English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, as I rise to speak, I am reminded of 15 years ago, when four leaders from Greater Manchester stood outside the Cabinet Office in Whitehall awaiting an invitation in. I was one of those leaders. Greater Manchester had 10 local authorities in 2010: five Labour, three Liberal Democrat and two Conservative. We had already signed up to the first combined authority in the country—a legally binding agreement to serve the people of Greater Manchester—and that was running quite well. We therefore asked the Government for full devolution and full powers, and, more importantly, the funding to go with it.

We presented to the full Cabinet of the Government, including Nick Clegg and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Four of us sat there, facing them, with two jugs of water and four glasses. We did not expect that. We thought it would be a small number of people. My role was to explain the earn-back model, which was simply that the combined authority would provide, at no cost to government—they quite liked that—the infrastructure for major development schemes: motorway links, transport hubs and many other measures that would then enable development to take place. When successful, the Government would collect the subsequent gross value added tax from the businesses and we would earn a proportion of that tax back to reinvest to create more jobs and opportunities. We were successful, but it took four years to hammer out the financial details of that deal with the Treasury. It was eventually signed off in Manchester by the Chancellor himself, George Osborne, in 2014.

The obvious difference between that devolution deal and the devolution Bill we have today is elected mayors. We did not have elected mayors in those days. We, the 10 leaders, were responsible for our portfolios, directly accountable and directly elected—and that is the problem. We have an elected mayor in Manchester now, Andy Burnham, and he has been outstanding, working collaboratively with combined authorities, putting place before politics, with the first mayoral development corporation not in a Labour-run town but in Liberal Democrat Stockport. It has attracted over £300 million of private investment so far, including thousands of new homes, a fully integrated transport hub, now expanding further across Stockport town centre. Bringing the bus network back under public control was a masterstroke. He is also driving Greater Manchester to be the fastest-growing economy in the UK at present. Having said that, all is not well in Greater Manchester. The private hire cross-boundary issues are of great concern to us. My noble friend Lady Pidgeon, our transport spokesperson, will go into more detail later, but there are more private-hire drivers from Wolverhampton working in Greater Manchester than work in Wolverhampton itself, and that cannot be right.

Mayor Burnham might one day in the future leave us to do greater things in another place and reach higher office. We do not know that. What we do know is that the new Bill gives elected mayors sweeping new powers but is almost silent on democratic accountability. Removing planning powers from directly elected members does not sit well with this group, and future governance arrangements for fire and police will be high on my agenda as this Bill receives the full scrutiny it deserves. As I have said, Greater Manchester has a combined authority. However, there will be strategic authorities, and there must be stronger roles for their council leaders to ensure that potential mayors cannot override the views of three or four constituted local authority leaders. And is it right that the mayor has a casting vote where decision-making is tied? Where is the accountability and the honesty in that?

The Liberal Democrat party is the party of devolution. Talk of “empowerment” in the Bill is frankly laughable. It goes hand in glove with robust scrutiny, accountability and giving citizens the confidence that voting matters, their voices matter and their voices will be heard. That way, you get benefits for all of society, not only a few. If this Government listen and accept reasonable amendments, this Bill could begin to do what we all want: growth, investment, better transport and better qualities for all. But, if it does not, there will be opportunities lost. We delivered in Greater Manchester and continue to do so, because we increased scrutiny, embraced joint accountability and built confidence in the private and public sectors. I hope the Government take heed of that, because this Bill is too important to fail.