English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Third sitting)

Sean Woodcock Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th October 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is talking about localism and the importance of things being done with communities, not to them. I was a Cherwell district councillor when we were involved in joint working with South Northamptonshire. I remember clearly that the leaders of South Northants district council were distinctly unimpressed by the level of consent that they were given when the Conservative Government told them that Northamptonshire county council, which the Conservatives bankrupted, was being disbanded and that joint unitary authorities were to be created in Northamptonshire. Was he so exercised about local consent at that point?

[David Simmonds]

The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is yes. I have spent a good deal of my time in local government. One of the key issues that we learned from the process, and one of the reasons why former Secretary of State Eric Pickles said that he had a pearl-handled revolver in his desk—for anyone who came to him to suggest forcing local government reorganisation on England—was the need to get things right with local consent.

There are times, which I think we can all see in the local government landscape at the moment, when, because of geography or failure of leadership, we know it is necessary for Government to intervene, and Governments of all parties have done so. Northamptonshire was an example of such a place. Individual local authorities within it had not failed, but there had been a collective failure of the public service in that area. The Government therefore felt compelled to intervene to remedy that, as opposed to imposing an alternative vision for how they thought the local area should be governed.

New clause 23 stands in my name. It seeks to enshrine in the legislation the principle of consent. We have the very opposite of what we have been told as a Committee, that this is all locally led. Clearly, the Government are already using the levers in their power to compel local authorities down a certain route. Under the force of such compulsion, local authorities feel that that is what they have to do, because it is the only way to address some of their reasonable and justifiable concerns. The timetable, the process and all those things come at the same time as a wholesale reorganisation of planning and infrastructure, which is stripping away the local powers and voices that are so critical to ensuring that the infrastructure and new housing that we all want are delivered.

The view of the Opposition, therefore, is that we need to enshrine in this legislation not powers for Whitehall but powers for people—powers for people to shape through their local leaders the community structures of service that deliver for them and the taxes that they pay. People are represented to exercise such powers. Enshrining the consent of local authorities is a small step in that direction.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Fourth sitting)

Sean Woodcock Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th October 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Manuela Perteghella]

We have not looked at the costs, but we need to understand that the Bill devolves significant powers, possibly to one person. My local authority is a three-tier one at the moment, and we are very happy with that, but now the district councils will be abolished and possibly the county council, and we will have to be part of a unitary authority and then a strategic authority. It is important that we as MPs are here to stand up for our communities and residents. We need to ensure that anyone who gains more powers comes to them through Parliament.

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady and her party seem to be proposing that every single potential devolution should come before this House for scrutiny. That would take up a considerable amount of the time of the House, as well as incur the costs picked up on by the hon. Member for Hamble Valley. Is her amendment just about kicking devolution into the long grass, rather than being serious?

[Manuela Perteghella]

No, the amendment is not kicking anything into the long grass. We have to get the Bill—this devolution—right. It is all about accountability, as I said when we were discussing the commissioners. This is a big change. Some of the Committee will already have unitary authorities and I will talk later about devolved Administrations, but for my constituency, that will be new. We need to get it right. Going back to the cost, that will be smaller compared with the cost of what could go wrong.