English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Viscount Trenchard

Report stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am not at all sure that the Government understand that decentralisation and devolution are fundamentally different things. What we have here is a Bill for continued central control of the governance of England, subject to allowing mayors rather more powers. I therefore strongly support these amendments from these Benches, while saying that the practice of the last Conservative Government was rather different from the principles we have heard enunciated today.

I recall vividly that all but one of the councils in the great county of Yorkshire asked, when negotiating with the Government for restructure, for a whole of Yorkshire authority with other authorities underneath it, and it was made clear that it would be conditional on acceptance of a four-mayor structure for Yorkshire. If we were to get the money that the Government were offering, we would have to accept what the Government insisted on having. That is a good example of Conservative decentralisation, and now we have Labour decentralisation.

I am my party’s Cabinet Office spokesman; I am concerned with constitutional issues. In the majority of democratic states, the structure of local and regional, as well as national, government is a constitutional issue. In England, it is dealt with as a matter of convenience. Successive Governments talk a certain amount about how to get civil servants out of London, but the extent to which what local government does is controlled and funded in detail by Whitehall departments means that of course the majority of civil servants have to stay in London because that is where the power is and the decisions are taken.

This is a very flawed Bill. We are doing our best to limit its many problems. This amendment will perhaps limit the damage a little and allow local and regional areas to have some continuing say in how the governance of England should be maintained.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, as many noble Lords have said this afternoon, not only on these Benches, the Bill is titled the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill but it seems that it does the exact opposite. I strongly support my noble friends Lady Scott and Lord Jamieson’s amendments in this group.

Amalgamation of councils or the establishment of new combined authorities should definitely not be allowed without local consent. Consent is necessary to ensure that the proposed restructuring reflects the views and needs of the local community. Without local consent, the transfer of contracts and services may not be efficiently handled, and there is a large risk that service continuity will not be maintained. Of course, that will lead to increased public discontent with the changes. Already the public are not happy at the rushed changes being proposed, not only to local government but because the changes themselves are unpopular and probably mostly bad. However, in addition to that, to try to install, from above, elected mayors for every local authority in the land at the same time is very risky and damaging.

Where new combined authorities are to be created, particularly those being directed by the Secretary of State, it is very important that the new structure preserves local identity and sense of place, which is so important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has often acknowledged during the debates on the Bill. It is also very important to obtain consent from councils because without consent, it is unlikely that adequate discussions will have been held between either councillors or staff, and there is unlikely to be a common understanding of which roles will be affected by the reorganisation.

For these and other reasons already well put forward by my noble friend Lord Jamieson, I support all the amendments in this group and will certainly support my noble friend if she should divide the House.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Viscount Trenchard

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I am rather confused about this amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which seeks to require a mayor with fire and rescue authority functions to delegate those functions to a deputy mayor for fire and rescue. In an earlier discussion, the Committee debated the appointment of commissioners to assist mayors with responsibility for matters such as police and crime and fire and rescue.

I strongly agree with the observation of the noble Baroness that it is not very democratic to replace elected police and crime commissioners with appointed commissioners assisting strategic mayors, or indeed to replace them with deputy mayors. But I think that we need more consistency, because the public will become very confused that quite a number of authorities are going to have commissioners assisting mayors, and the Bill seeks—especially in the clause that we are now discussing—to appoint deputy mayors. I want to ask the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, how they see the difference between commissioners and deputy mayors. Are they effectively the same and is that not going to be confusing?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to be here at the previous sittings—I had clashes of different obligations in the Lords last week.

I want to pick up from what my noble friend Lady Pinnock called the structural consistency issue. In preparing for the speech that I am going to make on Amendment 195, in the past few days I have read through a number of recent reports, including Labour Party as well as government and parliamentary reports on the governance of England, and I am struck with the frequency with which everyone from Gordon Brown through to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee say that one thing that we should be aiming for is consistency in the boundaries of different authorities so that, as far as possible, they coincide and the question of accountability is therefore relatively clear.

I was therefore struck when the Ministry of Justice produced a White Paper on policing that suggests that we might change the current structure of police forces in England—in Yorkshire that at least now coincides with the four mayors—by perhaps six to eight police authorities, which would not coincide at all with the 30 to 35 strategic authorities that we are heading towards in Britain.