English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Baroness Royall of Blaisdon and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage
Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 310, which seeks to insert a duty to consider the needs of rural communities into the Bill. The duty would require

“strategic authorities and their mayors, when considering whether or how to exercise any of their functions, to have regard to the needs of rural communities”.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support. Like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, I lament the fact that the rural-proofing unit was taken away, and I hope it will be restored one day.

I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for meeting with me and for her letter of 17 March, which went to all noble Lords. The letter informed us that amendments would be tabled to increase the number of commissioners to up to 10 and would thus support the appointment of commissioners dedicated to cross-cutting issues such as rural matters.

Government Amendments 42, 51 and 60 will be debated in group 9 and naturally, I support them. However, there is still no mention of “rural” in the Bill, which runs the risk of not presenting a devolution-for-all approach. The distinct lack of reference to rural communities, along with many provisions drawing from the Greater London Authority Act, means that the Bill currently reads as urban-centric in its approach to devolution.

Rural areas have distinct needs, as has been so well pointed out this afternoon, and they present a unique opportunity as important economic drivers for this country, through farming, food production, local businesses and tourism. With the creation of new strategic authorities and the devolution of powers to strategic authority mayors, we need to consider carefully the application of “strategic” within a rural context.

Historically, strategic investment has typically focused on urban areas, ignoring the potential and opportunity for rural areas to contribute to the local and national economy, inspire forward investment from the private sector, and meet essential needs for food production, health and well-being, climate resilience and nature recovery. We have an opportunity here, as we move forward with this programme of devolution, with rural parts of the country now being covered at strategic level, to ensure that our rural areas are not forgotten and that our rural communities have fair representation and the strategic investment to support and drive rural growth.

Rural areas have very different characteristics across the country and benefit from tailored approaches to economic growth and development. This legislation provides the opportunity to empower areas to provide the bespoke solutions needed for their rural communities. That, in itself, is fundamental to the devolution agenda.

My amendment, which addresses the points raised by the Royal Town Planning Institute and a recent report commissioned by the Rural Housing Network, entitled English Devolution and Rural Affordable Housing, would embed rural representation in the Bill and offer safeguarding provisions. That would lead to better consideration of rural communities and their context, specific needs and opportunities through the devolution process and the implementation of the new strategic layer of local power.

With 85% of the country’s land being classified as rural and 17% of the population living in rural areas, let us reaffirm our recognition of the value of our rural communities and ensure that they have every opportunity to thrive in this new era of regional empowerment, growth and identity. I urge my noble friend the Minister to include this duty and, at the very least, to ensure that there is specific reference to the needs of rural areas in the Bill. It must be clear that the Bill relates to rural as well as urban areas, so that the needs of rural areas are properly considered at every stage.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate on this very important group, having attached my name to Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and Amendment 310, which was just very ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall.

All these amendments constitute a group; I chose these two because we are introducing rural affairs as an area of competence for strategic authorities, giving them a duty to “have regard”, which makes quite a nice package. Interestingly, in the last group the Government conceded the power of the argument for including culture as a key element of the Bill. I really cannot see why they have not done the same thing with rural affairs, having heard the very powerful arguments made in Committee. I live in hope that, having now heard the arguments on Report, the Government will see the sense of including rural affairs in the Bill.

We spoke extensively about this issue in Committee, and we have already heard three powerful arguments today for taking this direction, so I will just add a couple of points. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, put it very well when she talked about young people gathering at the bus stop in the early evening because they know that a bus will not come along and disturb them for 15 or 16 hours—or possibly six days, the way these things work. That really is a measure of deprivation. At the other end of the population age scale, of course, we have a fast-ageing population, many of whom live in rural areas. They may once have had enough money to have access to a car, but that does not mean they are going to be able to use one indefinitely. That is a crucial issue in relation to bus services in rural areas. If you have a metro mayor, it is going to be very hard to get attention paid to that kind of issue.

I want to major, as I did in Committee, on the issue of food growing. Many other things happen in rural areas—people live in rural areas for all sorts of reasons—but our rural areas should be regarded far more centrally as part of the way in which we feed our population. Speaking at the NFU conference in Birmingham recently, Professor Tim Lang, a well-known food expert, reflected that the UK is only 54% self-sufficient in food. Lest someone say, “It’s a crowded island”, the Netherlands is 80% self-sufficient in food. We need to treat our land, our local areas, as places that produce a lot of their own food. Professor Lang said that our model of agri-food capitalism has just relied on the idea that others can feed us, but we all know the state of the world, the state of geopolitics and the state of climate. That is not something we can continue to rely on.