English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 53 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Pinnock. This amendment is about how you scrutinise mayoral commissioners. I noted what the Minister said in responding to the previous group about the mayor or combined authority members being responsible for scrutinising commissioners, yet that removes any responsibility on the constituent authorities to undertake scrutiny. It is doubly important that elected members of the constituent local authorities have some powers in scrutinising the work of a commissioner. They will need powers to do that—to require the mayor and relevant commissioner or indeed any member of their staff to attend and give evidence—so it can be a requirement to attend rather than a request to attend, and there should be an ability to require the production of any documents relevant to the exercise of a commissioner’s function.

There should then be a right to publish reports on the committee’s findings and recommendations, with an absolute power to do so; it would not be for the combined authority or the mayor to say that this matter cannot be published. It is really a fundamental matter about who is in a position to scrutinise what mayors do.

Can I make just two points about scrutiny, which will come up later in our deliberations? The best form of scrutiny is one that happens before the decision is made, not one that comments on a decision after it has been made. The best way in which to deliver that objective is through a committee system, because a committee system actually authorises decisions to be made and has the major advantage that the scrutiny is happening at the same time as a decision is made.

I have found it very disappointing in the Bill that quite so much is being said about the committee system and its perceived failures, most of which I do not recognise. It may be that when we get to further discussions in Committee and then on Report, further consideration can be given to those matters. I hope the Minister will be able to say that the Government do not downplay the importance of scrutiny, particularly when so many issues and so much public money is involved in the proposals to devolve power to mayors and commissioners. I beg to move.

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 191, and, in doing so, declare an interest as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The amendment would provide for the establishment in every local area of a local public accounts committee to ensure the effective scrutiny and accountability across the whole range of public service spending and activity in that area, not just the actions of the strategic authority or the mayor. So why is an amendment like this necessary?

During the past 40 years we have seen in this country a radical fragmentation of our public services with the establishment of a myriad disconnected, sometimes single-purpose agencies. Sadly, these have too often worked in isolation, seeking to achieve their own specific targets energetically, but on occasions their efforts have conflicted or overlapped with their partners. They have too often worked in silos and, sadly, regulators have been very slow to recognise and challenge that. As a result, the public often struggle to access or even make sense of the disjointed services which this system has produced. In addition, resources are wasted because of the overlap and duplication, bureaucracy thrives, and there is inevitably a culture of competition rather than collaboration. This needs to change, but I do not believe that, as drafted, the Bill alone will achieve that level of change. If we are adequately to integrate public services in a locality, all public service providers and partners have to build co-operation into everything they do.

A later amendment in my name seeks to impose a duty on all local public partners to do just that. But alongside that kind of duty we also need to put in place local accountability—and not always accountability to the centre, which has been the model we have followed for so long. We need more local accountability to ensure that genuine co-operation does take place, so that services are delivered which are actually recognisable to ordinary local people and which meet their needs effectively.

King’s Speech

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, when you are the 61st and last Back-Bench speaker, you can at least hope that some people will be pleased to see you—and I hope that noble Lords are. Building on that positive start, I add my welcome and congratulations to the Attorney-General and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, on the Front Bench. The noble and learned Lord gave a remarkable maiden speech, and it is wonderful to see a local mayor taking up a national office. It should happen more often.

I will pick up a theme that, surprisingly in some respects, has been focused on by a large number of Peers: the loss of trust in government and the state. I agree with them. It has become so severe a problem that it is beginning to threaten our democratic foundations. After all, why would you vote for, campaign for, lobby or influence a state that you do not trust or think can deliver?

I will touch on two reasons why this crisis has occurred. First, people feel increasingly distant from the decisions that affect their everyday lives due to the stifling centralism that has engulfed this country over the last 40 years.

Of course, that is why I welcome the proposal in the gracious Speech to introduce a devolution Bill. However, devolution should not just be seen in terms of the selective transfer of some statutory powers to more local levels of governance, or structural change. To help restore trust, devolution must be about creating stronger, more effective communities—that is what it is about—where people feel a sense of belonging; communities able to define their own needs and make choices about their own priorities; communities that can fully realise the potential which we all know they possess and which we already see in the contributions made by individuals, charities and voluntary sector groups; communities that can quickly respond to changing demands, innovate and build trust in ways that we saw so well during the pandemic.

To create those sorts of communities, we need a long-term vision for the future relationship between central and local governance, based upon greater financial stability and with localities given access to whole-place budgets. We need some credible form of local accountability which, frankly, we do not have at the moment, and we need to confront—yes, confront—the inevitable resistance of central government silos to ceding power. What about a mission-based approach, Minister? For me, the success of devolution a decade from now is not going to be measured by the number of powers transferred or bodies set up, but by whether we have created stronger communities, providing better services, improved growth, reduced waste and that critical sense of belonging.

The second reason why we have this crisis of trust is a profound disenchantment with the behaviour and standards of some who hold public office. I know more than most that we have vast numbers of dedicated public servants who have tried so hard to maintain services in the face of almost impossible challenges, but we cannot ignore any longer the failings exposed by the infected blood inquiry, the Post Office scandal, Windrush, Hillsborough, Grenfell and now the Covid report, and nor can we excuse them as isolated historic incidents. If we are going to regain trust, we need to show that we want to change that and address those failings. We need to show that we are determined to give the public what they have the right to expect, which is not least to be treated with respect and consideration.

Clearly, our current attempts to codify these expectations are not working. The Nolan principles, the Ministerial Code and the Civil Service Code proved insufficient, and their words will ring hollow with, for example, the victims of the infected blood scandal—many of whom I have met—for whom integrity, accountability, openness and honesty were sadly absent. We need a thorough review not just of the content of those codes but, even more importantly, of how they are enforced and how breaches are sanctioned, whether those breaches are by officials or by Ministers.

Surely the Ministerial Code must be made statutory, but what about giving Permanent Secretaries the power to seek a direction, not just on the grounds of value for money but, equally, on potential breaches of the codes of behaviour? If local government is required to appoint statutory monitoring officers—which it has had to do since 1989—then perhaps central government departments need something similar.

We have long boasted that our standards of governance in this country were beyond reproach, but recent inquiries tell a different story. They speak sometimes of a system which is excessively defensive and reluctant to learn the lessons of failure. That has to change.