English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be living through the reality that my noble friend Lord Fuller has just outlined: in Eastbourne, we will be completely unparished. The people have been consulted and, having listened to my noble friend beforehand, decided that they do not want an unlimited precept in a town of 150,000, thank you very much. The proposals for smaller parishes, based on wards which have been designed to be equal in population and nothing to do with the actual community boundaries, really do not work. I support my noble friend on the Front Bench in her amendment, and my noble friend Lord Fuller, but I would add that people must have a usable mechanism to decide what the boundaries of their parish should be. This must be a local conversation, and there must be options and support for that debate. It should not be something that is imposed.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Pinnock for making most of the points that I would have liked to make myself, so, given the need to move on, I will try to be brief.

This Bill is about English devolution and, in practice, decentralisation from Whitehall to mayors. There is actually very little community empowerment as proposed, because powers are going to move upwards from Whitehall to mayors, and therefore mayors will simply get increasingly important. I have tried twice to convince the Government to devolve powers from mayors to local authorities with an annual review, and from local authorities to town and parish councils, which are closer to local people and, crucially, closer to local taxpayers—but so far, to no avail.

This is a fundamental group and my name appears on several of the amendments. There are huge dangers in the Government’s planned changes to local government, not least, as we have heard, that decision-making will get more remote from people as local authorities get larger. Town and parish councils have neighbourhood expertise and knowledge, and that must not be lost in the upwards drift of decision-making. Neighbourhood area committees should have mandatory representation from town and parish councils; they must not duplicate existing structures or behave as if town and parish councils do not exist.

The Bill as it stands appears to remove a right which is currently held by parishes under Section 293G of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and Article 25 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. I am advised that this is what is about to happen. This is a serious omission. Parish councils are responsible for neighbourhood development plans, which are part of the statutory planning framework, and to omit parishes is to disregard and marginalise neighbourhood development plans. I understand that Ministers have said that they do not wish to do that, and I hope the Minister will confirm that that is not the Government’s intention and tell us further what the Government might do about it. It will not be enough simply to consult parish councils; it should be for planning authorities, which are going to be highly centralised, to act fully on any matters of local knowledge and experience that parish councils highlight.

I am looking for the Minister’s assurance that the Government understand what they are doing in terms of the powers of town and parish councils. I think that they need empowerment. All the amendments in this group are justified, including a number in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, which I support. Governments must strengthen the role of town and parish councils, given the large councils that the Government seem intent on creating. There must be meaningful involvement with parish and town councils, and neighbourhood-level decision-making in planning needs to be protected. I hope that weight is going to be given by the Government in the Bill to the crucial role that town and parish councils can perform. If there are any amendments in this group on which the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, would be minded to test the opinion of the House, she would have our support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 248D is an amendment to my noble friend Lord Banner’s Amendment 248. My amendment would prevent my noble friend’s amendment coming into effect until the Government’s promised review of open spaces had been completed.

If the Government choose to proceed on the issue of statutory trusts for recreation, it is essential that due process is followed. We know that many people across the country feel strongly about high-profile cases involving statutory trusts, and many of them are concerned about the loss of important green spaces in their local area. There is a reason for the existence of statutory trusts for recreation, and we will stand up for open spaces. We have long campaigned for a brownfield-first approach to housing delivery, and it is greater housing density, not urban sprawl, that is needed. However, we are not blockers. This is about building the right homes in the right places. The Conservative Party is the party of housebuilding. In 2019, we committed to delivering 1 million new homes by the end of that Parliament, and I am proud to say we kept that promise.

My noble friend has already outlined the issues of the Day case so I will not repeat them, but I will refer to paragraph 116 of the Supreme Court’s judgment, in which Lady Rose said:

“I recognise that this leaves a rather messy situation in which CSE”—


the new owner of the land—

“no doubt bought the land in the expectation of being able to develop it”.

In the wake of this judgment, a rather messy situation needs resolving. I think noble Lords on all sides of this debate recognise that a solution is urgently needed, not least because the situation we face today is holding back much-needed housing delivery. We recognise the problem, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Banner for his hard work in bringing forward a solution today. He is a very accomplished lawyer in this field and we rely on his expertise in this House so often.

I know that the Minister recognises the problem raised by my noble friend, and we welcome the Government’s engagement with the underlying issues created by the Day case. However, as a responsible Opposition, we need to ensure due process has been undertaken. Ministers have committed to a wide review of open spaces and the sufficiency of those spaces. Surely it is right that they should not proceed with a change in the law on this contentious issue without waiting for that review. That is why I and my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook have tabled Amendment 248D, which would prevent regulation in respect of statutory trust orders being made until the Government’s review of open spaces has taken place and would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the outcomes of the review. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I had a large number of amendments to my noble friend’s amendment, but I have reduced them in the interests of simplicity and time.

As my noble friend Lord Jamieson has pointed out, at an earlier stage we were promised a government review of this area. To me, that seems entirely appropriate. This is a complicated area and one of huge importance to communities and to the country as a whole. My noble friend Lord Banner has, of course, devised an extremely attractive and competent amendment, but amendments introduced late in a Bill’s progress in the Lords have a long history of having unexamined and unexpected consequences. They really do not give time, particularly in a difficult area, for government and civil society as a whole to get into the interstices of what needs to be done. Yes, we need to do something, but we should do things in the proper order. The amendments I have left in illustrate some of the areas in which I think my noble friend’s amendment needs examination.

I am unconvinced by the arrangements, or lack of arrangements, for compensation for loss, which leave in the ability for a developer to harass a community by putting in a new application immediately after a previous one has failed. The arrangements for bringing an application to the attention of civil society are very weak in the context of how information flows today. The process can be initiated by a tenant without the freeholder’s involvement. That seems extremely odd. It does not deal with situations where land is being transferred between local authorities, as will happen a good deal in the context of local government reorganisation. There is no real assessment of the need for open space locally. The consideration of environmental loss is very weak. For all those reasons, I think we should go back to the promise made by the Government and, as my noble friend Lord Jamieson’s amendment suggests, not put the Banner amendment into effect until we have done the review.

As my noble friend Lord Banner has pointed out, Wimbledon has won its case so there is no longer urgency with that big beast—the All England Lawn Tennis Club—lobbying hard for this amendment. We can afford to take time to get this right. Noble Lords know that I dislike the actions of the tennis club very much. Well, there we are; I shall survive the fact that it won and my friends lost. I think only highly of my noble friend Lord Banner who has, by bringing his amendment forward, made it impossible for him to accept even a cup of strawberries from Wimbledon for the next few years. He also finds himself putting forward arguments which he will attempt to demolish when he opposes the development of the new Chinese embassy. I think very highly of him and there are a lot of things in his amendment that I like, but I would really like us to take time to consider it properly.