Greater Cambridge Development Corporation (Establishment) Order 2026

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

At end to insert “but that this House regrets that the geographic scope of the Development Corporation proposed in the Order is not extended to correspond to the functional economic geography of the Cambridge-based economy; and that this Order is not accompanied by an Order setting out planning powers for the Development Corporation focused on very large new sites for development.”

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the order and setting out so clearly what the Government are seeking to achieve. I have tabled a regret amendment, not because I oppose the establishment of the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation but because I think what is in the order and in the Government’s plans both is insufficiently ambitious in terms of the geography and what needs to be achieved and overreaches in what the Government are seeking to do for planning and plan-making powers in Cambridge itself.

I should declare an interest. Of course, for 18 years I was Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire, the area that the development corporation will cover, and for the last decade I have been chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I have had only the most positive continuing engagement through that role with local planning authorities and the Cambridge Growth Company. I agree entirely with the Minister that we will very much miss the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, in his role as the Minister for the OxCam growth corridor, and I hope that the Government will continue to follow through on the excellent work that he implemented.

Why do I say that the Government are insufficiently ambitious? When we look 25 years ahead, we are looking for a development corporation to add value to what is already being done in Cambridge. We are already building. The university has helped to build Eddington. We have built out at Trumpington Meadows. We allocated green-belt land and are building out at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. It is the Government who prevented us from proceeding as we wanted to in Cambridge North because they would not pay for wastewater treatment and removal. We have just had Homes England, Hill Residential, the local authority and the Cambridge Growth Company coming together to set out plans for the redevelopment of Cambridge City Airport as the Cambridge East development, with East West Rail coming through. There is no shortage of impetus from the planning authorities. Indeed, last year, Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, a shared service between Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, was the planning authority of the year.

We need to look at this development corporation and ask: how does it add value? The Minister was absolutely right: it is by building out the infrastructure. I will give just one example: the mass rapid transit requirements around Cambridge. Cambridge Ahead has said recently, on where the Cambridge cluster really extends to, that in the years ahead we are looking at what is, in effect, a polycentric system of Cambridge and related large settlements which will form part of a functional economic geography. If you look at a map, a 20-mile radius around Cambridge includes Ely, Newmarket, Haverhill, Royston, St Neots and Huntingdon.

Huntingdon is an excellent example. We need mass rapid transit to Huntingdon, in addition to the A14 and the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. We have the space to do it. Huntingdon’s local plan process is currently looking at some 24,000 additional homes in the plan period and beyond, in places such as Alconbury Weald and Wyton. If the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation is going to deliver that infrastructure, it has the powers to do that beyond its territory, as the Minister said. But, if it wanted to take responsibility for major settlements such as Alconbury Weald or Wyton or, heading to the east, somewhere such as Westley Green, it is technically beyond the boundary that we are looking at. If the Minister wanted to add value to the local planning process, she might like to have a look at East Cambridgeshire District Council, which is not proceeding with any local plan process, unlike Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council, which are in the midst of creating a very ambitious local plan and expect to conclude it by the end of 2027.

What I ask the Minister to do is to think very hard about this regret amendment and accept that the development corporation should not be confined to the geography that is set out here. It should, in time, potentially be responsible for other major settlements. Within Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire, it should not take general planning powers and, specifically, should not take the plan-making powers after the point at which the current local plan is adopted. That would be an outrageous abuse of the democratic process and would vitiate all the partnership working being done in Cambridge city and beyond in the Greater Cambridge area to try to deliver precisely the nationally significant growth that the Minister has been advocating.

We are talking here about the establishment order, but I think the Minister fully understands that what we are really talking about is that, when the subsequent planning functions order comes forward, that should be an opportunity for her to think again about the results of the consultation and to bring forward something focused on red-line sites for major, strategic settlements, and not taking responsibility for plan-making powers. I beg to move the regret amendment in my name.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this really interesting, albeit short, debate. We have to understand that this is the first of what will necessarily be further debates at some point later in the autumn in relation to the order setting out what the planning functions of the development corporation will be.

I thought what the Minister had to say about maintaining a review of the boundaries was a really helpful and important thing to say, but it has to be understood that there is no legal requirement that the development corporation’s boundaries should align with the administrative boundaries of local authorities. They can differ. Perhaps we ought to give ourselves the freedom to think that they should differ in this instance, because we do not know what the unitary council is going to look like, and it is not absolutely necessary that the development corporation aligns with the unitary council when it comes.

When the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, explains how well Cambridge has succeeded, he is, in a sense, reinforcing the fact that the place I represented and the local authorities which I supported—South Cambridgeshire was a Conservative authority for years—worked together to enable the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to be established by releasing green belt. We worked together to allow Trumpington Meadows to happen, and Cambridge City Council worked with the university to enable Eddington to be built, which is an award-winning development to the west of Cambridge. These things happened at pace and are examples for the rest of the country. So, the point of the development corporation, which I think we all support, is to do more and to add value; it is not to take over the responsibilities and the powers of the local authorities in so far as they are delivering.

I think we can agree that, if a local plan did not meet the need, you would have to step in. But I do not think there is any evidence that the Greater Cambridge local plan does not meet the need. There is plenty of evidence that East Cambridgeshire is not undertaking a local plan process at all, and the development corporation is not planning to step in there. Some parts of East Cambridge abut Cambridge city, and they are some of the principal areas for potential development in the future.

I will finish on this point. When the Minister looks at boundaries, and particularly when she and her colleagues look at planning functions, if they look at the possibility of having development management powers for major sites—I do not mean 250 homes; I mean the really big sites where the development corporation can add value to what is happening already—then fine, go for those sites, but just put a red line around them. You do not have to define strategic sites in the legislation. You can just put a red line around where those strategic sites are. As they come forward, maybe outside the area—in Huntingdon, or even, I say to my noble friend, at Tempsford—you could put a red line around those, make them part of the development corporation and give them the development management powers in that place. One does not need to take plan-making powers for the whole of a local authority area. That would be a step too far. We have enabled this debate this afternoon to put down that marker to the noble Baroness and to the Government, so they can think about that before we return to this in the autumn. With all those points made, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this very important issue. Those of us who have operated in two-tier areas would often look at London boroughs and other unitaries—the unitary of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, was very close to my local authority—to see that clarity is much easier for the public to understand in a unitary authority.

My noble friend is right to point out that these problems come with duplication, and there are benefits in eliminating that. For example, Buckinghamshire Council estimates that it costs around £30,000 a year just to tell people that they have got the wrong phone number. Those sums can be taken out to make that funding available to invest in front-line services.

The Secretary of State has announced an outcomes framework so that residents can see for themselves how well their council performs. But they should be judged against the same set of services and I very much look forward to the lack of confusion and to not having to have discussions, as I did many times in my own authority, about what are street trees, what are highway trees and who should be looking after which trees.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. The Minister said that no decision had been made on unitaries in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. I looked at the letter that was sent to leaders of local authorities and it did not explain why a decision had not been reached. It did not explain what further evidence needed to be gathered in order to make a decision before October, as the Minister said. Of course, tomorrow this House is to debate the establishment of a development corporation in Greater Cambridge on a territory that is aligned with the expectation of where one of the unitary authorities would be. Now we will not know what the geography of unitaries in Cambridgeshire will be at the point at which we make that decision. Can the Minister tell me why a decision could not be made in Cambridgeshire?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am very grateful that we will debate that issue tomorrow, because at one point this afternoon I thought we might not. I am very pleased that we will debate the Cambridgeshire development corporation tomorrow.

In relation to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, local government reorganisation is a fundamental change that will affect residents for generations to come. Given the significance of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for national economic growth, which I know the noble Lord will understand from very close quarters, it is very important that we take the time required to get this right. The Secretary of State has indicated that we will aim to reach a decision on which option to implement by October at the latest. We are still committed to the existing timetable, but we wanted to take account of some of the growth issues that are still emerging as we go through the next phase of this decision-making.

Lobbying Transparency (In-house Lobbyists) Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. I was much entertained by his speech. He, along with the Bill’s proposer, rightly said that this is not about trying to restrict lobbying activity; rather, it is about trying to introduce transparency in lobbying activity. We want to see lobbying take place.

I am reminded that Benjamin Franklin’s major contribution to the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolutionary War was, of course, as a lobbyist in London and Paris. So, lobbying can play an essential part in creating democracy as well as in sustaining it.

I declare an interest: I am a director of a company that is on the register of consultant lobbyists, in recent times principally only because it acts as a secretariat to development forums and contacts housing and planning Ministers in that context. I am also an adviser to a company in Brussels that is on the EU transparency register. I will come back to the comparison between those two registers. I also declare an interest in that I was the Minister responsible for the 2014 legislation under the coalition Government, and had the benefit of being supported in that task in the other place by the then deputy leader of that House, Tom Brake, who is now the distinguished director of Unlock Democracy and is, I suspect, a supporter of this Bill.

It may surprise the Bill’s proposer that I support in principle what she is attempting to do. I will, I am afraid, irritate her by saying that, while I agree in principle, I disagree with almost every practicality of how she is doing it. The reason why—here, I come back to the comparison between the Westminster register and the EU transparency register—is that it is virtually impossible in the Westminster register to reconcile the quarterly information reports that Ministers make about their meetings with the consultant lobbyists who are on the register to try to see how they directly relate to one another as regards meetings and, especially, content. There is nothing about the content.

I should remind the House that in 2013-14, when the Bill was going through—unusually, this is not reflected accurately in the Library briefing—it was not extended to companies that were not consultant lobbyists because, in 2010, we in the coalition Government had introduced the ministerial reporting requirement. At that time, as far as we were concerned, the ministerial return would make it perfectly transparent if any company met a Minister on its own behalf, because that would appear in the return. The point was that a meeting between a public affairs or consultant firm and a Minister might appear in the Minister’s return, but you did not know on whose behalf they were speaking. That was why the register of consultant lobbying was established and why it had the parameters it did. The intention was not to restrict transparency but to add a transparent register where the quarterly information returned would not provide the information.

Why do I think we need to go further? There is capacity within the Act to go further, which Administrations since 2014 have not used. That capacity is twofold. First, as was mentioned previously, special advisers could be included along with Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, because consultant lobbyists know perfectly well that special advisers are an extremely effective way of avoiding the transparency the register is meant to provide. That is available, through secondary legislation, under Chapter 2 of the Act. Secondly, Chapter 23 gives Ministers the regulatory power to change what information is required to be provided to the register.

There is a very big difference. I will not bore the House by enumerating the differences between the Westminster register return and the EU return, but the latter is far more substantial in terms of what you know about an organisation that is seeking to influence the policy of the European Union. You know on whose behalf it is working, what clients it has, what funding it receives, which band of financial activity it is devoting to this task, and so on.

Why do I think the EU register is now a better way of doing things? Because you can reconcile the content of the lobbying with the organisation that is doing it, on whose behalf it is doing it and what resources it is devoting to it. If we are going to be transparent, we might as well go to the EU register, but it is substantively different from the one in the 2014 Act. The 2014 Act is constructed around regulating the person who lobbies, whereas the EU register is about regulating the nature of the activity itself. It is possible to move the 2014 Act in that direction, and I suggest that we should, but this Bill does not do that sufficiently.

I will give just one example. In paragraph 1(1) of Schedule 1, an exception from the requirement to register is provided if the person conducting the communication with Ministers or Permanent Secretaries does so for a business whose main activity is not lobbying. Most organisations will say, “We’re covered by the exemption. Lobbying is incidental to what we do, so we don’t need to register”. When they do register, they will get very confused about who they register. Should it be the chief executive? Should it be everybody? The EU register does not have that problem—the organisation is registered, not the individuals within it.

I suggest that at this stage, given that it is Second Reading, we say yes to the principle of trying to do something about this, but in Committee we may have to look in some detail at how we do it. It is not about simply putting “in-house lobbyist” alongside “consultant lobbyist”; it is about shifting from consultant lobbying and in-house lobbying to creating a register of organisations that are seeking to influence government legislation and policy. They should be on the register, in the same way as is true of the Brussels register.

Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, these draft regulations were laid before the House on 27 April. The Government were clear in our manifesto that housing need in England cannot be met without planning for growth on a larger than local scale and that we would introduce new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning. To that end, the Planning and Infrastructure Act, which received Royal Assent last December, legislated for the reintroduction of an England- wide system of strategic plan-making.

The Act inserted a new Part 1A into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, placing a duty on strategic planning authorities to prepare a spatial development strategy. An SDS will form part of the development plan to which local planning authorities must have regard when determining planning applications unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Local plans will be required to be in general conformity with the relevant spatial development strategy. SDS are high-level plans that will define the overall scale and distribution of growth and development across an area, including the potential need for regeneration and environmental protection or enhancement. They may identify broad locations for development and the infrastructure required to support it, and can redistribute housing and other development needs between local planning authorities.

These regulations will make two minor, consequential amendments to support the implementation of this new system, which we intend to commence later this year. They will amend Section 114 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 so that SDS examinations are classed as statutory inquiries within the meaning of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992, enabling the Lord Chancellor to make rules related to the procedure to be followed during the examination of an SDS. They will also amend the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 so that marine planning authorities must notify strategic planning authorities of their intention to start preparing a marine plan. Strategic planning authorities are the local government bodies that will be responsible for preparing an SDS.

Unless the Secretary of State directs otherwise, a draft spatial development strategy must be examined by a person appointed by them. The matters to be examined are for the examiner to determine. However, the draft National Planning Policy Framework sets out that the purpose of the examination should be to assess that relevant procedural requirements have been met and that the strategy is sound, alongside any other matters that the examiner considers appropriate.

Regulation 2 will amend Section 114 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 to allow the Lord Chancellor to make rules, under Section 9 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992, governing the procedures for examinations. Any such regulations will support the effective examination of a strategy.

Regulation 3 will amend paragraph 1 of Schedule 6 to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 to require a marine plan authority to notify a strategic planning authority whose area adjoins or is adjacent to marine plan areas of its intention to prepare a marine plan. This requirement already extends to local planning authorities and will enable strategic planning authorities to consider how they wish to participate in the marine planning process and to put in place appropriate arrangements for that participation.

This is the first part of a wider package of secondary legislation that we are preparing to support the implementation of the new system of strategic plan-making. Other statutory instruments, which we intend to make in the autumn, will include regulations that will make further consequential amendments to secondary legislation, rules on the procedure to be followed during an examination, and regulations setting out the procedure to be followed in connection with the preparation of a spatial development strategy. I trust that the Committee agrees that these minor, consequential regulations are necessary and will support the effective implementation of the new system of spatial development strategies. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder if I might intervene at this stage. The Committee will recall—pretty much everybody in the Committee was present during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill’s passage—that, going back to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, I have been very supportive of strategic spatial planning, and we want to see that brought into effect as soon as possible.

I declare my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and as a supporter of and adviser to development forums in other locations, as detailed. For the development community in all those places, one of the consistent messages that comes through is about desirability, not simply of having sub-regional spatial planning at a strategic level, not confined to the territory of one local planning authority generally but embracing several, but of what is afforded by that opportunity—namely, the ability to bring together transport strategies, infrastructure strategies, growth plans and spatial development strategies into one document, which can then help guide and direct the planning infrastructure.

As the Minister helpfully explained, as the Explanatory Memorandum does, this is one of several statutory instruments necessary to bring the procedure of strategic development strategies into place. The Minister said, “in the autumn”, but I want to find out is what is going to happen and when. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that it remains the Government’s intention to publish the response to the consultation on the draft NPPF in July, before recess, so that we can see the final NPPF—without having to wait for the customary publication just before Christmas—and get on with it. On the timetable, I hope that will mean that it will be possible for there to be planning policy guidance published in relation to the preparation of spatial development strategies and for that to happen as soon as possible in the autumn, but certainly, I would have thought, by the end of the year.

Together with the statutory instruments, that will, I hope, enable the Government to set a period during which combined authorities are asked to publish and submit their spatial development strategy timetable to the Secretary of State.

I assume that this will be applied in relation to groups 1 and 2. The Minister and the Committee will recall that, just a little earlier, the Government published a geography of spatial development strategy areas. Groups 1 and 2 are the existing strategic mayoral combined authorities and the devolution priority programme. I am looking for groups 1 and 2 to have their SDS timetables requested to be submitted in the early part of next year at the latest. I would be grateful if the Minister could give the Committee a sense of the complete timetable for SDS.

I turn briefly to the content of the NPPF and the overview. The overview in the draft was not explicit about the requirement in the statute for a spatial development strategy to set out the amount or distribution of housing and the amount or distribution of affordable housing. I have mentioned this in an earlier debate on the English devolution Bill, but I hope that the Minister can assure the Committee that the NPPF is being amended to make some of these requirements of a spatial development strategy a bit clearer.

We should be under no illusions about the difficulties that will potentially emerge. We may well have spatial development strategies that are born of an ambitious local growth plan. My own area of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, for example, has a very ambitious growth plan published by Paul Bristow, the mayor. If local authorities in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough were to assess housing need based simply on the standard method, there would be no way in which the growth plan that the mayor is looking for could be accommodated by the level of housing supply implied. For local plans to be consistent with the spatial development strategy, they will have to go further.

The same may be true for, and considerable questions could be raised by, green-belt policy. For example, Stockport could not agree with the other local authorities in Manchester on a joint development plan, not least because of their difficulties in agreeing on green-belt policy. A spatial development strategy could, according to the guidance published thus far, set out where changes to the green belt need to be considered in local plans, but the local plan would set the boundaries. What happens if a local planning authority seeks to adopt a local plan that does not change the boundary of a green belt? Having considered it and decided not to change it, does that mean that the local plan is consistent with the spatial development strategy or not? As we go along, we have to be increasingly clear about what consistency with the spatial development strategy looks like. I say that because we will have a number of these debates—not necessarily on every statutory instrument—and, as guidance is published, it will bring some of those important issues to the forefront.

I ask the Minister about the follow-up to the geography document. The Committee will recall that, although the geography of many of the combined authorities is established, it is not for others. For example, we simply do not yet know whether Buckinghamshire will be included in Thames Valley or if it will be a single foundation strategic authority. We need to learn more about what the final geography will look like and when we might hear that. Unless we get that information, I do not think strategic planning boards will be established in areas where a mayor and combined authority are not being put in place relatively soon. I hope that there will be a timetable for that, as well.

My final question is prompted by my being up in Warrington yesterday. Liverpool is relatively advanced in the preparation of a spatial development strategy and, as I understand it, is looking to have it examined and adopted next year. Will Liverpool City Region’s spatial development strategy be treated as consistent with the requirements of a spatial development strategy as set out by the Planning and Infrastructure Act? I hope that, because it was designed alongside the SDS for London, it will be and that the Minister will say that, through Liverpool’s SDS, we can begin to see the process of spatial planning being implemented in places across England.

Those are my questions arising from the statutory instrument. I do not want to be thought of as opposing it, in any sense. I support the SI.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend I am certainly not opposed to these regulations; I am very much in favour of spatial planning. I have just one question for the Minister. I thank her very much for setting out so clearly the purport of these regulations and apologise for not being able to give advance notice of this question. It is a bit left field and if she wants to write, I quite understand that. It is in the context of development corporations. I appreciate there is ongoing work on this and that the emphasis may change given the experience of Liverpool. I wonder what the evolving thinking is within the department. Is the Minister able to say something about these measures, which make a massive difference to growth, and how that could impact the Thames estuary, the Solent and so on? I am happy for the Minister to write if that is more convenient.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all Members for their considered contributions this afternoon. I am grateful to most noble Lords for supporting the overall direction of travel in relation to strategic development strategies. I hope the Committee agrees that the two minor amendments are appropriate. I will try to answer as many questions as I can. For any that I do not answer, I will respond in writing.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for his broad support for the SDS and I agree with him about sub-regional planning. He probably went through the same process with the East of England Plan that I sat through for many months. Pulling together into one place transport, infrastructure and strategic planning is key to getting the growth that we all want to see.

The noble Lord asked me a number of questions. I will try to take them in the order he asked them. He asked me whether the SDS will contain affordable housing. The legislation is deliberately permissive, so, if the board wishes, it can specify levels of affordable housing within the plan.

The noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asked about a timetable for the implementation of SDS and strategic planning boards. We intend to lay these SIs in the autumn. I cannot be more specific than that, but that is our intention. The strategic planning board regulations must be subject to consultation before being laid. That probably picks up one of the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. We anticipate that consultation will be after the Summer Recess and, once that is complete, we will lay the SIs.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked about the publication of the NPPF and whether the SDS overview will include clear requirements for the statutory requirements. We intend to publish the revised NPPF in the summer. While we are considering responses to the consultation, I cannot comment on its content, but the NPPF cannot change the statutory requirements for SDS set out in the Planning and Infrastructure Act. That is important. In the Act that we got after we finally finished, following some very late-night sittings, we set out what an SDS is there to do. It cannot change that.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I completely understand that the terminology of the Act says that the spatial development strategy may set out the amount and distribution of housing and affordable housing. My point is that, even the latter, in relation to affordable housing, was not included in the draft NPPF text for PM1 relating to SDS. I think it ought to be in there.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that comment. I will feed that back to the team. It is not completed yet, so I will feed his comments in.

On planning practice guidance for SDS once the NPPF is published, we will consider the need for planning practice guidance, but we need to publish the NPPF first. We will have a look at that once the NPPF is under way.

The noble Lord asked about the group 1 and group 2 SDS areas and the timetable for them to submit an SDS. The period within which the strategic planning authority needs to submit its timetable will be set out in regulations. We anticipate that most SPAs will be asked to submit a timetable within 90 days of the formal commencement of the SDS duty. Assuming that commencement is in the autumn, this will be, as the noble Lord rightly suggested, in the early part of 2027.

There was a question about green belt and where changes to green-belt boundaries may need to be considered but the local plan has set the boundary. What happens if there is a disagreement? The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to this as well. Local plans have to be in general conformity with any adopted SDS for the area, and that applies to green belt as it does to any other aspect of an SDS, but that will be tested at the local plan examination. General conformity allows for some inconsistency but not a completely different approach. I suspect that that will be tested in examination processes, and it will be interesting to see where that falls.

The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, echoed the question of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on the areas for strategic planning boards. We intend to respond to the strategic development strategy area consultation in the summer, setting out the areas that the Government think should produce strategic development strategies. Where boards will be needed, the regulations to establish those boards must be subject to statutory consultation. We anticipate that consultation will happen after the Summer Recess and that, once that consultation has happened, the regulations will be made so that the strategic planning board can formally come into being. That is when the geography finally gets confirmed.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked me about Liverpool being well advanced—I say well done to Liverpool for cracking on with the job—and whether this will be adopted under the new NPPF and guidance. We understand that Liverpool SDS is likely to go out to consultation either late this year or early next year and, as such, it will be subject to the policies in the updated NPPF.

The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, asked me about development corporations; he has probably heard me say that I am a big fan of them. We discussed them a great deal during the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the English devolution Bill. I cannot answer his specific questions around the Solent and the Thames estuary, but I will reply to him in writing on those questions, if that is okay.

The noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asked me about rural representation. It would probably be most helpful if I explained the right to be heard at examination. It is quite correct that, unlike the position for local plans, there is no formal right for individuals to appear and be heard at the examination of a spatial development strategy. This is the same approach as that for examinations of, for instance, the London Plan. It is proportionate and effective that that should be the case for strategic plans, but each SDS has to consider its whole area, both urban and rural. So the SDS area consultation proposed, for example, that York and North Yorkshire would do its own plan, on which the mayor would lead.

In practice, experience demonstrates that inspectors take considerable steps to ensure that a wide range of relevant interests and perspectives are heard during, for example, the London Plan examinations. By way of illustration, the most recent examination of a spatial development strategy—the 2019 London Plan—was conducted over 12 weeks, with a participant list extending to 27 pages. I expect that that is why we ended up with the extensive plan that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to.

The Government’s intention is that spatial development strategies operate as those high-level documents, establishing the strategic framework within which the subsequent local plans, which are required to be in general conformity with them, are prepared. Importantly, and in contrast to local plans, spatial development strategies do not allocate specific development sites. It is appropriate that the formal right to appear is preserved for local plan examinations, while examinations of spatial development strategies remain proportionate to their strategic role. I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said about people being interested in planning and engaged in it, but my experience is that they are much more engaged when you are discussing the site-level stuff, which is in the local plans, rather than the more esoteric discussions around a strategic plan.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked me some further questions about what the geography of SDS should be. The English Devolution White Paper sets out the criteria for sensible geographies, including the principle that devolution geographies should ensure the effective delivery of key functions such as SDS. So, where mayoral devolution arrangements already exist, it is proposed that these will be used as a basis for producing SDS, with the exception of the West of England Combined Authority, given the discussions on North Somerset’s place in the region.

Where devolution arrangements do not yet exist, we propose to prioritise existing local consensus on geographies for working together where proposals for devolution have previously been submitted to government with full local agreement, provided that these meet the other sensible geography criteria. These include scale—populations over 1.5 million where possible, to create genuinely strategic SDSs—as well as public service boundary alignment and ensuring that no islands are created.

If a future devolution agreement comes forward on a different geography once the geographies of SDS are confirmed, any SDS will have to be amended, reviewed or replaced to fit that new devolution geography. Of course, we have the ambition to align SDS and the devolution geography, but we have to accept that the devolution picture is still emerging. We need to get on with strategic planning, so we may have to make changes in due course to that.

New Towns: Laying the Foundations (Built Environment Committee Report)

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. I pay credit to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for the work that they did in this committee and continue to do. It is very helpful. I share the view of my noble friend and regard myself very much as a friend of the New Towns Taskforce and the new towns programme, albeit occasionally a critical one, as the Minister knows well.

I remind noble Lords of my registered interests, particularly over the past decade as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. It is on Cambridgeshire that I want to focus for a couple of minutes. I was the Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire for 18 years and for the past decade I have been working in the development forum and continue to live in the area. Thirty years ago, we started building Cambourne on a greenfield site to the west of Cambridge. To put it all in context, in the Cambridge region we are building out Cambourne. If Cambourne North is in the local plan, which I expect it to be eventually, it will be 25,000 homes. We are building out Northstowe, which is anticipated to be 10,000-plus homes. We are building out Waterbeach, north of Cambridge, on the A10 between Cambridge and Ely, which is expected to be 11,000 homes. Last week, the Government, in the shape of Homes England and the Hill Group, secured the project for the build-out of Cambridge East, which people think of as Cambridge airfield, which will be more than 10,000 homes.

So we have our own new towns programme. None of these are in the Government’s new towns programme. Cambridgeshire is planning to deliver 55,000 homes through its own new settlements, without the benefit of the new towns programme in any formal sense. However, the Government are planning a development corporation. I look forward to a debate on the statutory instrument about that, and we will discuss it then.

We have learned a few things. First, in Cambourne, we are 30 years on but only now are we going to get east-west rail with a railway station. Secondly, at Northstowe, we learned the lesson that we needed some of that infrastructure. The Conservative county council built the guided busway and a Conservative Government built the A14 rebuild, but that did not mean that Northstowe happened when we expected it to and to the extent that we thought it would. If I had been standing here in 2007, I would have said, “In 10 years’ time, Northstowe will be established. It will have 2,500 homes and be planning to go to 10,000”. Ten years on from 2007, there were in fact no homes in Northstowe. Why? Because in October 2008 the market collapsed.

It is so important that, as my esteemed friend Oliver Letwin said in his review, we understand the central importance of markets and of ensuring that we respond to them, not least in where we locate new towns and where there is market demand and viability, and in the diversity of tenure in those towns, so that we can see these properties go into the market. It is only those market sales that are fundamentally going to fund the affordable and social housing that we want to be a significant part of this.

We have learned some of those lessons and they are being incorporated into the new towns programme, but we should not imagine that we are operating by looking back to 1945 and then imagining what we are going to do in 2026. No. We can see now in Cambridgeshire what the lessons are. Some of them have been painful ones, but we have none the less come through and are succeeding. I want the Government—we will have this debate another time—to recognise that Cambridgeshire is doing the things that the Government want it to and does not need the new towns programme to make it happen, but that we can learn from it in encouraging other places to do so.

I have two more points. First, yes, there should be development corporations, but in some places they should be mayoral development corporations with tax increment financing, as well as loans from Homes England and the Government. Secondly, when my noble friend’s committee comes to look at the future and community engagement, it should remember that it is the young people today—probably teenagers—who will be moving into many of these homes. Let us engage them too, not just the communities that already live there.

Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, as an adviser to development forums in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cheshire and the Thames Valley, and as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation.

I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, because she made a number of interesting points, one of which I want to add to, if I may. I was pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who said many things that will help to inform our debate and get us beyond what might otherwise be an unhelpful polarisation between those of us who believe from experience that the right to buy is a successful policy that should be continued and those who for other, perhaps ideological, reasons want to restrict the right to buy.

There is a practical point about how right to buy should be managed. For example, if the Government wanted to reduce the discount and chose to do so, there would be an unwelcome practical implication for those who had legitimate expectations that they would be able, after a number of years, to exercise the right to buy. I think they should, at the very least, be able to continue to exercise the right to buy on the understanding that they would continue to occupy the house for a long period, and that if they cannot commit to that, or to the right of repurchase by the local authority, they should not be able to exercise the right to buy. There are ways in which we should be able to support right to buy, rather than simply restrict it.

The point I want to come back to, which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, helpfully made, is the distinction between affordable and social housing. I hope that where we are at the moment in the debate on this Bill and associated issues is looking at increasing the supply of homes for social rent. I am afraid we are very far from where we need to be. From my work in development forums, I know that many developers are unable to secure purchases by housing associations and registered providers of contracts for the supply of affordable housing. That is impinging on the number of homes that are available for social rent. Roughly one-quarter of what they are providing is for social rent, so that is probably 30,000 affordable homes coming through the Section 106 route, of which probably no more than 7,000 are homes for social rent.

Homes England is, correctly, pursuing an increased social and affordable housing programme, but, even if that achieves the 60% social rent composition that Homes England is aiming for, that would mean a maximum of 18,000 homes for social rent a year, and I will be very surprised if it manages to reach that figure. We are probably looking at no more than about 25,000 homes for social rent in total, but the noble Baroness, Lady Shah, who is not presently in her place, was talking about housing federations and the like looking for up to 90,000 additional homes for social rent. I do not know how we can possibly reach that figure.

However, I say to the Minister that if it is not even necessarily part of the scope of this Bill, it is important for us to look at additional ways in which we can generate capital to support investment in additional, affordable and, in particular, social housing. I suggest that she has a look at the Legal & General report, published in April this year, which looked at the possibility of, as it were, energising the latent value in the social housing stock for the purposes of reinvestment into new social housing. That is what many noble Lords on all sides of the House are looking for. The report essentially proposes that housing associations—and the same principle could be applied to council housing stock, where it exists—take the latent value and say, “Let’s transfer this as a large-scale transfer into a partnership provider”, where the partnership is with institutional investors who are looking for long-term investments with an index-linked source of income, which, of course, is what we now have by virtue of the CPI plus-1% increase in rents.

So there is the possibility of generating additional capital that can then be reinvested back, directly through the housing associations, into additional affordable housing. Legal & General’s estimate is that, if this were done for about one-third of the total housing stock in housing associations, it could lead to as many as 8,000 additional social homes per year, representing roughly one-third of the total of affordable homes that could be funded as a consequence of such a major project. Time does not permit me to talk more about this but I hope that Ministers will look actively at it. I would be pleased if they were able, with officials, to engage with this report and its possibilities, and with the housing associations and the local authority sector, to see whether we can create a new programme that would deliver that degree of value, because at the moment we have housing revenue accounts that are cash constrained and housing registered providers who are cash constrained with all the costs of maintenance, building and so on. We have to find ways in which we can realise their asset value in order to overcome their present cash constraints.

Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) (Revocation) Order 2026

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, very briefly, and perhaps with a little surprise, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, on the Conservative Front Bench: we have to regret what happened about these elections. We can also celebrate that eventually democracy won out. I am looking forward to the affected elections on 7 May, not just because the polls suggest that they, across these islands, are going to work out rather well for the Green Party.

Regret is the right term, but we might also say that what has happened—the mess of the Government’s creation in terms of these on again, off again, on again elections—has helped to highlight the weakness of our constitutional arrangements, which really cannot be described as a democracy. We have a situation in which Westminster is dictating far too much what happens on these islands, not just in terms of elections but in so many other ways. We have local councils that have enough money and power to carry out only their statutory responsibilities; that is, those dictated from Westminster.

We really need to think about so many other issues on these islands, not just because of the outcome of the Brexit referendum in 2016, but because of the slogan that people very clearly expressed then. They wanted to take back control. People do want to take back control in their local communities and to have the power and resources there; and, crucially, they should know when the elections are going to be. That should be a regular schedule that cannot be interfered with for political convenience. I commend the noble Baroness for persisting with this, because it is an issue we need to keep highlighting. We need to keep stressing that this is just one example of the way in which our current uncodified constitution, accreted over centuries of historical accident, is not meeting our needs in the 21st century.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene briefly by referring to the example of Suffolk. I entirely agree with my noble friend on the Front Bench about these issues. I draw attention to the fact that I chair the Cambridgeshire Development Forum and support the Norfolk and Suffolk Development Forum, although I do not chair that. But for these purposes I am speaking simply as a Suffolk resident.

There we were in Suffolk, keen, certainly from my point of view, to progress the devolution priority programme for Norfolk and Suffolk. We were then told that the mayoral election for the Norfolk and Suffolk strategic authority was to be delayed. That decision has not been revoked. The decision to delay or to postpone the county council election in Suffolk has now been revoked, which means we will have county councillors, who I think were originally elected in 2001, serving all the way through to 2027—

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

You mean 2021. You said 2001.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Did I? Sorry—2021, serving all the way through to 2027, maybe even to 2028 in practice, and overlapping with unitary councils that are to be established with elections taking place in May 2027.

As I think I have demonstrated through my difficulty in trying to follow all this, these are unnecessarily extremely complicated processes for trying to move devolution forward and get us to the point where we are in a strategic authority with unitary councils. The lack of pace in a Government who are always telling us everything is happening at pace seems to have led to an unnecessarily complex situation, not least for the voters and residents of Suffolk. With local government reorganisation taking place at the same time, we are going to end up paying more for the processes of managing this overburdensome democratic situation. I hope that in the context of this debate, the Government will say that they will look very hard at ensuring that they compensate local authorities and support them in managing the delays that they have occasioned.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I want to remind the House of a contribution I made during the passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I listened with interest to the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, but with a large degree of scepticism, because I personally experienced exactly the issue that is being complained about, at the hands of the Conservative Government. I was re-elected in 1981 to the Greater London Council, with my term due to end in 1985, and the Conservative Government—the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, is the guilty party here—extended my term of office to 1986. So, it is quite clear that there is no point of principle here. I am glad that it has ended up the way it has, but to try to make out that one party does it and the other does not is totally wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to respond to this regret Motion for the Government. Before turning to the order itself, I think it is worth setting out the wider context for the local government reorganisation programme. We are on track and making good progress, including elections scheduled this May for east and west Surrey ahead of an April 2027 go live date, giving new councils stability and a clear mandate. We have also announced decisions in four further invitation areas: Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock; Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton; Norfolk; and Suffolk.

These are decisions that will improve how local government works for over 6 million people, with the next tranche on track to deliver decisions for summer 2026. This demonstrates that our ambitious reorganisation programme is on track to deliver the real benefits that we intend from it, and to deliver on the biggest devolution of power, finance and control, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, described it, to local people in a generation.

Turning to the order itself, I add my thanks to those already expressed around the Chamber to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. My noble friend who chairs that committee has been very helpful to me in debating some of the issues that have arisen during these debates.

Changes to election timing are not taken lightly. They have been used only where there is strong justification, closely linked to supporting effective local government reorganisation. In recent years, that has included areas such as Cumbria and North Yorkshire, where adjusted timetables helped provide stability during transition to new unitary councils. That same practical rationale underpins its more recent use, including in Surrey, where reorganisation is critical to ensuring the financial viability of that area’s councils.

Of course, I recognise that concerns have been raised about local democracy. Democratic legitimacy matters profoundly; people must have confidence that their vote counts and their voice is heard. But they must also have confidence that the structures into which representatives are elected are capable, sustainable and fit to deliver the services on which communities rely. Our responsibility is to safeguard both, and that applies to all parties in this House which are responsible in government. That balance has guided the Government’s approach throughout the reorganisation programme, including in listening carefully to concerns raised by councils themselves and considering the appropriate approach to election timing within the wider context of effective transition.

As the House will know, the Secretary of State’s original decisions followed representations from local authorities. In 30 areas, councils set out evidence on the challenges of delivering structural change alongside full ordinary elections, and the view that postponement would release essential capacity to deliver reorganisation. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, gave us some of the timetable, but I want to go back to before the timetable that she outlined.

On 18 December 2025, the Minister wrote to 63 councils scheduled for May 2026 elections inviting representations on whether postponement would release essential capacity, with a deadline of response by 15 January. We received 500 representations from councils, MPs, the Electoral Commission, parish councils and members of the public. Clarification letters were sent on 19 January to four councils where the position was unclear. The Secretary of State assessed each council individually, considering evidence of capacity constraints—that is, political, senior officer and electoral returning officer impact—as well as financial implications, democratic considerations and wider representations.

On 22 January, we announced the intention to postpone elections for 29 councils and allow 34 to proceed. We then received further representations from Essex County Council and Pendle Borough Council for decisions to be reconsidered. On 29 January, we confirmed the final position of 30 council elections postponed and 33 to proceed. That preceded the timetable that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, set out; I just wanted to clarify how we had got to that situation on 5 February.

Decisions were therefore taken on a case-by-case basis, informed by all those representations, and were in line with the existing precedent for aligning electoral cycles with periods of structural transition. Following the receipt of further legal advice, the Government revoked that decision. That revocation was given effect through the order now being debated in the House. The decision was taken to provide certainty for councils, candidates and voters, with the result being that all elections originally proposed for postponement will proceed in May 2026, and preparations for those elections are continuing on the restored timetable.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

The Minister has not told us at all, and nor indeed does the Explanatory Memorandum tell us, the nature of the legal vulnerability that was implicit in the decision to reconsider. The fact that the decision had to be taken by an independent Minister in her own department, not by the Secretary of State, suggests that there was a significant flaw in the original decision that was made.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I was coming to the legal advice and I will do so. I hope the noble Lord will be patient for a moment while I get to that part.

Looking beyond the delivery of the current local elections, the Secretary of State said on 23 February that the Government would reflect carefully on the concerns raised by your Lordships about the use of these powers during the passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, particularly the concerns expressed about postponing elections for more than one year where a council is undergoing local government reorganisation and the risk that repeated delays to elections can weaken the democratic mandate of councillors.

Against that backdrop, the Government tabled an amendment on Report to prevent double postponement for reasons connected with reorganisation. That is a concern that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, expressed. Again, I thank opposition Peers, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for supporting that amendment, which your Lordships agreed on 13 April. This demonstrates that the Government remain focused on ensuring that reorganisation is delivered in a way that is orderly, provides clarity and certainty over electoral arrangements and is capable of supporting strong local services from day one.

To support that transition, the Government are providing targeted capacity support to councils undergoing reorganisation, including up to £63 million in funding to help manage the process while continuing to deliver for residents. I hope that picks up the points about funding raised by the noble Lord, Lord Porter. I wish I could find that magic sofa in Marsham Street. If he has any advice from previous Ministers who worked there, I ask him please to tell me where it is because I would like to find it. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, also raised points about financing.

Taken together, these steps reflect a balanced approach, safeguarding local democracy, providing certainty on election timing and giving councils the tools they need to move through reorganisation successfully. For these reasons, the Government consider that the approach now in place provides clarity, accountability and a sound basis for effective transition. I am grateful to your Lordships for the care with which these issues have been considered, and I will respond to some of the points made during this short debate.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, in this group I have Amendment 186, which would allow a separate cultural ecosystem plan to be put in place to sit beside the local growth plan. I was very heartened by the support for this amendment in Committee from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He said this amendment

“really matters … because it is the means whereby clarity will be produced about who in the mayoral and local authorities is responsible for what”.

Furthermore, he drew attention to

“the need to ensure that local government maintains the key responsibility that it has always had for the development of cultural assets in its area”.—[Official Report, 4/2/26; col. GC 619.]

I could not have put it better myself.

Our cultural assets are an ecosystem that crosses boundaries as well as being hugely important at the local level, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, emphasises. We talked at some length about culture on the first group today, but I ask the Minister once again whether cultural ecosystem plans might be considered for the guidelines at the very least.

I have also put my name to Amendments 124, 127 and 246 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, which she fully explained. Her agent of change amendment is hugely important. I will not repeat the arguments I gave in Committee except to say that the Music Venue Trust points out the significant difference between how the system works in England, where it is non-statutory and unsatisfactory, and in Scotland, where there is a statutory requirement and it works well. If the noble Baroness wishes to take this to a vote when the time comes, I will certainly support her in the Lobby.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I remind the House that I am chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I provide advice to the Norfolk and Suffolk, Thames Valley and greater Cheshire development forums as well. I apologise to the House in advance, as I know that I cannot be here for days two and three on Report, which is one reason why I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for leading the amendment relating to the statutory position of a chief planner.

In the spirit of the Whips’ rendition of the Companion, I will not repeat either the points so splendidly made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, or the speeches I made in Committee and on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. I know that his amendment, which is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my own Front Bench, appears to have a great deal of support not only in the country but in the House. I hope that when the time comes, if that is on day three, the noble Lord, Lord Best, will, if necessary, test the opinion of the House to show that support. We have not previously imposed that provision on the Government but, if necessary, the House should impose it in this Bill.

I also thank warmly my noble friend on the Front Bench for speaking to Amendments 122, 123, 125 and 126. As he said, they are all about making the local growth plan consistent with the spatial development strategy. I will not go through that in some detail, but we have now seen the draft revision of the National Planning Policy Framework. While it says, for example, that the spatial development strategy should give spatial expression to the strategic elements of the local growth plan, that plan, as set out in the Bill, does not make it clear that it should identify which employment, commercial, industrial and logistical projects are integral to the growth projections for a strategic authority area. It needs to do that so that those strategic elements will necessarily be reflected into the spatial development strategy; exactly the same is true for infrastructure as well. That is why those two additions to the content of the local growth plan are so important in being reflected into what then, in due course, should be incorporated in the spatial development strategy, which is already legislated for.

I finish merely by saying to the Minister that I hope she and her colleagues will look carefully at the draft revision of the National Planning Policy Framework, in so far as it relates to the spatial development strategies. It should say more by way of the content of a spatial development strategy, along the lines of what we have already discussed. Many noble Lords will recall that we debated at length whether the spatial development strategy and the Planning and Infrastructure Act should deal with both the amount and distribution of housing and, specifically, the amount and distribution of affordable housing, but the National Planning Policy Framework does not refer to the latter.

It is really important that the NPPF, to which the equivalent of statutory weight is to be given in planning policy decisions, should reflect the statutory requirements mandated in legislation by this House. I very much support my noble friend’s amendments, which would have that effect.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 124 and 127 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, Amendment 186 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and Amendment 246, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, to all of which I have added my name. A common thread runs through all four.

Culture, as we have heard, does not function in isolation. It depends on an ecosystem of different venues and activities that sustain one another. Amendments 124 and 127 would ensure that cultural considerations are genuinely embedded in planning and strategic decision-making, while Amendment 186 asks authorities to consider the cultural sector as an interconnected whole, rather than a collection of separate parts.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 206 in this group. I guess it is fishing in a similar pool to that of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, but with a more explicit purpose.

With the increased size of local authorities that we are going to get, we will have cities becoming parishes. At the moment, I think the largest parish form of council is Northampton, which has a population of about 130,000. I do not know what the outcome of the local government reorganisation will be, but quite a large number of towns and cities that have a substantial population will have their powers reduced to that of parish and town councils. My guess is that there will be an expansion in parishing in those areas because people will want to make up the democratic deficit.

However, my point in this amendment is to try to ensure that, where neighbourhood areas are identified as being important—as, for instance, with the Pride in Place programme—the parishes, whether town or city-style parishes, are at least represented. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, correctly argued, they are a form of elected democracy and are there to represent their local community. While we all celebrate and work with people who are from neighbourhood organisations, they do not have the same standing in their community because they have not been directly elected by local residents. What I am therefore trying to achieve with this amendment is that, at least where neighbourhood areas are identified and a governance body is established for a neighbourhood area, parish and town councils should have a stake in that organisation. That is what my amendment seeks.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group and will speak to them in turn, but I just begin by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. His Amendment 206 and my Amendment 207 are complementary, and in a sense, ask the same question: if one is creating effective neighbourhood governance, does one do it by incorporating town and parish councils into some structure or by investing town and parish councils, as far as possible, with functions and responsibilities themselves? That is where I think our amendments are complementary and could in practice be adopted in one direction in some places and in another direction in others. I accept that this is not our job in this clause, which seems to be the only clause that does not get its own schedule. I would want to have a schedule attached to this clause that set out in intense detail how this would be done because it would vary from place to place.

I was listening to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, earlier; I did not interrupt, but the Long Title has no interpreted legal force. It is called the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, and that is a means of citation, but the Long Title does not mention community empowerment. In effect, you can look at what the Bill is called but then you look at the Long Title and it just makes provision about various forms of authorities. It does not actually say that the purpose of the Bill is to devolve power or to empower communities. It is our job to ensure that the Bill really does that. Clause 60 ought to be about community empowerment, which is where my Amendment 208 comes from. In so far as there should be guidance to local authorities on how they go about creating effective neighbourhood governance, it should be geared towards empowering and engaging local communities. It is not necessarily the case that that would happen.

I live in Suffolk. My noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook and I were both at the same meeting where the intention—it may be intention in many places—is to create neighbourhood governance. This is, in essence, the elected members of the unitary authorities forming a committee for an area. I do not say that that is irrelevant to this purpose, but it is not the same thing as town and parish councils, which have their own identity, their own powers, their own connections and relationships with all the people who live in that precise area. I come back to the word “identity” because, as all noble Lords understand, political identity is very important in how one creates political and organisational governance structures. The starting point for government structures should be: what is one’s political identity? As it happens, in Suffolk, most people probably identify with their town or parish. That is where they start from. My proposition is terribly simple, which is that towns and parish councils should be, wherever possible, strengthened and their functions maintained or enhanced by this process of local authorities creating effective neighbourhood governance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, might I ask the noble Lord a question about which areas are not parishes? My strong impression is that the unparished areas in Britain are, by and large, poorer inner-city areas —those areas that are most disengaged and disillusioned with politics. If that is the case, it ought to concern us, but I have not yet managed to get full evidence of it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sure the noble Lord is absolutely right about that. The interesting thing is that, just because an area is urban, it does not mean that it does not have parishes. London, one of the biggest cities in Europe, is very often called a city of villages. That they are called parishes is normal in urban areas as much as it is in country areas. “Parish” is not a rural concept; it is a well-established historical concept, wherever you happen to live. Extending parishes across the country would be an admirable way of extending neighbourhood governance.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, could I take advantage of my noble friend’s expertise again? How are unitary councils included under Clause 60(5)? It lists only counties, districts and London boroughs, so I am not clear how the clause applies to unitary councils.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I think the Minister might wish to refer to that, if necessary. My understanding is that, just because an authority is unitary, it does not mean it stops being a county or a district. You could have single foundation counties and districts, in theory.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 209 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I am not going to mention parishes; it is too controversial. In my village, the parish council is incredibly important. It sets up a litter pick, once a month, which I do every month and it is wonderful. I love walking out in front of cars in the village that are going too fast and just stopping them with my little stick. There is not much rubbish left anymore.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, used a very good word for what this side of the Room is experiencing: unease. Sometimes it goes a little bit beyond that, as well.

This amendment seeks to strengthen Clause 60 by setting clear minimum standards for meaningful community participation in neighbourhood governance. The Bill repeatedly speaks in the language of devolution, empowerment and bringing decision-making closer to communities but, to do that, you must make sure that people are genuinely involved in shaping decisions, rather than just being consulted once it has all been fixed.

As the Bill stands, it requires only that “appropriate arrangements” are made for local engagement. That phrase is far too vague, and that vagueness risks exactly the sort of weak or inconsistent participation that has undermined public trust for years. Without minimum standards, engagement can easily become technically compliant but practically meaningless. Meaningful participation requires more than consultation; it requires deliberation, and spaces where people can learn, discuss, challenge and contribute to shaping outcomes. That is why the amendment refers to

“deliberative processes such as citizens’ panels, assemblies, or community conversations”.

In my village, we have community conversations on the street, on a regular basis—and very healthy it is too.

These approaches are well established, increasingly used by councils and effective at engaging people who would not normally take part in formal consultations. The amendment also rightly emphasises inclusion; there is a danger that engagement exercises are dominated by those with the time, confidence and resources to respond. Communities are affected most by decisions, and those who are already underrepresented in policy-making are precisely the voices that are hardest to hear and most important to include. That probably counts double for inner-city parishes or areas.

Transparency is equally important. People need to be able to see how their input has influenced decisions. When communities are asked for their views but see no visible impact, trust is eroded. We need to report on how engagement has shaped plans and outcomes.

The amendment also recognises that meaningful participation needs support. The Minister has said that there is a lot of money going into local councils. I very much hope that it is enough to do exactly this sort of participation and engagement, because asking councils to deliver deeper participation without providing the means to do so risks setting them up to fail.

I do not think that existing powers and future regulations will be sufficient. Although flexibility matters, flexibility without standards leads to inequality. Minimum standards prove a floor, not a ceiling. They ensure that all communities can expect a basic level of involvement. There are excellent examples of councils doing this well; the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that such good practice becomes the norm, not the exception.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I can understand that, but how does a big town council for 100,000 or so people actually work within a unitary of half a million people, given that the town council will have the powers of a parish only and most of the decisions will be taken by the unitary? The important structure at the level of the town will not be the town council, with its rather artificially constrained boundaries, but the local unitary neighbourhood—whatever it calls itself—with the rather expanded boundaries, and the budget, and responsibility for all the things that we want to happen, which the town council will not have any of. If we are looking at parishes, we do not want them on ward boundaries. Ward boundaries have grown to fit the needs of the Electoral Commission. If we are having parishes, we want them to represent communities, which we do not have with our ward boundaries.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I have been looking at the clause and I come back to the fact that the local authorities in question are clearly not strategic authorities; the point is that they are the unitaries. I do not know about Sussex, but in Suffolk, for example, the unitaries may end up being districts or the county but, either way, they will be comprised within the local authorities that would have to undertake this job. Bear in mind that Clause 60 does at least enable functions to be conferred on this neighbourhood structure, so if one were to establish a town council in Eastbourne, the unitary in question—let us say it was a county—could seek to confer functions on that town council.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Yes, but the town council will be on our current boundaries, presumably, whereas to work with the last 30 years of building and development we really ought to incorporate all those large areas of housing and commerce that Wealden has stuck on our boundaries rather than elsewhere. Understanding how the Government intend to proceed on this is relevant to the decisions that we are being asked to take now. I very much agree with what other noble Lords have said. Representation is important, as are the concepts of parish and local identity. We would like to take what will be a rather challenging decision in the full light of knowing what the alternatives open to us really are.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

180A: Schedule 24, page 263, line 14, leave out “(whenever passed or made)” and insert “passed before, or in the same Session as, this Act”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to limit the Secretary of State's power to amend future Acts of Parliament using secondary legislation, in line with the DPRRC's recommendation. The 'Henry VIII power' could only be used prospectively for Acts passed in this session, rather than any future Act of Parliament. It is connected to three other amendments in the name of Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, we turn now to a group of amendments that all relate to the exercise of delegated powers to amend future legislation—Henry VIII powers. They are powers by way of statutory instrument to amend primary legislation in the future. The relevant document—if noble Lords are interested to read it in detail—is the 45th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which reported on this Bill and drew the attention of the House to the Henry VIII powers.

Before I turn to precisely what it said, it did not note, but I have, that in Clause 88 there is a general power for making consequential and incidental provision relating to future legislation. Clause 88 says:

“Regulations … may amend or repeal provision made by an Act of Parliament passed before, or in the same Session as, this Act”.


My amendments do not affect that.

My Amendments 180A, 184A, 196F and 235DA in this group relate to Henry VIII powers to amend future legislation, which was the subject of the Delegated Powers Committee’s report. It said:

“It is reasonably common for Henry VIII powers to allow for consequential amendments to amend future Acts of Parliament passed in the same session as the Bill in which they appear … the Government and Parliament are capable of passing Bills in future sessions consistent with preceding legislation”.


It says in the next paragraph that in November last year the parliamentary counsel noted to the Constitution Committee that

“the power to amend consequentially Acts in future sessions is rare and normally specifically justified in the delegated powers [memorandum] … The Bill includes numerous instances of this type of power and the Memorandum”—

that is, the Government’s delegated powers memorandum—

“does not provide justification for any of them”.

It says, in the recommendations in paragraph 23 of the report:

“In the light of the Government’s failure to justify the ability of these Henry VIII powers to change the effect of Acts of Parliament to be passed in future sessions, we recommend to the House that the delegated powers in clauses 54 and 71 … Schedule 24 and … Schedule 26 are amended to remove that ability”.


I have tabled four amendments to do precisely that. In each case, they would take out the words “whenever passed”, meaning whenever passed in the future, and insert precisely the same words as those the Government themselves used in the drafting of Clause 88—that is, that they would amend or repeal provision made by an Act of Parliament

“passed before, or in the same Session as, this Act”.

I think there is a small, technical problem with my amendment in relation to Schedule 26. Since it relates to an insertion to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, the reference to “this Act” might be inaccurate. However, we will not worry about that, because we can deal with it on Report as necessary.

The purpose of these four amendments relates to a number of places. It relates to Clause 54, which we are dealing with presently, which modifies the functions of mayors and strategic authorities; Clause 71, which concerns the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles; Schedule 24, which we have just been discussing, which concerns licensing powers for the Mayor of London; and Schedule 26, which relates to local government reorganisation powers. The subject matter of those powers is almost unimportant; the point is that, in each case, the Government have used the same language to give themselves the power, by statutory instrument, to amend future Acts of Parliament beyond this Session. In the same way as Clause 88, each of my amendments would limit that power to amend Acts passed or made up to the end of this parliamentary Session.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, has tabled Amendment 184. As I say, I have tabled Amendment 184A, because it does the same thing as the others, whereas Amendment 184 would remove the regulation-making power entirely. I submit that that would go too far, since there is often a need to make consequential or incidental provision.

The essential point that I come back to is that there is no basis for justifying taking a power to amend future Acts of Parliament in future Sessions, because those Bills, when they are introduced to this place, can take account of, and make their own provision for, what the future shape of legislation should look like. It is not a question of saving parliamentary time; they can be dealt with in those Acts when the time comes. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having spoken in the previous debates on this Bill due to the pressure of work. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has spoken eloquently to his amendments, and I agree with nearly everything he has said. I will speak to Amendment 184 in my name, as I am extremely concerned about the long-term implications of Clause 54(3).

Clause 54 begins with subsection (1):

“The Secretary of State may by regulations make incidental, consequential, transitional, transitory or supplementary provision for the purposes of”—


it then it goes into the detail. My concern is with subsection (3), which, for the benefit of the doubt, I will read:

“Regulations under this section may (in particular) amend any Act of Parliament (whenever passed), including by amending this Act”.


This is an amazing power to hand to the Secretary of State in the future, whoever he or she might be. The ability to amend any Act of Parliament, which may not even be a twinkle in the eye of any future government at this stage, is breathtaking.

Until the end of January, I had the privilege to sit on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The council that advises the DPRRC was extremely concerned about the number of delegated powers in the Bill that we are currently debating. There are 92 delegated powers, and a further 42 not covered in the memorandum, due to the fact that the Bill is likely to interact with existing enactments.

Similar powers were brought forward in 2015, at which point the committee felt that the powers were too broad. However, we now have a new Government and a new philosophy. I can understand that the Government want to be able to change past and current legislation in future, but they are asking for the power to change legislation that is yet to be drafted—a power that bypasses the role of Parliament completely.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, spoke at length on his amendments, which relate to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s concerns about the Bill. He set out his arguments extremely clearly and referred to the committee’s 45th report, which was published on 16 January. That report details the committee’s concerns; it is extensive and raises significant issues around the way in which the Henry VIII powers will be executed. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has already ready out the committee’s recommendation concerning this particular power, which is as follows:

“In the light of the Government’s failure to justify the ability of these Henry VIII powers to change the effect of Acts of Parliament to be passed in future sessions, we recommend to the House that the delegated powers in clauses 54 and 71, and those in paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 24 and paragraph 1(8) of Schedule 26 are amended to remove that ability”.


I apologise for repeating what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said word for word, but it is really important to stress this point.

Considering this strong recommendation from the Delegated Powers Committee, as well as the concerns raised by me and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the Committee that the Government are prepared to accept this amendment and amend the Bill accordingly. This is an unjustifiable abuse of power, bypassing Parliament to seek to amend future Acts of Parliament and legislation that is not even in the initial stages of being drafted.

--- Later in debate ---

Again, I welcome the spirit in which the noble Lord has brought forward his amendment and I will reflect on whether the Secretary of State requires this power to apply to future primary legislation ahead of Report. With these reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, not only for her supportive comments on all these amendments but for her participation in the Committee’s scrutiny. We are grateful to the Delegated Powers Committee for the time and trouble that it takes in drawing these things carefully to our attention.

I will not dwell on this. I entirely understand many of the things that the Minister was saying. No part of these amendments is seeking to frustrate the Government’s intentions through these four separate parts of the Bill. The point is technical but simple. At any future stage, future primary legislation can take account in that primary legislation of whether it may be necessary for the powers in this Act to, for example, change the functions of mayors and strategic authorities or to revise the local government reorganisation arrangements in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act. It can take account of those and extend those powers to make statutory instruments to amend them in that primary legislation itself. However, we should not, before that legislation has even come here, give a power to amend it. That would significantly restrict our ability in future legislation to anticipate how that legislation can be used and to scrutinise it in the proper way at the time.

I will of course withdraw my amendment but I hope that the Government will come back, not only having responded to the Committee but in order to change this language on each of these occasions to the same as that in Clause 88. However, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 180A.

Amendment 180A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I, too, support what my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook was saying. I recall that she was responsible for Sections 18, 19 and 20 of LURA, on the conferral of functions on county combined authorities—as they were at that time—so she has been down this track.

I have three quick points. First, and I think my noble friend touched on this, the existing legislation, by which the Secretary of State can confer functions on combined authorities or combined county authorities, operates on the basis of a proposal from those authorities to the Secretary of State for the functions to be conferred. After consultation, the Secretary of State requires the consent of those authorities for the functions to be conferred. I cannot find that in Schedule 25, so the conclusion that one reaches is that, in this devolution Bill, the authorities do not even have the power to decide whether the functions are theirs or not. They will just be given to them or modified without anything beyond consultation; it does not require a proposal or consent. That is a very odd way of proceeding.

Secondly, we had a discussion in an earlier group about the structure of the voting arrangements in Clause 6, but we suddenly find in Schedule 25 that the Government want a power to change them on potentially quite important issues. I cannot for the life of me understand why that is necessary here, because the individual strategic authorities can change their constitutional arrangements anyway, if they really wanted to. I think that we established that in the earlier group. So why do the Government want to be able to change the voting arrangements?

Thirdly, on the pilots, there is a requirement in paragraph 21 for the pilot schemes to produce an impact report but, as far as I can see, it has to be given to the Secretary of State. It does not appear to have to be given to anybody else and it certainly does not have to be published. The Government should come back and make it clear that, when produced and given to the Secretary of State, the impact report should then be published.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for probing whether Schedule 25 should stand part of the Bill. Schedule 25 is central to the objectives of the Bill and the Government’s ambitions for devolution in England. We have been clear that the devolution framework delivered by this Bill is the floor not the ceiling of our ambitions for devolving powers to our communities. Schedule 25 provides the Secretary of State with the power to confer new functions on strategic authorities and to modify these functions. This will ensure that strategic authorities and mayors have the powers that they need to deliver for local people.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, wanted to question which functions could be conferred using these powers. As outlined in paragraph 4 of Schedule 25, a function can be conferred if it

“is a function of a public authority, and … relates to any aspect of any area of competence”.

It might help if I go into a little more detail on that. The current list reflects the areas under which the Government believe strategic authorities should hold powers and functions. Functions and powers held under these areas will best empower mayors to act strategically, to drive growth and to help shape public services for their local communities. The current list of thematic policy areas is deliberately broad and allows for a wide range of activities to fall within the areas of competence. The Government remain open to considering whether the list could be expanded in future.

Questions were asked about the conferring of functions on to a strategic authority and how that will work.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt but I have a question. When the Minister talks about extending the list in future, is that the list of functions within areas of competence, or is she talking about the ability to extend the list of areas of competence?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am talking about the functions within the competence.

The Secretary of State will be required to consult relevant parties, including the strategic authority, the constituent councils and any body that currently holds the function. The Secretary of State will then need to determine whether to confer the function, paying regard to the need for the effective exercise of the function concerned. Regulations made under Schedule 25 will be subject to the affirmative procedure, ensuring that appropriate parliamentary scrutiny takes place.

In some instances, it will make sense to pilot functions with a smaller number of strategic authorities for a time-limited period. I will try to answer the questions about piloting, but I will look at Hansard later and come back in writing if I have not answered them all. Where we are piloting, strategic authorities will be required to provide an impact report on the pilot, which the Secretary of State will take into consideration before deciding whether to confer the functions permanently; I will consider whether those reports should be public.

As an example—the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked for an example of this—development corporation functions are held by mayors. If we wanted to move those functions to foundation authorities, for example, we could use these powers. What will happen with a pilot is that an area will make a request for a function. Pilots will need to be consented to by both the Secretary of State and the relevant local authorities. When a pilot has been completed, there will be an impact assessment of that pilot.

I will come back to the noble Baroness in writing on her questions about default voting arrangements, balance of power and the safeguards.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about a grid setting out the different powers between different layers of local authorities. We have already produced one; it is on GOV.UK. Perhaps the noble Lord might like to have a look at it and, if he has any further questions, to come back to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, before we complete this group, I just want to say that what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said by way of moving his probing amendment asks not only important questions but questions to which we will have to come back, if not in this Bill then on the NHS reform Bill. As I know the noble Lord will completely understand, in so far as that forthcoming legislation will transfer responsibilities back into the Department of Health and Social Care and, potentially, give specific statutory responsibilities to integrated care boards, neither of those will allow this legislation and the 2016 legislation to operate in the way he intends. We will, therefore, have to come back to that and how it will happen at the time.

As things stand, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care does not devolve any of his functions to local government. In effect, he devolves the functions that would otherwise be exercised by NHS England in Manchester to the mayoral strategic authority. If we are going to do that in other mayoral strategic authorities when NHS England has disappeared, there will need to be a new structure to see how this works.

In some ways, it is entirely dependent on how the Government intend, in the NHS reform procedures, to re-establish the relationship between the NHS and local government. Nobody—I heard the noble Lord say this quite recently—has satisfactorily created that relationship. In the coalition Government, it was a very complicated process, and it did not work. There have been positive outcomes in relation to public health, but, for local government, there have not been satisfactory outcomes in relation to the management of health services—particularly in so far as they can be combined satisfactorily with social care services. This is something that we will have to return to in the NHS reform Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, turning first to Clause 53, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his probing stand part notice. As we have said more than once, the devolution of health is a complex matter that raises many important questions—particularly, as we have heard, around the relationship between local authorities and the NHS. I listened to the passion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on this issue. I assure him that I felt as passionate as him 15 years ago; I hope that, at the end of all this, he is not as disappointed as I was.

When I was going through this in Wiltshire, the interesting thing was that the staff on the front line—those in the NHS and in local authorities—really understood this issue. They understood the importance of devolution and how they could deliver much more efficient, better services for the people whom they wanted to serve. That pushed me to do this more and more. However, as I have noted previously, many of the determinants of public health sit outside the health system. We must be clear on who is responsible for what. As we have said many times, where additional duties and responsibilities are placed on local authorities, they must be matched with sufficient resources to deliver them properly. In addition, the Government’s approach must be evidence-based and must demonstrate value for money for taxpayers.

On previous groups, the Minister mentioned the mayor’s involvement in integrated care boards, and we all welcome that. But it has to go further than that. In my opinion, being a member of an integrated care board will not deliver what we need to be delivered on the ground with health and local authorities.

This brings me to Amendment 185 in the name of my noble friend Lord Gascoigne. I thank him for making the case so compellingly. This amendment would prevent the duplication of powers between local authorities and central government. In the realm of health, for instance, we cannot risk the lines of accountability being blurred, whereby functions and responsibilities are devolved down to local authorities, yet Whitehall does not equip them to deliver effectively or continues to do the same jobs itself, leading to duplication.

This is precisely the difference between the Government’s current approach to devolution and what genuine community empowerment ought to look like. This amendment aims to correct that by ensuring that, when a function is devolved, it is also relinquished by central government, while still permitting the appropriate oversight where needed.

If the Government truly believe in local community empowerment, there can be no greater vote of confidence than supporting the principles set out here, trusting local authorities to do the jobs devolved to them fully, and giving local people clear, transparent lines of accountability. This is a matter not of meaningful devolution but of efficiencies and effective government. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on both these important amendments.