and enduring question about how leadership is accountable and the flexibility to operate within a system that is devolved.

At its heart, this debate returns to the principles of devolution. It is about not just transferring powers from the centre to the local level but about who exercises those powers. It is about how they are held to account and how clearly responsibility is understood by the public whom those institutions are designed to serve.

On the amendments, while the noble Lord, Lord Bach, made a good case, we have concerns about commissioners holding responsibility for multiple areas of confidence because there is a risk that it could reduce accountability, concentrating authority into too few hands and blurring the lines of responsibility, making it harder for the public to discern who is ultimately answerable for decisions—there may be cases that need further thought in this area. I also accept the noble Lord’s points about police authorities. With the recent announcement in the other place, can the Minister say whether that is being taken into account in the devolution Bill or, even better, whether that announcement is going to take account of the devolution Bill? That is rather important.

On the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, devolution works best when responsibilities are clear, visible and capable of effective scrutiny. I have a real concern here, which has been shared by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. First, I will talk about commissioners. What is the definition of a commissioner? Working in local government, when you say that the commissioners are coming in, while I personally am not used to a failing council, normally you send them in after a best value inspection when one is failing. We have had this issue several times in the devolution Bill, and definitions and consistency of definitions would be helpful.

However, the real concern about commissioners is that we seem to have an expanding strategy. The Bill talks about seven but now we have amendments that talk about political advisers, special advisers and more deputy mayors. My focus in local government is value for money. Local government and mayors should be about delivering services to residents. They should not be about creating an unelected bureaucracy that is appointed and risks political cronyism. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also raised a number of practical issues such as whether when the mayor resigns all the commissioners go and you lose all that knowledge and so forth. I will not go on to those again, because that would be unnecessary repetition, but we have a real concern.

A number of noble Lords raised an issue around whether we can have commissioners for specific areas. I have sympathy with that, but they do not have to be commissioners. We are talking about political leads for certain areas. There is no reason why an elected councillor cannot be a political lead, whether it is for rural affairs, the environment, culture and so forth. I do not think that we have to focus on commissioners there—that can be a political lead.