English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I want briefly to speak in favour of my noble friend Lord Shipley’s amendment. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said about how the committee system does not necessarily work.

I want to share the Sheffield experience with the noble Baroness. In Sheffield, when we had a strong leader model, the leader picked her cabinet, and we ended up with 10 people deciding for the entire city. There were 84 councillors and 10 people chosen by the leader. There was one occasion—I think my noble friend Lord Scriven will remember this—where, in one ward, all three councillors were part of the cabinet and large swathes of the city had no say. What we ended up with—I hope noble Lords go and Google this—was the Sheffield tree fiasco, where even the noble Lord, Lord Gove, who is not in his place, came up and could not see what was going on. That was a result of the groupthink that existed within that strong leader model.

Let me tell your Lordships what the situation is at the moment in Sheffield. There is no party in overall control. You would think that would be chaos, but it is not. It is made up of nine councillors drawn from all political parties representing different parts of the city, who all sit on a particular committee. There is a leader of the council—at the moment, he is a Labour councillor. All the committee chairs sit on what we call a strategy and resources committee. Therefore, all councillors have a say. We do not have the ludicrous situation where the scrutiny boards, as previously under a strong leader model, are picked by the same leader who is in charge of the cabinet. It was a ruling group which had all the cabinet positions and the scrutiny positions. That is why we ended up with bad decision-making.

It is why I say: let local people decide. If this Bill is about community empowerment, let them decide. People in Bristol and Sheffield have decided to go for a different model. I referred to Birmingham on a previous occasion and how it had a strong leader model but was not able to make the difficult decisions that Sheffield most recently has, despite no party being in overall control and moving to a committee system. We have not been in the financial crisis that the likes of Birmingham have been in.

What I am saying is that different models can work, but let us trust local residents. Let central government loosen a bit of control and let local people decide. Given what is written on the tin of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, why are we not empowering communities? At the moment, it feels disempowering. Therefore, I hope the Minister will address the issue of the Sheffield experience.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion F1 and particularly Clauses 37 and 91. Large parts of England—about 20% or one-fifth—will be unparished when the Government have finished vandalising our councils with LGR—the historic county boroughs, cathedral cities such as Norwich and Oxford, coastal communities such as Great Yarmouth, Hastings or Eastbourne, and new towns such as Stevenage, where the noble Baroness served with distinction as leader for many years. I note my noble friend Lady Maclean is not in her place, so I will save her from saying that the town of Redditch, which she represented with distinction, is wholly unparished—save for little Feckenham in the south-west of that new town.

When Labour is done, these places will not have a properly constituted, legally incorporated and democratically legitimised local council to mow the park, heat the baths and run the carnival, complete with a proper mayor, wearing red robes and a tricorn hat, with ribbon-cutting, convening powers. Through Clause 60, what the Government have in mind for these unparished areas is a system where out-of-town patsies are parachuted in to play politics in toothless talking shops with no resources, because there is nothing left in the precept once social care has feasted on it.

I read with astonishment this morning what the Minister wrote to us in proposing Amendment 37A, which will allow town and parish councillors to attend those meetings. Does she not see the problem here? In those places, there are not going to be any town or parish councillors—that is the point. By what alchemy will she conjure up councillors from thin air to attend these meetings? It is just magical thinking. That is why Amendment 37A is worthless: you cannot send people who do not exist.