English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 102. Before I start, I must tell the Minister that, when I went home from the last session of this Committee, I found my wife watching an old episode of “Yes, Prime Minister”. The Prime Minister’s Cabinet Secretary and Treasury Secretary were discussing the threat of real regional government to Whitehall control, and how they needed make sure that some regions were set up sufficiently diversely to ensure that Whitehall and the Treasury maintained control. It deepened my already deep scepticism about whether this Bill will really achieve devolution or not.

Like others, this amendment talks about the problems of making sure that, at the regional and subregional level, we co-ordinate as far as possible. If I understand the purpose of the Bill, we will end up in England with somewhere between 30 and 35 strategic authorities with mayors. In some areas, they will meet the urban conglomerations; in others, they will be artificial, imposed on different counties. I note, however, that the Home Secretary is now proposing that we have in England perhaps some six to eight police authorities. At present, in Yorkshire where we wanted to have a regional single strategic authority, we now have four mayors and four police forces, so it fits relatively well. What the Home Secretary now proposes will tear that apart and make much more difficult again any sense of regional and local democratic control of the police. The next restructure of the NHS might well do something similar on a departmental basis. Can the Minister say how far there is any attempt in Whitehall to make sure that, when restructuring takes place, it does as far as possible attempt to make sure that boundaries coincide rather than cut across each other, as they have so often done?

Nevertheless, we recognise that there will always be different levels at which one has to co-operate. If you live in West Yorkshire, the trans-Pennine region is extremely important. If we ever get round to building Northern Powerhouse Rail, which will probably not be in my lifetime, we will have created a new region which is Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, and all those between it. That will require a range of different authorities. The water catchment areas are unavoidably difficult. We have spent ages in my region discussing how far the Humberside region fits into either Yorkshire, Lincolnshire or wherever. There will be a need for co-ordination.

The question I would like to leave with the Minister—perhaps she can come back to us—is this. How, following this restructuring of local and subregional government, will they do their best to ensure that, in the next set of restructuring of other bits of public agencies, we will try as far as we can to recognise that a sense of place and regional identity is fulfilled by ensuring that, where possible, those things coincide?

To finish, I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that I once spent a Saturday morning in Huddersfield marketplace—I used to be president of the Huddersfield Liberal association—trying to help people with their vote. At least half of the people who came up to me said, “Can you tell me what constituency I’m in? I do not know”. The constituency boundaries or their names had been changed, which is confusing for local people. It is all part of why public trust in our Government has weakened. The sense of place has also weakened. This Bill should be doing something to improve that, but I rather fear that it does not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendments 103 and 104 appear under my name. I confess that I can take no credit for drafting them; they started with my honourable friend Siân Berry in the other place. I take note of the Whips’ injunction on brevity, so I will largely focus on those two amendments. They may look rather long, with pages and pages, but they have the same injunction repeated three times relative to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act and the Greater London Authority Act, so they are actually much shorter than they look.

As the proposed titles state, they would create a duty on mayors to establish a deliberative citizens’ assembly within six months of being elected to inform strategic decision-making. That word “strategic” is important, because we have seen it demonstrated again and again that citizens’ assemblies provide a great way to address the big strategic questions. Proposed new subsection (6) in each amendment states that the mayor must take into account any recommendation made by the assembly, and publish a response.

Assemblies have really taken off up and down the country, if in a very piecemeal fashion—perhaps despite Westminster, rather than because of it. I am holding previous Governments responsible for that, but the current Government now have a chance to turn over a fresh leaf and act towards democracy by encoding citizens’ assemblies in this Bill. The organisation Involve, which has organised many of these, stresses how citizens’ assemblies are a way to

“strengthen legitimacy, foster trust, and solve complex problems”.

As it said in a recent blog post, it is a

“powerful answer to the breakdown in trust in our elected representatives and the wider crisis of democracy”.

Just to give noble Lords a sense of the kinds of government organisations that have been making use of citizens’ assemblies, Involve has organised various events along these lines for Innovate UK, UKRI, the Care Quality Commission and the West Midlands Combined Authority. There is a very long list; that is just a sample of them.

Under different structures and local initiatives, one area where citizens’ assemblies have proved particularly powerful is in looking at climate action. We have seen many local authorities set net-zero targets and communities have got together through citizens’ assemblies to work out how to do that. I take two examples of very different ones. In Kendal, right in the depths of the Covid pandemic, the town council organised a climate change citizens’ jury that was regarded locally as very successful. Then, in another place, very different politically and demographically, there was the Westminster citizens’ climate assembly in 2023. This is something that is taking off, but in a piecemeal fashion. This is a chance to really put a focus on deliberative democracy at the heart of this Bill.

Finally, on citizens’ assemblies, I draw attention to the powerful speech by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, on the lead amendment in this group and the really powerful testimony from a group called Citizens for Culture, which is based in the south-west. It talks about championing citizens’ assemblies in terms of arts culture and says that:

“When diverse voices come together to learn, deliberate and decide, it leads to decisions that are more legitimate, more inclusive, and more connected to the lived experience of local people”.


Culture, brought together with a citizens’ assembly, creates a vital space where communities can make meaning, build identities and imagine new futures. I think that expresses the idea very well.

I can see the Whip looking at me so let me just say something about Amendment 104. There are many different amendments, both in this group and in previous groups, about mayors having to work with—in this case—local public service providers and other local government. This amendment would provide one more way of doing that. We have heard from all sides of the Committee that that is a really essential and necessary thing that is missing from the Bill; I am not attached to any particular way of doing it, but this would be one way of doing it.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, I feel the need to stress that we should not write off deliberative democracy, where people can access information and ideas and come together to reach new conclusions. Let us also stress that the economy—businesses and jobs—is one part of a much larger whole that is the community. Our society needs resources, education, time and health, so a simplistic, one-directional look at what our communities need will not answer our issues.

It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who made some very telling points about how this is a seriously half-baked Bill. Your Lordships’ Committee is going to have to add quite a bit of heat to get it anything like ready for the table. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the National Association of Local Councils. I too wish the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, well and hope that we can see her back soon.

I start with the noble Baroness’s Amendment 95, as it demonstrates why we need many of the amendments in this group. It sets out in clear terms that the role of local government is to provide “democratic, place-based leadership” and it should not be

“solely a delivery arm of central government”.

Increasingly, that is what local government has been forced into being through the decades-long power grab by Westminster, accompanied by swingeing austerity that has left councils unable to carry out pretty well anything but their statutory responsibilities, which are of course determined by Westminster. That is a major driver of the extremely high disillusionment with politics and why the slogan “Take back control” was so popular in 2016.

I set all that out because my Amendment 9 seeks to add to the list of areas of competence. Most of the amendments in this group, as well as Amendment 95, would take the Government in the direction they say they want this Bill to go. I will focus on Amendment 9, but, regarding Amendment 8 from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on community engagement and empowerment, I have a lot of later amendments on this which are not necessarily contradictory but potentially complementary. I also support the community energy amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Last night in the Chamber, I spoke about community energy; we are just not seeing the driving force that we need to bring renewables to local communities, which surely has to be a crucial part of the areas of competence of the new strategic authorities.

My Amendment 9 addresses food security and poverty. In terms of local food production, according to a recent report from the CPRE, 1,7 00 farms have disappeared around the edges of towns and cities since 2010. We have seen those peri-urban areas stop being food-producing areas when they should be at the centre of local food systems. We have seen a massive cut in the number of county farms; according to figures from 2019, over a couple of decades they have gone from 426,000 acres to about 200,000 acres. We have seen councils’ control over local food systems hacked away.

We know—this is why poverty and food fit together very well—that we have enormous spatial inequalities, arguably the highest in the OECD. That has been increasing over three decades. There is an understandable feeling in Cumbria, Cornwall, Northumberland and north Devon that Westminster does not understand their poverty problem or the reality of their lives. They are right. We cannot fix the problems of each of those places by making one rule from Westminster; tackling poverty in those places has to be a local responsibility, with power and, importantly, resources to go with it. We have been through regional development agencies, local enterprise partnerships, town groups and the wildly unpopular investment zones. There has been a huge democratic deficit in all those systems, and they all have failed.

I draw on two reports from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. The first is The False Economy of Big Food and the Case for a New Food Economy, which focuses on how what is colloquially known as “big food”—large centralised systems—is making us sick. It is the first report I have seen to have calculated the estimated total cost of our broken food system: £268 billion. A lot of that is the costs of healthcare, welfare support, social care and loss of productivity, all of which are having to be met by local authorities. Those are the costs—surely we need to put the solution and a reduction of those costs together.

We have lots to do here in Westminster. We have an extremely uneven playing field with a handful of big supermarkets and big food manufacturers entirely dominating the markets, throwing their weight around against local communities and farmers. Westminster needs to act, but how are we going to fill in the gaps? What are we going to put in all these different communities up and down the land? There is no one answer. Westminster does not have the answers.

I stress that about 22% of people in the UK are in food poverty. That means people who have a limited opportunity to feed themselves well, often relying on food banks, et cetera. UKRI is funding the Food Systems Equality project, involving systems in local communities to ensure healthy, sustainable food that reflects cultural preferences. We have recognition from one arm of government that the solution to our food issues has to be local—that is what UKRI is doing—but we have to put the power into local and strategic authorities to deal with that.

I pick one example of where something great is happening. An organisation called Growing Kent & Medway is an inspiring effort to create healthy and sustainable food systems in what has traditionally been the garden of England. It is place based, with a huge number of small independent businesses. I have tasted some great cheese and cider here in the House when they have come to visit us. But if we are going to have those kinds of systems all around the country in each area, they have to be supported by the strategic authorities.

Finally, I bring together food and poverty issues, including local food security in the UK. There is an interesting piece of work by the Royal Geographical Society, which carried out a visualisation of what food insecurity looks like in different parts of the country. It is useful to have this as a map, because you can see what different colours come out on the map showing the difference in different places. Food insecurity is variable across the country because of the levels of poverty, but the way in which people’s foodscapes are configured are different in different places. There is no way in which Westminster can find the solution for each place, because the solution in each place is different. There is nothing more fundamental for government to ensure that people are fed, but the Government in Westminster have to let go and let local communities find their own solutions.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we have been talking about public safety under Amendment 5. I want to check with the Minister how far the Bill is linked to some of the issues with which other departments in Whitehall are dealing. We all know that all the complicated policy problems are cross-departmental. Chapter 6 of the Strategic Defence Review was about a whole-society approach to home defence and home security, and the need for a broad approach to the multiple threats that we now face, including terrorism, climate change and hybrid warfare of one sort or another. The review stressed that we need local resources, knowledge and co-operation in order to make sure that we face some of those threats. So, I am glad to see public safety here.

I recall that when the Salisbury poisoning took place, the public health officer in Salisbury played a vital and impressive role in sorting out its response. I also remember that, when the Covid pandemic struck, the Government outsourced the placing of testing centres to two large companies, one of which had its headquarters in Miami and made a remarkable number of mistakes in where to place the centres. We need not just strategic but local authorities to be leading on this. I hope that the Minister can assure us that public safety is one of the dimensions with which we are concerned.

I am struck that it has been eight months since the Strategic Defence Review was published. It also said in chapter 6 that we needed to start a “national conversation” on how we respond to multiple threats. I have not heard any of that national conversation yet. I hope that the Minister’s department and the Ministry of Defence are in active conversation about how this dimension is built back into our society and our government structure and how the resources—because it costs money—will be provided to local authorities, local civil rescue services, local fire services and police forces to make sure that we can face these multiple threats to our public safety.

UK Constitution: Oversight and Responsibility (Report from the Constitution Committee)

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for the committee’s work and for his clear and comprehensive introduction today. I thank the committee for taking on the difficult—indeed, impossible—task of trying to find ways, within the limits of its mandate, to prop up a tottering, failing system. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, for reasons I will come back to later.

If we start where the committee starts, paragraph 3 of the report says that the system is “uncodified and flexible”, and cites the Supreme Court from 2019: our system

“remains sufficiently flexible to be capable of further development”.

I am afraid that there is a tone there of protesting too much. The vehemency is a measure of desperation. We are stuck, rather visibly, somewhere between the 16th and the 19th centuries. That is rather acknowledged in paragraph 5, where the committee says that the constitution is

“vulnerable to erosion and challenge, and relies to a considerable extent upon individuals respecting and complying with constitutional norms”.

The noble Lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, very clearly set out how much that is not happening.

I begin with a practical example. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the slaughter of Cecil the lion by a vile American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe. That reminds me of a disgraceful evening in your Lordships’ House, on 12 September 2023. A Bill had gone through the elected House with the support of all sides. We saw in this House 12 former public schoolboys drive a cart and horses through what we have always been told are the respected traditions of the House—the unwritten, uncodified rules—to filibuster the Hunting Trophies (Importation Prohibition) Bill. The unwritten rules demonstrably were not worth the paper that they were not written on.

The committee’s report refers to the

“primacy of the Prime Minister in safeguarding the constitution”.

There is an obvious, glaring weakness there if our constitution relies on one person. That is not the way for a constitution to organise a structure. More than that, I point out the position of the Prime Minister. Our current Prime Minister and his party, after a landslide election, have the support of 34% of people who voted in the general election last year. If we look at eligible voters, we find that the Prime Minister has the support of 20% of them. Of course, we do not elect the Prime Minister; we elect MPs. If we look at who elected our current Prime Minister, of the people of Holborn and St Pancras who voted, less than half of them voted for Sir Keir Starmer. We are putting all the weight of our constitution on this one person, on those incredibly fragile foundations.

Is it any wonder—a lot of Members of your Lordship’s House commented on this—that, at the start of this year, there was a Channel 4 poll in which 52% of 13 to 27 year-olds said that the UK would be in a better place with a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections. I remind your Lordships that that is where we are today. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said, a wide range of people now regard the idea of coming into Parliament as poison. That is a measure of the problems with where we are.

How about, instead, we start to think much more broadly? I absolutely do not fault the committee for not doing this—I am sure it did not regard this as within its mandate. How about we think about having a proper, modern, democratic, functional constitution? That is where we have to go, because it is not what we have now. We can see the impact of this in the state of the nation—we could even say in the state of this building. It is easy to blame individuals—and I do, very often—but why do we keep having failing Government after failing Government after failing Government? We have to look at the constitutional and institutional structures.

I come to a more specific point. In chapter 5 of the report, about the Council of the Nations and Regions, the committee says:

“The Government should set out who within the UK Government is responsible for the Council of the Nations and Regions”.


It is clear that this is being taken so seriously that we have no idea who is responsible for something that will meet every six months and bring together elected mayors who represent some parts of the country. Again, we are going to see first past the post elections, with elected mayors who may well be elected with 25% to 30% of the vote. That is who is going to be speaking for their regions. These are devolution plans imposed from Westminster.

I come to a very specific point here. It is interesting that this entire report makes no mention of local councils, which are at least rather more representative local organisations. They are not included in the Council of the Nations and Regions. I point to a ministerial Statement in June, when the Government declared that councils must have a leader and cabinet model. This is Westminster directing how local councils should work. This is supposed to ensure that local communities will have the right mechanism to engage with their council. I have a question for the Minister directly. The people of Bristol in 2022 and the people of Sheffield in 2021, through a grass-roots campaign and a referendum of the whole city, decided that they want committee structures in their councils. Are the Government really going to overrule that basic piece of democracy?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Probably.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I hear “probably” from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, and I fear that that may be right.

Having just been at the Local Government Association conference in Liverpool, I warn the Minister and the Government that there will be resistance to the plans to abolish district councils—the form of government closest to the people. People are going to fight.

I come to my concluding sentence. We cannot rely on good chaps suddenly discovering a sense of responsibility and honesty. Institutional structures do not support “good chap” behaviour. The Select Committee is trying valiantly to shore up something that is not working. We need to think about getting a modern, functional, democratic constitution for the UK.