English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

This is there simply to position the Government to confirm that they understand what devolution actually is. As I said right at the beginning, in my view this Bill is a staging post. I would like to have direct elections to strategic authorities, but I am the first to admit that that is very difficult to deliver because the systems do not exist for that to become a possibility. But, in time, that should be the objective; otherwise, there is a huge danger that we are not defining the powers and responsibilities of local government on the one hand and of mayors and strategic authorities on the other, which will become a source of conflict. I just hope that here in Committee the Government will be sufficiently open to discussions on this matter, which will assist the delivery of a more powerful form of devolution than is currently within the Bill.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I wish to speak in favour of the purpose clause tabled by my noble friends Lady Scott of Bybrook and Lord Jamieson.

From the outset, the Title of the Bill is quite wrong and misleading. The Bill is not about devolution; it is about centralisation. The number of directed powers it awards to the Secretary of State to instruct combined authorities is alarming. The purpose clause proposed by my noble friends reinvigorates the Bill to achieve what matters most to local government now and the issues most likely to be of concern in the future—namely, sustainable council finances and keeping the “local” in local government through locally led decision-making.

Putting aside the tax-raising powers for mayors enshrined in the Bill, it does nothing to address the serious concerns the sector has about putting the finances of our councils back on to a sustainable footing, or on the ever-increasing DSG deficits or the seismic pressures placed on upper-tier authorities in the delivery of their SEND responsibilities. However, what we had before Christmas was the Government’s unfair funding announcement, which left many councils worse off than before following the withdrawal of the remoteness adjustments metric, which in turn has left councils such as Buckinghamshire £44 million worse off.

We then come to the part of this purpose clause on local decision-making, which my noble friends are correct to underpin. At the start of my contribution, I referenced centralisation. It is astonishing that a devolution-facing Bill will essentially award mass powers to the Secretary of State to impose LGR and strategic authorities without any say from local authorities and groups in those areas. If devolution is to work, it needs to be locally led by local leaders and the community, not forced on communities by Whitehall. Over recent years, we have seen that local government reorganisation and the creation of combined authorities can be agreed by a consensus in local communities and without the imposition of Whitehall. Just look at Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire—two examples of unitarisation which have gone to plan. I welcome the addition in this purpose clause of ensuring that reorganisation and the creation of strategic authorities are locally led.

The Government’s approach to this has already been fairly shambolic. County council leaders who had elections postponed were of the clear understanding that mayoral elections, shadow unitary authority elections or a combination of both would happen in May 2026. Instead, we have had further delay as a result of Whitehall not working closely with local leaders. This is why the point in the proposed new clause about locally enshrined decision-making is worthy. I hope the Government will accept this amendment so that the purpose clause sits in the Bill.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I have no interests to declare, other than that I want legislation to be as good as it can be. I very much welcome my noble friend’s amendment because it provides the foundation for my Amendment 251 that would provide for post-legislative scrutiny, which we will come to much later. Too often, Ministers see legislative success in terms of getting a measure on to the statute book. The real measure of success is when the Act delivers what Parliament intended to deliver. To check whether it has done that, post-legislative scrutiny is necessary some years after it has passed.

To assess whether the Act has achieved what it intended, one needs to know clearly what its purpose is—in other words, the basis on which you are undertaking the measurement. This amendment has the great virtue that it stipulates the five purposes that the Bill is intended to deliver. That would provide the measure against which a body set up to engage in post-legislative scrutiny could examine whether it has actually delivered. That is the great value of this amendment and, for that reason, the Government should have the confidence to accept it, as it would show they believe that the Act will deliver what it is designed to do. If they will not accept the amendment, will they bring forward a purpose clause of their own to demonstrate what they believe are the key purposes against which success can be measured?