English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I am not going to disappoint the noble Earl, Lord Devon: I will speak about Cornwall, but I will also mention our brothers and sisters in Devon at a certain point.

I start with a serious point. As Members will know, Cornwall is in the far south-west of the United Kingdom: only the Isles of Scilly are further south-west. It is a Celtic nation that is surrounded by the ocean, primarily, and a little bit of the River Tamar as well. It is also an area of the country, together with parts of Devon and the Tamar Valley, that was part of the first industrial revolution, not just in this country but globally, in terms of its extraction of minerals, tin and copper, and international trade with the Phoenicians way back in classical history, and it is a nation that is now looking at providing the nation with the mineral lithium so that, in Somerset, our first and only gigafactory can produce its output with British raw materials. It is also a nation that is surely one of the first sources of quality food and drink and all of that area.

Culturally—culture has been mentioned a great deal in this debate—it is the only part of the realm outside of Ireland, Wales and Scotland that has its own language, Cornish, which is recognised by the Council of Europe through the charter for minority languages and recognised by the Government as well. So it is an important part of the United Kingdom.

Although most of my colleagues here have been very critical of the Government and their proposals at the moment, the one thing I will definitely congratulate them on is Steve Reed’s announcement two weeks ago that Cornwall should have—let me get it exactly right—a “single foundation strategic authority”. That has been very much welcomed through the work of Cornwall’s six Members of Parliament—four Labour and two Liberal Democrat—and indeed the leadership of Cornwall Council under its Liberal Democrat and Independent leadership. So I want to thank the Minister for that move forward and the clarity that there is, and its importance for the people of Cornwall. I should explain that I am not Cornish myself. My family were migrants from Denmark into Suffolk in the 10th century. But residents in Cornwall feel that the personality of the land they live in and its culture are of importance to them, not just to those who were born and have long traditions there.

With those congratulations, my questions to the Minister are the following. First, will all strategic authorities be able to become members of the Council of the Nations and Regions? At the moment, that is quite an exclusive club in terms of authorities and, in the past, Cornwall has been excluded, even though the terms of reference make it sound as if it is for all authorities with “devolved responsibilities”. Clearly, all strategic authorities would have that.

Secondly, Clause 51 allows the established strategic authorities to come back to the Secretary of State and ask for extra powers. We do not want to see a caste system of strategic authorities, which would be very dangerous for the future. Could that ability to ask for further devolution be moved out to all strategic authorities?

I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. I am sure my colleagues would hope that a similar thing could be extended elsewhere, but I welcome it for Cornwall. I stress that we are not anti the rest of the south-west at all: we work very closely with other local authorities in the south-west. Although the noble Earl, Lord Devon, may put his clotted cream on his scones before the jam, we do not hold that against our brothers in Devon, even though we have a different culture ourselves.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 121A on behalf of my noble friend Lord Blunkett who sends his apologies to the Committee this afternoon. He has a long-standing appointment that he could not cancel, so he asked me to speak to his amendment on his behalf. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has expressed, I suspect, a bit of sympathy towards this amendment, and so he should. The Walk Wheel Cycle Trust has provided a detailed briefing on this amendment which sets out a very good case.

Essentially, the amendment would provide the local transport authority or designated upper-tier local authority outside London with the power to prohibit pavement parking in its local area, and provide, where sensible, for exemptions.

The case is very straightforward. Essentially, pavement parking is a threat and a jeopardy to anybody with a disability, and in particular those who are partially sighted or blind, and anyone with a mobility impairment. Polling on the subject suggests that 73% of those with a disability would support local authorities enforcing against pavement parking. For those who are partially sighted, the percentage is even higher.

The truth is that barriers such as pavement parking put people off travelling. According to a national travel survey, disabled people take 25% fewer trips than non-disabled people because they fear the consequences of using pavements that have cars parked on them, so there is a real transport accessibility gap.

Some 41% of individuals who responded to the Government’s consultation on this subject felt that they would leave home more often if there was an end to pavement parking. Pavement parking affects us all, not just those who have disabilities. In particular, it forces people off footpaths or pavements on to the road, which of course can be very dangerous. Another problem that perhaps is not stated as much as it should be is that it damages pavements, causing them to be even less safe to use. Cars parking on pavements reduces walking and wheeling and we should take note of that and make our streets genuinely more accessible, free and easy for all to use.

In London, I understand, there is effective power to tackle pavement parking and Scotland has devolved powers as well, giving local authorities there a very clear steer in the way in which they enforce.

As I understand it, the Department for Transport conducted a consultation on this issue five years or so ago and the public have been waiting a long time for a response. In January this year, the department finally said that it would give these powers to English councils at the next legislative opportunity. I have discovered in my time in the House of Lords that these opportunities do not come along very often, and I suggest that this is probably one of those legislative opportunities. I therefore urge the Minister to give this amendment a positive response and perhaps, between now and Report, we can perfect the words so that the powers can work more effectively, not just for people in Scotland and London but across England as well.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, very much in the same vein of argument. One thing that shocked me, reading some of the background to this, was that local transport authorities do not have this power at the moment. It seems remarkable. Yet Scotland and London, as the noble Lord mentioned, already do.

The other group of people who should be mentioned are parents with young children who are trying to navigate pavements blocked by cars, vans or whatever. It seems absolutely obvious that this wrong, which is right in London and Scotland, should be put right immediately. I can see very few arguments against that.

Having said that—I hope Hansard will pause for a while—I am an offender, because my eldest daughter Jessica lives in Ivybridge on a 1960s estate where the roads are so narrow that when I visit her I have to park partly on the pavement. She is nowhere near public transport. I can see the noble Baroness looking at me disparagingly. There is no local public transport and so, in order not to block the road, you have to park partly on the pavement.

The amendment absolutely states that local authorities have the discretion to apply that exemption to certain streets, so I think it is right for the occasion. It is important for pedestrians, wheelers, parents, the disabled and us—the public.

I also say to the Minister—I do not know whether this is legislated for—that the other thing that really gets up my nose is people parking on cycle lines. That can be equally dangerous, as cyclists have to veer out into the main road. It is not related to this amendment, but I would be interested in the Minister’s comment as to whether that is also illegal.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said and as I understand it, this is already government policy, so let us just get on and do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that contribution. I am interested in what she said. Unlike many noble Lords here, I am not into London politics at all, but that speech almost painted an ideal situation in London between different levels of local authority. I presume that Great British Railways will be very much a national organisation. I ask the noble Baroness: does politics not get in the way occasionally? I remember some years ago that, when the Mayor of London—it was still Sadiq Khan—tried to turn more of what used to be the British Rail commuter routes into London Overground services, the reaction of the Secretary of State in the Tory Government at the time was, “No way am I going to allow a Labour mayor to take over and have more power in this area”. I am delighted by the noble Baroness’s picture of London politics, but it does not read every way. We are trying to stop politics always getting in the way of improvements—but perhaps she will come back to me and tell me I am wrong, it is all sweetness and light and we do not need to be worried, and I will become a resident of London again. That would be great.

[Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his kind comments. I also work on the Local Government Association, where I have a broader purview. In some of the discussions we have heard today, I have been sitting here thinking, “We do that in London, and we need to make sure that other places do it too”. I find that, where local authorities are keen on Vision Zero and moving towards more sustainable active travel, they are going ahead and doing it. It is with local authorities that are not so keen that a bit of politics probably comes into it. You want everyone to be on the same page and acting the same way. I am not going to mention any local authorities that are not on the same page as Lewisham or, frankly, as progressive when it comes to our green agenda, sustainable travel and so on, but last Monday I had to reprimand someone from a local authority and say, “You’ve got to give people information and guidance so that they can decide. You can’t decide for them whether they want to be included in declaring a climate emergency”. In fact, we have moved past the climate emergency; we are on to a climate action plan now, so I had to inform them of that.

Sometimes there are those differences but, as I say, we work closely with the LGA. The noble Lord mentioned an example where we had a Tory Secretary of State and a Labour Mayor of London. There can be sticking points where we want to get ahead and do something. That is why I speak to my noble friend Lord Bassam’s amendment, because we need things to be speedier and we have more capacity in local government and know our areas. We need this to be more streamlined so that we can make those decisions more quickly, such as for a transport and works order, and have connections to be able to speak.

For example, with the Bakerloo line extension going out into Kent, we have those relationships and connections. They are not in the Mayor of London’s realm but outside. More locally, in Grove Park, in the south of my borough, we have a desire and an ambition to have an inner-city national park. There is a patchwork of land owned by Network Rail; we are getting it and other parties around the table so that we can drive it and work together. We have an ambition to have this park, where Edith Nesbit lived and wrote The Railway Children. No matter what part of government we are in, money and financing always seem to get in the way. But, where there is a meeting of minds and a desire to achieve our goals, we can try, incrementally and bit by bit, to work towards that.