English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will be fairly brief, because last week we had a considerable discussion on cultural concerns. I support all the amendments in this group and have put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

The noble Baroness rightly points to cultural infrastructure. I would go further than venues. We should also be thinking about rehearsal spaces, artists’ studios, recording studios and ways of developing opportunities for the artists themselves, technicians and arts organisations, such as theatre companies, bands, orchestras and so on. There should be a consideration of public access to cultural services, such as museums and libraries. Indeed, every area of arts, culture and heritage should be considered to the extent that a separate cultural plan should be put in place to sit beside the local growth plan, and my Amendment 147 would put that in place.

As with the local growth plan, there are clearly different ways in which an area can develop its own arts and culture. No area is going to be the same. Every area will have its own individual plan, as it should do.

I am grateful for the discussions I have had with Culture Commons about this. I am also very grateful to the Minister for the very constructive discussions some of us had with her about this area yesterday.

Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, is on the agent of change principle. We have had extensive discussions about this during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Nevertheless, this is an important amendment.

The grass roots music venues are very grateful for the 15% reduction in business rates, but this is not an either/or. A venue that is doing well can fold because the agent of change principle is not being properly or effectively applied.

The guidance alone is not working, as the Music Venue Trust is so clear about. As I said in the discussions on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it points to the significant difference between Scotland, which has a statutory requirement and where the system works well, and England, which does not have a statutory requirement and where it does not work well at all. The Music Venue Trust has intimate knowledge of this, because it deals with cases.

I believe the amendment would make a significant difference. I fully support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendments 141, 146 and 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and Amendment 147 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to all of which I have added my name.

Taken together, these amendments recognise that culture does not operate in isolation but as an interconnected ecosystem with different parts depending on one another, as the noble Earl has said. That is why Amendments 141 and 146 would strengthen the place of culture in planning and strategic decision-making, while Amendment 147 rightly promotes a more systemic approach across the culture sector.

While I do not wish to repeat the arguments that I made at length during the passage of the planning Bill on the agent of change principle—this is another recycled amendment from that Bill—I want to underline the central point here and echo much of what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, namely that the agent of change principle is now widely accepted. Few would argue that new residential or commercial developments should be able to externalise their impacts on existing cultural venues, forcing those venues to absorb the cost of mitigation or, too often, close altogether. The Government have acknowledged this and announced their intention to implement agent of change through policy. However, the difficulty is that policy alone, whether in planning guidance or licensing frameworks, has consistently proved insufficient. Non-statutory approaches are applied unevenly, interpreted narrowly and too easily overridden when competing pressures arise. Guidance can be ignored, policy can be diluted, and, without a clear, legislative footing, enforcement becomes discretionary rather than expected. For cultural venues operating on tight margins, that uncertainty is, in itself, deeply damaging.

If the Government accept that the agent of change is necessary at all, and their own statements suggest that they do, it surely follows that it must be implemented in a form that is effective, durable and legally robust. That is precisely what Amendment 222 seeks to do. It would not create a new principle but give statutory force to an existing one, moving us from aspiration to assurance. For that reason, and for the coherence it brings alongside Amendments 141, 146 and 147, I strongly support Amendment 222 and urge the Government to look favourably upon it.

[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister knows, I wholly welcome the Bill, and I am delighted to hear Preston and Manchester being cited as examples of good practice, because, as the Committee knows, the north-west was my region. However, I rise to support the principle that local growth plans should include provision for cultural venues, especially live grass-roots venues.

If we look to music and the recent success that we have had at the Grammys, we see young women from disadvantaged backgrounds who came through the BRIT School, a free school, and worked in local live venues. If we look to the recent UK success at the BAFTAs and the Oscars, we see young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been able to come through theatres and other live performance spaces, as the noble Earl said. We have, for instance, wonderful scripts, workshopped by local young people in local spaces, that then have huge success.

I particularly want to talk about youth theatre. People will be aware of the success of Liverpool’s Everyman Youth Theatre—I will stop talking about the north-west in a minute. I was born in Coventry. I have to say that youth theatre and youth education, which was provided in a joined-up way by the youth service at that point, gave me a pathway forward, and it gave a lot of my contemporaries an opportunity to have a way forward, as well as hope and participation, when a lot of our fathers were being made redundant from car factories in Coventry. I therefore hope that my noble friend will consider including in local growth plans the provision of live cultural venues and the development of local cultural plans.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 196D, which would place a duty on strategic authorities to work with local and community-based bodies when exercising their functions. Devolving powers to the level of the people whom they affect means that effective devolution depends not only on transferring powers from Whitehall but on ensuring that those powers are exercised in partnership with the communities they affect. Without an explicit duty to work with community-based bodies, there is a risk that decision-making becomes remote, technocratic and insufficiently grounded in local reality. This amendment would ensure that parish and town councils are treated not as an afterthought but as partners in governance, helping strategic authorities to understand local conditions, priorities and constraints before they are implemented.

Voluntary and community sector organisations also play a critical role in the delivery of local support and preventive services. They are often hubs of energetic volunteers—people who want both to be involved in their local communities and to bring enthusiasm, energy and drive to local life. Following on from the story of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, when I was a member of a community council on the west coast of Scotland, volunteers and members of those communities persuaded the mighty Strathclyde Regional Council to support a town-twinning project and fund it. So you can find examples of this kind of thing all over the country.

I believe that, in all of the powers and strategic aims of this Bill, the key roles played by town and parish councils are forgotten; in fact, the Bill barely mentions them. Parish and town councils are key players in local communities. They are closest to the ground and most responsive to the day-to-day needs of communities. This Bill must contain a statutory obligation to work with the most local and community-rooted bodies—parish councils—as well as the other essential local groups and agencies that are involved in delivering services at a local level.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 100 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 101 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.

If the arts, culture and heritage are rightly recognised as an area of competence, as the noble Earl argued persuasively they should be, it follows logically that they should also be recognised as a basis for collaboration. Amendment 100 would simply make that explicit, placing culture alongside economic and social well-being as something on which mayors may work together, rather than treating it as incidental or discretionary.

I understand, of course, that the Bill currently frames collaboration as applying between neighbouring strategic authorities. I acknowledge that intention, but I would gently suggest that culture does not always conform neatly to a geography. Cultural ecosystems are interdependent in ways that often cut across administrative boundaries and sometimes beyond immediate neighbours; that is not an argument against the structure of the Bill but a reflection of how culture functions on the ground.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, spoke powerfully about cultural ecosystems, and I agree with him entirely. They are both geographically and economically interdependent. Grass-roots venues feed major institutions. Studios, rehearsal spaces and local festivals sustain the pipeline of skills on which national and international success depends. As is well known, cultural infrastructure —including libraries, museums, theatres, music venues, studios and heritage sites—acts as a form of civic glue, regenerating high streets, anchoring communities and driving wider economic activity.

We already see good practice emerging. Manchester and Liverpool, for example, have used accommodation-based visitor charges through business improvement districts to reinvest in culture, the public realm and visitor services. Although these schemes are imperfect, they demonstrate how locally controlled funding can support cultural ecosystems in a way that aligns the interests of residents, visitors and the hospitality sector. In that context, I very much look forward to seeing how the tourism levy evolves and how it can best support this kind of joined-up cultural ambition.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will be quite brief and will make a point of principle to start with. If something is important enough to be an additional area of competence, it should have a dedicated commissioner to go with it, which is in line with what the Government have done so far. I say that at the outset.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has given us an intriguing, rather creative amendment in terms of flexibility, but I have a couple of concerns. I know that the noble Lord is an enlightened individual arts-wise, who I am sure would like to see—like me—the arts, culture and heritage thrive in the new strategic areas. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, and I pointed out last week in the debate on my Amendment 6, not all councils are quite so enlightened. Even if every mayor was conscientious enough today to ensure that their strategic authority did everything it could for the arts, culture and heritage—I say this simply as an example of an area of concern rather than competence—there is no guarantee that those who follow would have the same commitment unless there was a statutory commitment. This is very much in line with what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, was saying earlier. I very much support Amendment 51A in her name, and the other amendments that she proposed as well.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly support the amendments in this group that seek to remove the cap on the number of commissioners and the appointment of special advisers. In doing so, I restate my support for Amendments 6, 10 and 51 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, to add the arts and culture as an area of competence, which would allow a modest increase in the number of commissioners from seven to eight.

I fully recognise that the Government wish to maintain a coherent and settled devolution framework, to limit additional costs that such appointments would incur and to exercise caution around unelected roles. Here I entirely take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to those numerous and very important questions.

I also accept the argument that further powers may be pursued within the existing areas of competence. That said, the question here is one of governance rather than architecture. A small degree of flexibility in the commissional model, as the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Bach, have argued for, would allow mayors to organise their leadership teams and their advisers in ways that reflect local priorities and circumstances without altering the framework itself.

Different regions face very different challenges: a dense metropolitan authority and a largely rural combined county authority may reasonably require different internal arrangements. For those reasons, I generally support these amendments and the flexibility they seek to introduce.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate. I thank all noble Lords who have participated. It does appear to be the first one today where we are not quite in agreement on things. I assure my noble friend Lord Trenchard that we share his concerns about appointing unelected commissioners to roles that have real political power. However, before I go on to that, this raises an important and enduring question about how leadership is accountable and the flexibility to operate within a system that is devolved.

At its heart, this debate returns to the principles of devolution. It is about not just transferring powers from the centre to the local level but about who exercises those powers. It is about how they are held to account and how clearly responsibility is understood by the public whom those institutions are designed to serve.

On the amendments, while the noble Lord, Lord Bach, made a good case, we have concerns about commissioners holding responsibility for multiple areas of confidence because there is a risk that it could reduce accountability, concentrating authority into too few hands and blurring the lines of responsibility, making it harder for the public to discern who is ultimately answerable for decisions—there may be cases that need further thought in this area. I also accept the noble Lord’s points about police authorities. With the recent announcement in the other place, can the Minister say whether that is being taken into account in the devolution Bill or, even better, whether that announcement is going to take account of the devolution Bill? That is rather important.

On the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, devolution works best when responsibilities are clear, visible and capable of effective scrutiny. I have a real concern here, which has been shared by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. First, I will talk about commissioners. What is the definition of a commissioner? Working in local government, when you say that the commissioners are coming in, while I personally am not used to a failing council, normally you send them in after a best value inspection when one is failing. We have had this issue several times in the devolution Bill, and definitions and consistency of definitions would be helpful.

However, the real concern about commissioners is that we seem to have an expanding strategy. The Bill talks about seven but now we have amendments that talk about political advisers, special advisers and more deputy mayors. My focus in local government is value for money. Local government and mayors should be about delivering services to residents. They should not be about creating an unelected bureaucracy that is appointed and risks political cronyism. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also raised a number of practical issues such as whether when the mayor resigns all the commissioners go and you lose all that knowledge and so forth. I will not go on to those again, because that would be unnecessary repetition, but we have a real concern.

A number of noble Lords raised an issue around whether we can have commissioners for specific areas. I have sympathy with that, but they do not have to be commissioners. We are talking about political leads for certain areas. There is no reason why an elected councillor cannot be a political lead, whether it is for rural affairs, the environment, culture and so forth. I do not think that we have to focus on commissioners there—that can be a political lead.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. My Amendment 3 would make a simple change but it highlights something fundamental to the Bill, so I want to spend a bit more time going through it than that single-word change would imply.

In looking through the areas of competence, energy is conspicuous by its absence, given that it will be a central challenge for the country—and, indeed, the mission of the Government—in the coming years. I shall use the Midlands region, where I live, as an example; of course, the first energy transition really started in the Midlands. I recently visited the Science Museum down the road, where there is an excellent example of the Boulton and Watt steam engine, which was brought into use in Birmingham and started to turbocharge the demand for coal and the first energy transition from biomass to fossil fuels.

That was a locally led transition, of course, but today, the Midlands remains the industrial heartland of the UK. We have so many energy-intensive users and heavy manufacturing, ranging from nuclear reactors and aero engines to trains, excavators and cars. As a region, we want to help lead the latest energy transition, as articulated in the recent Midlands Engine’s White Paper on energy security; I chaired the task force to produce that.

For a number of years, I have been making the case that, to date, the energy transition has been delivered in a top-down fashion. We have had many welcome developments, such as the formation of the NESO—the National Energy System Operator—but there is still a sense that this is something being done to communities, rather than bringing them along on the journey. No doubt progress is being made on the regional planning for the local power plant through Great British Energy, but we are not yet in a place where we have a fully joined-up governance system that marries up the necessary top-down view of the energy system and the critical bottom-up view that informs it.

Why is it important to drive the transition locally? First, I have already mentioned bringing local communities along on the journey. We are talking about significant changes to buildings, including changes in how we heat and insulate them, and changes to both grid architecture and next-generation charging. All this will be much more effective if communities are helping to drive this themselves and seeing those benefits.

Secondly, local areas have the knowledge of how best to implement the energy transition. For example, they know their local housing stock best. They know which technologies are best for future heating solutions, whether that means district heating or heat pumps. They know where the grid, the charging and the local generation is.

That feeds into my final point, on costs. The cost of the energy transition is getting significant attention at the moment, but the benefits for the Government here are the cost savings possible with a locally led approach. Billions in savings are possible if the most appropriate solution is brought forward for local areas, using local knowledge rather than one-size-fits-all. Regions and authorities are recognising this and taking action, but the Government need to drive this approach forward and avoid the patchwork nature referred to in our debate on the previous group.

What is needed is proper energy planning, at a local level, which then feeds up into regional plans and, ultimately, into the spatial strategic energy plan for the UK that the NESO is producing. That is when we will have a transition where we bring in all the expertise at a local level, which means the most efficient solutions at the lowest cost. There is an opportunity here for the Government to recognise, in the areas of competence, the centrality of energy to what strategic authorities need to deliver; this would ensure that strategic authorities are delivering on energy for their regions. The Government could use that to define how a bottom-up governance system for energy could work, how that might flow up into the spatial strategic energy plan, how that will interface with GBE and NESO, and so on.

I was grateful to meet the Minister last week. We discussed how paragraph (a) refers to “transport and local infrastructure” and how that is slightly misleading, in that it may give the impression of a focus on transport. The other benefit of this amendment is that it would clarify that first part of Clause 2 and provide clarity in the language on what strategic authorities are trying to deliver. With that, I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a visual artist. Amendment 4 in my name is a small but important clarifying amendment. It simply adds the words “including through tourism” to paragraph (d) of Clause 2, which already defines “economic development and regeneration” as a core “area of competence” for strategic authorities. This reflects the Local Government Association’s view that tourism should be explicitly recognised in the Bill rather than left implicit.

Tourism is not a marginal activity; it is one of the principal ways in which economic development and regeneration happen in practice. It supports local jobs, sustains town centres, underpins cultural and heritage assets and brings external spending directly into communities. In many places, particularly outside the large cities, it is the economic driver.

I have deliberately not proposed tourism as a stand-alone category nor sought to incorporate it into the important Amendment 6 tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to which I have added my name. His amendment rightly strengthens the strategic recognition of the arts, heritage and creative industries. My amendment is narrower and more operational. It simply makes it clear that tourism sits within economic development and regeneration, which is how local authorities already understand and deliver it in practice.

Too often, tourism is grouped alongside the arts and creative industries in local authority structures, where its scale and commercial focus can unintentionally shape priorities and funding conversations that are not directly about culture itself. Placing tourism clearly within economic development helps to maintain that distinction while allowing cultural policy to retain its own strategic clarity. This matters particularly in the context of the Government’s emerging work on a visitor or tourism levy. Even at modest levels, published estimates suggest that such a levy could raise hundreds of millions of pounds a year in England and potentially over £1 billion annually if applied more widely—sums that would exceed Arts Council England’s entire annual capital budget and be comparable in scale to a decade of lost local authority cultural investment.

In the Cultural Policy Unit’s helpful paper A City Tourism Charge—the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, will no doubt develop this point further on Amendment 6, with which I entirely agree—there is a strong and well-evidenced case that a significant proportion of any such levy should be invested directly in cultural and heritage assets, which are often the very reason that people visit in the first place. For strategic authorities to play a meaningful role in shaping and deploying such tools, tourism needs to be clearly within scope. Without explicit inclusion, there is a risk that tourism falls between stools—assumed but not quite owned. This amendment provides clarity, not prescription, and I hope that the Minister will see it as a proportionate and helpful addition.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 8 in my name, which would have the effect of adding to the list of areas of competence in Clause 2 an additional paragraph (h), “community engagement and empowerment”. Noble Lords would not be surprised by the suggestion that this should be designated as one of the areas of competence of strategic authorities and mayors, as the clue is in the Title: the Bill is about community empowerment, and community engagement is instrumental to the achievement of community empowerment. It is therefore one of the areas of competence for mayors.

This led me to thinking about what the Government are trying to achieve by listing the areas of competence—let us understand that and then we can decide what it is sensible to put into the list. As it happens, the White Paper was somewhat more helpful than the Bill itself in this respect, since quite clearly what is intended, as the White Paper puts it, is that this list should comprise

“areas where Strategic Authorities should have a mandate to act strategically to drive growth as well as support the shaping of public services, where strategic level coordination adds value”.

I am looking at that and thinking that “competence” is not necessarily the right word for this; perhaps it is “responsibility”. Let us not worry about the word, but let us at least understand what the Government are trying to achieve. Then I realised that, of course, the point is that they have listed seven because subsequently there is an intention to have up to seven commissioners. Is the answer, “Well, there just has to be seven”? I do not think we need constrain ourselves in that regard.

I then thought that perhaps these are listed because they are the areas of functional responsibility where additional functions are provided by the Bill at a later stage, but when one looks at the functions of mayors, six are the subject of additional functional responsibilities and powers itemised later in the Bill. Environment and climate change is left out but is none the less an area of competence, so we are clearly not talking just about what the Bill adds to mayors by way of responsibilities; we are talking about what mayoral strategic authorities should be engaged with to drive growth, to create social cohesion and to shape public services.

It seems to me, therefore, that there are a number of additions and no problem about how many, as long as they are genuinely representative of the areas of competence—meaning, responsibility and functional powers that are available to mayoral strategic authorities. It seems to me—this will save me getting up and saying anything more on the next two groups—that both Amendments 6 and 7 have merit, in that respect, in adding arts, cultural and creative industries on the one hand and definitely adding rural affairs on the other.

The number of commissioners should be determined in their own right, rather than by reference to the number of areas of competence. If there are more areas of competence than there are commissioners, that is not a problem. Interestingly, while listing the seven areas of competence as we have them in Clause 2, the devolution White Paper said:

“We are interested in where this list could be expanded now or in the future”.


I think that we can help the Government by expanding the list. I personally think that all three that I mentioned could be added without any demerits. They would then be more comprehensively illustrative of the range of functional activities that strategic authorities should be engaged in, in order to achieve maximum growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, quite rightly illustrated by reference to tourism—how they can promote growth, shape public services and improve the circumstances for the populations that they serve.

From my point of view, community engagement and empowerment is central to the delivery of many of these. I have no intention that community engagement and empowerment should be the responsibility of a commissioner. It should be the responsibility of the mayor and, of course, it is a cross-cutting area of competence. I can see no reason why one would leave it out, since it is instrumental to the achievement of the objectives.

I shall finish with just one question to the Minister, which I am perfectly happy to take up with her at a later stage. If it is indeed the Government’s belief that this list may be expanded, either

“now or in the future”,

as the White Paper said, where is the power to add to this list? I cannot find such a power. It seems to me that on the face of it there should be such a power. Even if the Government are not persuaded today, clearly in the future, if, for example, using later powers, the mayors of established mayoral strategic authorities were to make proposals for changes to the Secretary of State and acquire additional functional responsibilities, this may be in a new area of competence, but where is the ability to put that into the legislation? I hope that the Minister may, at this or a later stage, agree that we should add an order-making power at that point.

--- Later in debate ---

I urge my noble friend to include these important and world-renowned sectors—consider Liverpool’s film success at the Golden Globes recently—as an area of competence for strategic authorities in their own right. I know this would be welcomed and optimised by strategic authorities across England and beyond.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support Amendment 6, to which I have added my name, and to express my full agreement with the case made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I also support Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. Both amendments address a clear omission in the Bill by placing the arts, culture and creative industries, cultural services and heritage explicitly within the areas of competence of strategic authorities, precisely where local government, the Local Government Association and the sector itself understand them to sit. Amendment 51, also in the noble Earl’s name, provides the necessary consequential provision to ensure that this competence can operate coherently in practice. Together, these amendments bring clarity, not complication, and I strongly support them.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 6 in the name of my noble friend Lord Clancarty and Amendment 10 in the name of my noble friend Lady Prashar. I have spoken to a number of people in local government and become convinced that the new strategic authorities could benefit their regions if they had competence over the heritage and cultural sector.

Noble Lords have only to look at the catastrophic situation in the arts and cultural sector in the West Midlands to understand their importance. Birmingham has reduced the funding of arts in the city from £10 million in 2010 to a mere £1.1 million in 2024-26. In 2015, when the first big cuts were announced, they were in part because the political dysfunction of the city council persuaded the Arts Council to redirect funds, with a terrible effect on the city’s cultural and heritage life. Since then, the crisis has continued. The result of this long decline in funding was that in 2024 the city council signed off 100% reductions to funding for some of the most internationally recognised city institutions—the CBSO, Birmingham Rep, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Ikon Gallery, Fabric dance and dozens of community cultural organisations; the list goes on.

Some of these cuts have led to entrepreneurial responses by the city’s cultural sector. For instance, John Crabtree at the Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre has put on a more commercial and popular offer that has helped to stabilise the Birmingham Royal Ballet, which is also housed there. The Mayor of the West Midlands, who has strategic authority over the region but does not have legal competence for the cultural sector, has been able to direct some financial support through the regional authority’s cultural leadership board. It has managed to use money left over from the underspend on the Commonwealth Games and wider devolution funding to channel money to at least some of the most important cultural bodies in the city.

However, all these payments are one-off and do not replace longer-term core funding. They are not able to reach many smaller community cultural bodies, which have subsequently closed. In a city where there is huge concern about youth crime, that seems to be a retrograde and regrettable step. Imagine how much more effective the authority could have been if it had a statutory board to oversee and direct more extensive funds to the cultural sector across the region. I would hope that the establishment of a statutory heritage board in the West Midlands Combined Authority, with constituent authorities as members, would bring stability and greater funding to the sector across the region. In the process, that would allow local and national funding bodies to release money to the region and attract private philanthropy.

The acceptance of Amendment 6 would allow this competence and support for the cultural sector and the creative industries. As many other noble Lords have said, the heritage sector is so important for bringing together communities in a region, for giving them a sense of identity and for attracting tourism into the area. I ask the Minister, with her impressive career in local government, to appreciate how important such an additional competency could be in boosting regional development and cohesion.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, in the last group your Lordships’ House gave a pretty strong steer when it felt that the role of councillors and councils in determining local planning applications locally, based on a plan—not acting capriciously but on balance, with all the material considerations taken into account—was a very important principle, not just for the way that we run things in the country but for the fact that decisions are made by accountable people in a democratic way.

I am astonished that government Amendment 64 has come forward—although I am not surprised that the Government’s Back Benches are so sparsely populated. What this amendment would do is emasculate the principle of a proper local planning process. It raises the spectre of political interference, at very short timescales, in what is a quasi-judicial process. Clearly—and this is the reason I will ask for reassurance in a moment—it demonstrates a prematurity that is likely to slow down the process of development, rather than speed it up.

My evidence for the slowing down was given by my noble friend Lord Banner. I did not take down all the different sections and stages, but there are clearly statutory safeguard overrides, as well as practice guidance, procedures and statute, so that when development processes come forward, everybody has their say, in the right way, with the appropriate process. While there will always be a winner and a loser, at least people can say that it was done properly.

My concern with this is what the process will be whereby a Minister may call in a decision for stalling it. What intelligence will be relied on, and on what timescale? Planning committee agendas are normally published seven days in advance of the meeting. So within five working days of a recommendation for refusal from the officers, what is the process by which Ministers will be advised, “You’d better jump in on this one; this one might go wrong”?

What happens if there is a recommendation for approval but, on the basis of hearsay, rumour or possibly a letter in the local newspaper, there is a suggestion that the committee might decide to go the other way? I cannot quite understand how that would normally happen, because, as anyone who sits on a planning committee knows, they keep their mouths shut for risk of predetermination. This is where I am concerned about party-political interference in planning. There may be nods and winks and comments such as, “We think that so and so on the other side might be going this way”.

It all belies the fact that, as we all know, because the planning committee meets regularly and because it is quite an onerous thing and other people have different responsibilities, there is a series of substitutions, which are quite proper, with trained substitutes on that committee. With all those moving parts, I wonder, with a week to go, on what basis would the Secretary of State jump in?

I play to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about a quango report. At what stage are we going to prematurely judge that, of all the different material considerations, one report may be more important than another, when we all know that it is the role of the committee to balance all of them in the round and take in all the material considerations? Are we going to sleepwalk into a situation where Ministers give an additional vicarious respectability to one set of reports over another, with only half the evidence to hand and without seeing in the round the benefit of all the objections, proposals and debate in the chamber? We understand that the purpose of the Bill is to speed up planning, but it seems that its consequence is to slow it right down. How on earth would we end up in a situation where Ministers could be properly advised?

In this House, and in Parliament, there is a proper 12-stage process. We are at stage 10 of 12. For the reasons that my noble friend Lord Banner gave—about the interplay of all the complexity and detail here—this should have been brought forward in Committee or at a much earlier stage. But here we are, at the 11th hour, in Parliament’s revising Chamber, trying to work this out on the hoof. I cannot support this. It rides a coach and horses through established process, principles and democracy. It is half-baked, and it should be thrown out.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to speak in strong support of Amendment 87D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. It seeks to address a clear gap in our planning framework: the ease with which valued community buildings can be demolished under permitted development rights.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for reminding us in Committee that, since 2017, it has not been possible to demolish a pub under permitted development rights and that, since 2020, the same protection has rightly been extended to theatres, live music venues and concert halls. But every other community building—from sports halls to scout huts, youth clubs, village halls, arts centres, community hubs, social clubs, rehearsal rooms, day centres and faith spaces—can legally be demolished through permitted development under class B, in Part 11 of the general permitted development order, usually via only a prior approval notice to the council. In other words, a community can spend months achieving an asset of community value status, believing it has secured protection, yet the owner can still flatten the building with no full planning process, and the opportunity to save it is lost for ever.

The Minister suggested in response to the noble Baroness in Committee that local authorities can already protect such assets by issuing Article 4 directions. Although that may sound reassuring, in practice it is neither adequate nor realistic. Article 4 powers are slow, complex and discretionary. They require public consultation, ministerial approval and significant resources that many councils simply do not have. They are rarely used pre-emptively, and too often they are invoked after buildings have already been lost.

This amendment would provide a far simpler and fairer solution: an automatic national safeguard for assets that communities have already demonstrated to be of real social value. These are not sentimental relics but the social infrastructure of everyday life: the places where children learn to play sport, where community choirs rehearse, where food banks and lunch clubs operate and where amateur dramatic societies, after-school classes and local support groups meet. Once demolished, these spaces are almost never replaced.

As has been referenced, the London Nightlife Taskforce, which offers strategic advice to the mayor and will publish a major action plan later this year, has already underlined the urgency of this issue. Its early findings show that demolition and redevelopment continue to erode London’s community and cultural infrastructure, despite existing local powers. The task force, supported by the Night Time Industries Association, the Music Venue Trust and UKHospitality, is calling for stronger statutory safeguards to prevent the loss of spaces that sustain local life and creativity. Although its recommendations are directed at London, the same challenge exists nationwide. Communities in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and countless smaller towns face the same slow erosion of shared civic space, too often replaced by development that contributes little to social cohesion.

If we accept that pubs, theatres and music venues deserve protection from demolition, surely the same logic must apply to any building formally recognised by its community as an asset of value. This modest reform would give communities a genuine say before their most valued spaces disappeared.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, who is one of the House’s great champions of the arts and cultural life. Briefly, I will express the Green group’s support for Amendment 87D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. This would ensure that assets of community value cannot be demolished. It is worth going back to where the assets of community value started, in 2011. Creating that category of buildings and structures was so hard fought for, and it could, in effect, be lost under permitted development rights. The noble Baroness has identified a really important issue, and I hope the House will back that.

I rise chiefly to speak against government Amendment 64. We have already heard some important points. Both the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Fuller, pointed out just how late this is coming in the process and how we have not had the chance to have proper scrutiny. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is right about a considerable change in tone, but I would go further and say that it is a considerable change in the direction of the entire law, and that should surely not be done this late in the process.

More than that—like other noble Lords, I am sure— I have received a pleas from the Better Planning Coalition, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trusts to reject this government amendment. If we look at the situation and the arguments they make, absolutely rightly, we see that this amendment embeds into the law a concerning narrative about development at any cost. It does not acknowledge, and it pushes aside, the fact that economic activity and human life are dependent on the environment —the economy is a complete subset of the environment.

The core purpose of planning policy is supposed to be to ensure that developments do not happen in the wrong place or destroy nature gratuitously or without adequate consideration. It really feels, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, said, that this would open up decisions to politics. Well, this is purely politics: it seems to have been put in to drive headlines that say that the Government are taking a hard line with councils that oppose new housing.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and others who have expressed their support for this amendment as well as to colleagues in another place who raised similar arguments when the Bill was considered there, not least Dame Caroline Dinenage, the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in another place.

As noble Lords have said, these venues are vital parts of our cultural infrastructure. They are the reason that we can look forward with excitement to the musicians, artists and talented cultural figures of the future. They are also vital components in building not just houses and housing estates but communities where people want to live with things to do, things that bring joy to their lives. If the Government want the communities that are being built, with the commendable focus on new building that they have, to be vital living and attractive places, it is important that we encourage space for those who are going to brighten our lives with cultural output. We have also seen in the regeneration of coastal communities and many other places how important it is to have those important bits of cultural infrastructure to help revitalise local areas.

Like others, I commend the work of the Music Venue Trust in this regard. It has campaigned long and hard about the plight of live music venues at grass-roots level. My noble friend mentioned Ed Sheeran and Oasis, whose careers were built on these grass-roots venues. I would like to mention Sam Fender, who, like me, hails from North Shields and last week won the Mercury Music Prize and was spotted in the Low Lights Tavern in North Shields. So many of the artists that we like and enjoy today would not be here were it not for those grass-roots venues.

The Music Venue Trust has pointed out how many venues we are losing through all the many challenges. Some 43% of live music grass-roots venues did not make a profit last year. They operate on very tiny margins. There are obviously contending with the rise in national insurance contributions that the Government have set, and last year’s Budget cut rate relief from 75% to 40%, adding a £7 million tax burden on them. Anything we can do to make it easier for the number of grass-roots music venues and bits of cultural infrastructure to grow rather than diminish is worth supporting, and I add my voice in support of those who have spoken up for this amendment.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 71 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and my noble friend Lord Clancarty. As has been said, this is a long-standing issue and it lies at the heart of how new development coexists with existing businesses and community facilities. It concerns fairness and foresight in the planning system, ensuring that when new homes are built near established venues and facilities, the newcomers, not those already there, bear the responsibility for mitigating any resulting conflicts.

The crisis facing grass-roots music venues is now acute. As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said, according to the Music Venue Trust, the UK lost one grass-roots music venue every fortnight in 2024 and almost half of them—43.8%—now operate at a loss, with a quarter facing imminent closure. This follows the loss of 16% of all such venues in 2023, with 125 spaces for live music gone in a single year. The pattern is sadly familiar. A venue thrives for decades, new flats are built nearby, residents complain, and the venue faces crippling restrictions or closure. The iconic Night & Day Cafe in Manchester and the Ministry of Sound in London have fought costly, protracted battles simply to continue existing.

The agent of change principle is meant to prevent exactly this. After years of campaigning led by the Music Venue Trust and supported, as my noble friend said, by Sir Paul McCartney, Brian Eno, and many others, it was finally incorporated into the national policy framework in 2018, yet seven years on, that policy has fallen short. Why is that? It is because guidance alone cannot override statutory duties under environmental health law. Local authorities must still investigate noise complaints and issue abatement notices, even when the source of that noise long predates the new development. The principle exists in spirit but lacks legal force.

This amendment would put that right. It establishes a statutory duty spanning both planning and licensing functions. It requires developers to submit proper noise impact assessments to mitigate the impact of the schemes on existing venues and, crucially, requires decision-makers to consider chronology. Who was there first must matter in law, not just in principle. This is not only about nightclubs or music venues; the same logic protects churches from complaints about bells, pubs from garden noise and sports clubs from cheering crowds. Indeed, it protects any established community use threatened by incompatible new development. This is a modest but essential reform that will help stem the loss of venues that make our towns and cities vibrant and give local authorities the clarity they need to balance growth with cultural sustainability. I urge the Government to support it.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to be extraordinarily brief, because the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, has explained explicitly what this is about and why it is desperately needed. I add my name to all those who have spoken so passionately in favour of it and look forward to the Minister, with equal passion, agreeing to it.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for tabling Amendment 185H, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for tabling Amendment 112—I support both of them. In speaking today, I declare my interest as an artist member of DACS, the Design and Artists Copyright Society.

These amendments represent a vital evolution in our planning framework. Although we have long recognised the importance of assets of community value under the Localism Act 2011, we have yet to adequately address the unique vulnerability and significance of our cultural infrastructure. Amendments 185H and 112 address this vital gap by establishing a complementary scheme specifically aimed at safeguarding spaces where creativity thrives and community and cultural expression flourish.

As the noble Earl has said, Britain’s cultural landscape faces unprecedented challenges. We have witnessed the heartbreaking closure of countless music venues, recording studios, rehearsal spaces and artist studios—spaces that are not merely commercial properties but the very bedrock of our creative economy. These venues serve as incubators for emerging talent, repositories of cultural knowledge and gathering places where communities forge their identity through shared artistic expression.

I speak from personal experience. In the late 1990s, I was a member of Cubitt studios, an artist co-operative with a public gallery and 32 studio spaces, based at the time in King’s Cross before its redevelopment by the urban regeneration specialist Argent. At that time, artist-led spaces such as Cubitt prevented historic buildings from falling into decay, giving the area a focus beyond drugs and prostitution, for which it had become known. They sparked the creative energy that would later underpin the success of the King’s Cross regeneration. That pattern has been repeated across the country: artists acting as cultural guardians, only to be displaced when values rise and protections prove absent. As Neil Smith, the late geographer, once observed, artists are often “shock troops” of gentrification. They pioneer in forgotten places, but their very success makes those places vulnerable to speculative displacement.

The cleverness of this amendment lies in its recognition that cultural assets serve dual purposes: advancing the cultural well-being of communities while safeguarding the spaces essential for the development of specialist cultural skills. To a planner, a small rehearsal studio may seem inconsequential, yet it may be where the next generation of musicians learn their craft or where community groups gather to create, celebrate and connect. By building on the tested framework of the assets of community value scheme, Amendment 185H offers a proportionate and workable model.

Social Care Strategy

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on initiating this important debate and warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on her excellent maiden speech. My contribution will focus on a rather niche area: the urgent need to fix social care data so that an evidenced-based social care strategy can be developed apace.

The head of the Office for Statistics Regulation, Ed Humpherson, said:

“I am responsible for regulating data across economics, employment, health and more and it is social care that stands out by far for its low quality or even absent data”.


The Data That Cares report and its precursor, published by Future Care Capital, highlighted in some detail the egregious neglect of social care data, as did the OSR’s subsequent publications on the topic. However, progress in remedying the situation has been slow.

How will the Government devise a comprehensive social care strategy if they lack robust information about demand and provision, including information about the estimated 25% to 30% of adults in England who fund their own care? I stress “estimated” because we do not know for certain how many adults are currently in receipt of care. How will the Government proceed if they cannot meaningfully compare public spending on different types of social care services in different places and connected with different providers for cohorts of working-age adults with different needs; and, crucially, if they lack access to reliable data about the quality of care currently provided, as laid bare in the Homecare Association’s recent report on the subject? Can the Minister provide some reassurance and confirm whether the Government intend to continue implementing the Care Data Matters road map and, if not, let us know what will replace it?

If I were to make one suggestion, I would recommend that the Minister make full use of provisions in Part 2 of the Health and Care Act 2022 and immediately mandate the collection of timely, standardised data, including financial data, from social care providers that wish to be registered with the CQC or take receipt of public funds in connection with service provision—or, better, extend the scope of those powers to help them better understand the unregistered and private care market. This should be accompanied by a commitment to reciprocity to help providers make the most of data sharing to improve provision.

In conclusion, I emphasise the importance of investing in data-driven and tech-enabled care, otherwise we are apt to neglect a dynamo which could drive up productivity in a sector beset by growing workforce shortages and, crucially, unmet need. The Government could instead support economic growth in the UK by investing in CareTech research and development to capitalise on the one global market that is guaranteed to expand over the coming years. The Minister could usefully support initiatives such as Care City and the social care test bed anchored by the University of Liverpool’s Civic Health Innovation Labs, working in partnership with the National Care Forum, in the interests of making swift progress. The time for procrastination has long since passed.

Local Government Finances

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for initiating this important and timely debate. As the final speaker before the Front-Bench speakers, I would like to add my voice to others’ on how the arts and cultural services are an essential component within our local communities. As stewards of our communities’ well-being, it is incumbent on us to confront the challenges facing local government and to recognise the indispensable role that the arts play in enriching our lives and fostering vibrant and inclusive communities.

The fiscal health of local government is a barometer of our collective prosperity and resilience. However, over the past decade or so, most local authorities have grappled with budgetary constraints exacerbated by economic downturns, rising costs and competing priorities. The ramifications of these financial challenges extend far beyond the balance sheets of government offices; they reverberate through the very fabric of our communities, affecting the services and amenities that define the quality of our lives.

Amid these fiscal pressures, one area that often bears the brunt of budget cuts is the arts. Programmes and initiatives that support cultural enrichment, confidence-building, skills development, creative expression and artistic endeavours are often deemed non-essential or expendable in the face of tightening budgets. Yet such a narrow perspective fails to recognise the intrinsic value of the arts and their profound impact on our communities’ social, economic and cultural vitality.

The arts are not merely a luxury or an indulgence; they are a fundamental component of what makes a place thrive. From public art institutions that beautify our streetscapes to local theatre productions that ignite our imaginations, the arts enrich our lives in myriad ways. They foster a sense of identity and belonging, cultivate empathy and understanding and serve as a catalyst for social cohesion and community engagement.

Moreover, the arts are not just cultural assets; they are economic engines that drive local prosperity and growth. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, mentioned, studies have consistently shown that investment in the arts yields significant returns, generating jobs, stimulating tourism and fuelling economic development. Whether it be through the revitalisation of disinvested neighbourhoods that need to reinvent themselves through leisure and tourism, or the creation of creative industry clusters, the arts have the power to catalyse positive change and drive sustainable economic growth at a local level.

However, despite their undeniable contributions, the arts and cultural provisions remain vulnerable to the vagaries of budgetary constraints and fiscal austerity. When local governments face tough choices about where to allocate scarce resources, the arts are often relegated to the sidelines, resulting in reduced funding for arts organisations, cultural institutions and community arts programmes. This not only undermines the viability of these vital institutions but deprives our communities of the myriad benefits that the arts afford.

The impact of these funding cuts is felt most acutely by the marginalised and underserved communities, which often have limited access to arts and cultural opportunities. For many individuals, particularly young people, the arts serve as a lifeline—a source of inspiration, empowerment and hope in the face of adversity. When funding for arts education programmes is slashed or arts venues are forced to shut their doors, it is these communities that suffer the greatest loss. Here, I completely agree with others that, once these buildings are sold, they rarely, if ever, return to community use.

Moreover, the erosion of support for the arts exacerbates existing inequalities and perpetuates systemic injustices. As we are the world’s sixth richest nation, it is a sad state of affairs that even essential services such as libraries and museums are under threat owing to a lack of funding. Without adequate funding and resources, artists from underrepresented backgrounds face barriers to entry and struggle to make their voices heard. This not only stifles artistic innovation and creativity but perpetuates a homogenous cultural landscape that fails to reflect the diversity of our communities.

In confronting the challenges facing our local government finances, we must reaffirm our commitment to the arts and cultural provision as essential pillars of community well-being and resilience. This requires a paradigm shift in how we conceptualise the role of the arts within our communities—not as expendable luxuries but as indispensable assets that demand our unwavering support and investment.

To ensure the continued vitality of the arts, we must rethink the allocation of resources to support arts organisations, cultural institutions and community-based arts programmes. This includes sustained funding for grants, subsidies and public/private partnerships to empower artists and cultural organisations to thrive. It also entails integrating arts and culture into broader community development strategies, recognising their integral role in fostering social cohesion, mental health and well-being, economic prosperity and inclusive growth.

Furthermore, we must adopt a more equitable approach to arts funding, ensuring that resources are distributed fairly and that all communities have access to arts and cultural opportunities. This requires actively engaging with marginalised and underrepresented communities, amplifying their voices and centring their experiences in our cultural narratives.

The County Councils Network, in its briefing for today’s debate, calls for the next Government to have

“an honest discussion … as to what councils can be expected to deliver”

I believe that we should begin that process right now, because councils cannot afford to wait.

In conclusion, the state of current local government finances presents a formidable challenge, but it also presents an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to arts and culture provision as essential components of vibrant, resilient communities. As we navigate the complexities of budgetary constraints and competing priorities, let us not lose sight of the transformative power of the arts to unite, inspire and uplift us.