English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in the passage of the Bill. I know we do not have to address it, but I was intending to speak at Second Reading and I had to pull out for personal reasons just beforehand. This is an issue that genuinely interests me. Every time I sit in these meetings or take part in these discussions, it feels like being at Davos or the United Nations, with so many titles and vice-presidents, and I feel a bit left behind not having any myself. I am a bit like my noble friend Lord Norton in that I am merely a bystander in this, someone who is interested. I am a political geek and a taxpayer; those are my interests. Like others, I congratulate the Minister on many belated happy returns for yesterday. I can think of no better way of spending your birthday than with some of your closest friends late at night in the House of Lords.

My Amendment 12 is embryonic. We are in Committee and I am happy to have a discussion; perhaps if the Minister is still feeling jovial from her party, we can continue that joviality and have another discussion. This amendment is simple, yet it would introduce an essential safeguard into the Bill. Given that the Secretary of State ultimately has the power in the Bill to create these new strategic authorities—it lies in his or her hands—this amendment would ensure that they are satisfied that each new authority is capable of doing what is expected of it before it is created. Those capability tests should be grounded and focused, though not exclusively, on four areas: first, governance arrangements, to ensure that it is transparent, able to make decisions and face scrutiny; secondly, financial sustainability, so that it is on a sound financial footing and able to carry out the new powers and deliver; thirdly, administrative capacity, and whether it has the right people, expertise and systems in place; and, finally, accountability mechanisms, to ensure that it has credible systems for scrutiny and democratic oversight. To be clear, I envisage the same sorts of tests applying to both the new mayoral authorities and the new unitary authorities.

Ultimately, I say with respect to the Minister, this is not game playing, a stunt or an effort to stop the Bill. It is grounded in my concern that there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that, before a new authority can exist, it must be ready and able to do what it says it will. The Bill talks about their functions, voting systems and the powers they will have, yet a Bill about empowering the people has nothing about whether the system being invented will be able to, any good at or even capable of delivering better services for the people—not to mention better value for money, though that is in a future group. I am sure the Minister is looking forward to me speaking on it in due course.

I am sure that some will say that this amendment is unnecessary. Those people who object will probably fall into three rough camps. The first will say, “We don’t need to worry. It’s going to be fine. We should take what we’re given; it is what it is and we can’t go around dictating from on high what it should be like on the ground”. But that is exactly what the Bill is doing: we are dictating what the new system should be like. We are saying that there should be a plan in place and how it will work. I think we should make sure that these authorities are capable of standing on their own two feet. Given that one of the arguments for reforming local government is that it is already quite messy and difficult to navigate, we surely do not want to create a system that is even more confusing. Before we hit the “Go” button, there needs to be effort on the ground and in Whitehall to ensure that the new structures in place are robust and coherent. That is not bureaucracy, it is just accountability. One of the many fears I have about the Bill, I am afraid to say, is that if transparency and accountability are not built in from the outset, that will make it harder to understand and hold people’s feet to the fire. These tests do that.

Another argument against this amendment will be that, ultimately, it should be for the people to decide whether the authority is doing a good job or not. I am a genuinely firm believer in democracy: it is precious and unique. Of course the electorate will ultimately be the judge, but that will come only after the changes have happened, years down the track. With so many elections already being delayed because of reorganisation, there will be no checks put in place before changes take place.

Finally, I am sure that some will say that it is not possible to test something that does not exist. However, we can do so, not just in the prep work and the planning of what is intended, but in seeing whether existing local authorities are good at what they are doing already: whether they are late or slow in delivery, whether services are being cut or expanded, their finances, workforce capacity, roadworks, housebuilding—you name it. Before noble Lords feel compelled—this has happened to me before—to defend the honour of local authorities, I pre-empt this by assuring them that I am certainly not blanketly saying that all local councils are not up to it. Equally, I am not saying that Whitehall is perfect—far, far from it. I am merely saying that, before we proceed to create and approve these new authorities, there should be a system to ensure that they will work, including how they will build on, incorporate or tackle issues in the pre-existing authorities.

There is one final area I will touch on, which we have talked about in passing already. I do not want to open this up into a broad debate about local government finance, but it does have read-through here. We all know the challenges and I do not want to dwell on it, but, across the land, capabilities are not uniform. I read some research that showed that councils in the north are twice as likely to be at risk as those in the south. Then there are the associated costs of reorganisation, never mind whether the new entity is going to be any good. Some organisations are already asking whether the current wave of reorganisation will save money or in some circumstances cost even more. Yet this Bill has no requirement to test capability, never mind finances, before those new bodies are created.

This Bill should not be seen as an exercise to create layer upon layer without thinking it through first. This is a serious issue. It is about spending serious sums of money on serious things affecting the lives of many, so it is important that we get it right. Devolution is meant to be about making the system work better, and that is what is driving this amendment. I recognise that many councils will do an enormous amount of work in getting these changes right, but rather than hoping that this version of devolution works and that things do not go wrong for the taxpayer, let us put in a safeguard. Rather than rely on good intentions, let us make the system work from the outset. Trust is not enough. These simple tests, or something like them, would make sure that from the get-go the new system is better, stronger and more capable of delivering improved services for the people. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the constructive intention behind Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne. The desire to ensure that strategic authorities are properly equipped, financially sustainable and governed with integrity is entirely understandable. We have all seen, all too often, the consequences when structures are created without sufficient capacity or clarity of purpose. We do not want that to happen here, and this amendment seeks to guard against it. However—the noble Lord’s heart sinks—while I appreciate that instinct, we cannot support the amendment as drafted.

The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and I have different perspectives as we come from different backgrounds—him from No. 10 and me from more than 25 years in local government, 16 of them as a directly elected mayor. To us, the amendment seems to reintroduce a centralising veto at precisely the moment when the Bill is meant to be shifting power away from Whitehall. The Secretary of State would become the arbiter of whether an area is “capable”—a term left undefined, and thus open to subjective interpretation. What one Minister might judge as prudent due diligence, another might use as a brake on local ambition. That uncertainty does not sit comfortably with our belief in consent-based, locally driven governance.

We also have to be alive to the practical effects on the ground in the places about which we have spent many long hard hours talking—those most in need of levelling up. They are often those with a much weaker starting capacity. They could find themselves locked out by criteria that they are not yet able to meet, precisely because they have not been granted the devolution tools that would help them grow that capacity. We risk creating a circular trap: you cannot have the powers until you have the capacity, but you cannot build the capacity until you have the powers.

However, we recognise that strong oversight will be necessary with changes of this magnitude. Several amendments in the names of other noble Lords show a strong appetite across the Committee for rigorous oversight, but it must be oversight that does not stray into overprescription or paternalism. I understand why there may be concerns; the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, expressed them well. My spectacles are not rose-coloured—I acknowledge that local government has not always got it right and that there have been failures, some of them cataclysmic—but, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I think that we could also say this about past Governments, Prime Ministers and initiatives.

That said, the amendment springs from a very real concern: the public must have confidence that new strategic authorities will function effectively from day one. On that point, I entirely agree with the noble Lord. There is space—and, indeed, a need—for transparency in how readiness is assessed in order to ensure that governance arrangements are fit for purpose and to avoid the creation of authorities that are destined to struggle. However, in our view, the answer is not to place broad, undefined tests solely in the gift of the Secretary of State. Instead, we might look to more balanced alternatives, such as clear statutory criteria developed with the sector rather than imposed on it. I am sure that the Local Government Association will be keen to work collaboratively on this; we could even look at greater parliamentary scrutiny rather than ministerial discretion. There is room for a serious discussion on this matter—I hope that we can hold that with the Minister.

The amendment addresses a genuine risk but, in our view, the mechanism it proposes risks undermining the very local autonomy that the Bill is meant to strengthen. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good by setting hurdles that, in some areas, those who would benefit the most will struggle to clear. I genuinely look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Gascoigne goes to the heart of what effective devolution requires: capability. As he set out so clearly, it is simply not enough to create new strategic or unitary authorities in the abstract and hope that they will succeed. We can and should look at the performance of existing local authorities—including their financial resilience, their workforce capacity, the pressures they face and the services they currently deliver—to understand whether the foundations are in place for a new body to take on, in some cases, even greater responsibilities.

My noble friend was right to say that this is not about criticising local government wholesale—many councils are doing extraordinary work under immense strain—but capability is not uniform across the country. The financial challenges facing local authorities are well known. Reorganisation carries costs, and there is a real debate around whether it always delivers the efficiencies or improvements that are promised.

Against that background, it is entirely reasonable that we should expect a clear and transparent test of readiness before new strategic authorities are created. That is precisely what Amendment 12 would provide. It proposes that, before any strategic authority or unitary authority is established, the Secretary of State “must be satisfied” that it has the governance, financial resilience, administrative capacity and accountability mechanisms that are necessary to exercise the functions conferred upon it. These are not burdensome hurdles; they are basic safeguards to ensure that a new authority is set up to succeed, not set up to struggle.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I rather suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and I are fishing in a similar pool here. My Amendment 196B is all about local accounting officers and is designed to help to improve the level of scrutiny and accountability for each mayoral strategic authority.

The system of departmental accounting officers and their requirement to appear before the Public Accounts Committee is often used to justify value for money—an issue that could prevent proper devolution—but this is because accounting officers are technically meant to be able to justify all spending even if, in reality, the decision to devolve to a different authority has been made. With the development of the new combined mayoral authority model, we need to learn from those models being used by the devolved Administrations where accounting officers’ responsibilities have been given to the relevant bodies.

This amendment would look to devolve AO responsibilities to new local accounting officers, who would be local and accountable to the relevant authority’s scrutiny bodies for any spending by an established mayoral strategic authority. This is loosely based on the relevant legislation for Welsh accounting officers. The relevant body here might include a local public accounts committee; the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, made the case for that.

This amendment is designed to be helpful. The Minister may say that it is unnecessary but, in my view, it would be a genuine move towards devolved accountability—in terms of models of funding and allowing places to innovate while retaining an appropriate level of scrutiny. With the development of devolved mayoral combined authorities, we need an extra layer of accountability that looks at the way in which public money is spent. For too long, local government has been burdened with more responsibility, less funding and fewer opportunities to innovate and develop; at the same time, to my way of looking at things, local authority accounting practices have not really moved on from where they were in the 1990s. This amendment is an attempt to be helpful, very much in the spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, spoke to his amendment.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will make a brief comment on Amendment 196B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, which is worth discussing further, especially given how it fits with Amendment 191 from the Lord, Lord Bichard, which I strongly support.

The question I asked myself, perhaps trying to anticipate the Minister’s response, was: would it duplicate existing audit and scrutiny arrangements? I came to the conclusion that I do not believe that it would. Audit answers the questions of whether the accounts were properly kept and whether the acceptable processes and procedures were legally carried out. But this amendment addresses a different and much more important question: is public money being spent effectively across the whole system? Audit is retrospective, siloed and looks at individual organisations after the event. Local public accounts committees, as proposed in this amendment, would look across organisations in real time. They would look at how councils, mayors and public service partners are actually working together—they are not the same things.

The Bill deliberately—and correctly, in my view—will push power and spending into shared collaborative arrangements, but our scrutiny remains fragmented, organisation by organisation. This mismatch is the gap that Amendment 191 would fill. Without it, no one body would be clearly responsible for asking very basic questions such as: is it the case that joint working is working? Is it delivering value? Are overlapping budgets aligned with agreed priorities? Are partnerships working as intended? Audit does not do that—and scrutiny committees, as currently structured, will struggle to do that.

In contrast, this amendment would enable that. It is not more bureaucracy; it is better oversight. It is not another unnecessary new layer. The amendment is enabling, not prescriptive, and it allows Ministers to integrate these committees within existing audit and scrutiny frameworks. It provides coherence and not clutter, and in fact good system-level scrutiny actually reduces duplication by exposing it.

My main reason for supporting the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, is that devolution without strong, visible accountability risks undermining public confidence. If power and money are exercised at a mayoral strategic level, scrutiny must exist at that same level. Otherwise, we are asking people to trust structures they cannot see being properly examined.

In conclusion, Amendment 191 strengthens the Bill by aligning power, spending and accountability. It complements audit and scrutiny; it does not replace them. In fact, the financial cost of not having effective system-wide scrutiny could lead to duplicated programmes, misaligned budgets and failed collaboration, which will almost certainly cost a lot more than the modest investment required to make this work well. For these reasons, I hope that the Minister will give both ideas serious consideration.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support the principle of Amendment 191 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I observe that, for the first time, we are bringing local, parish and community councils substantially into scope, for I believe that the definitions provided in Amendment 191 will do so. What has not been fully understood is that one of the second-order effects of the Bill is that it will create a significant number of larger community councils as a result.

As a result of local government reorganisation, large numbers of cities, such as Oxford, Exeter and Norwich, and former county boroughs, such as Ipswich, Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, which have been billing authorities hitherto, will now fall into the lower tier of local authorities. Those authorities have no constraint or cap on the amount of council tax that they can raise. In Salisbury, they have jacked up council tax by 44% in the past four years—they have let rip, and it is not good enough. There has been no scrutiny, there has been cost shunting, and the council tax payers have paid more.

I have laid amendments, which we will discuss later, that will make provision for those larger smaller authorities to fall under the constraints that all the other authorities will have. I do not seek to fetter the smallest parish council, but if you have a population that hitherto has been part of a billing authority, it is right that they should be constrained going forward, as they have in the past.

I am not sure that I entirely welcome all the provisions in Amendment 191 on local public accounts committees, but the amendment shines a light for the first time on where we will go with these smaller community parish councils. There is merit in the thrust of what has been proposed here. I wait to hear how the Minister reacts to what constraints will be placed on this new class of large parish or town council as a result of the changes proposed in the Bill.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, these have been an interesting set of interventions. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that it is important that party-political contributions are kept to an absolute minimum when we are debating a Bill.

There is a basic issue in this group. The public have a right to expect that elected individuals do not end up with two jobs: being a mayor and being an MP. In some circumstances, it might be possible for the electorate to knowingly vote for that. However, that would be most unlikely to be the case. There is a question as to where, geographically speaking, the mayor might be the MP; it might be within the mayoral authority and it might be elsewhere. Either way, there is a clear conflict of interest, because Parliament judges the allocation of funding, for example, to the mayoral authority.

I do not think that you can have one person doing two jobs. Amendments 76 and others in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, would allow that, for whatever period, there could be an overlap of both mayor and MP retaining both offices. To be absolutely clear, we think that that is wrong. I say to the Minister that these matters are important and should not be for political parties to judge alone. It should instead be clearly understood that, when people have been elected to one of the posts, they should carry out the responsibilities that they have been given by the general public.

On Tuesday, I said that if, in a mayoral authority, there had been a large number of commissioners appointed by the mayor but then that mayor decided to become a Member of Parliament, he or she would leave the mayoralty and, as the Bill is currently drafted, all the commissioners would lose their jobs as a consequence. When politicians are elected to a job, they must see the job through and do it to the best of their ability, given that the public have expressed confidence in them doing so. They have an obligation to fulfil their contract with the electorate.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will add something to the wise words of my colleagues. To us, this is about the concentration of power in the hands of one person. The powers being given to new mayors are considerable and I understand them; to some extent, I agree with them—as a directly elected mayor for 16 years, of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? I see the two roles as completely different: a role in national government is completely different from a local, regional role. There could be massive conflicts of interest, but the key thing is that this concentrates too much power. Conservative colleagues have talked about that, but then they are quite happy to let somebody do both jobs. To our mind, that is just not rational.

The key thing is that this creates more political opportunities for more people. It also encourages mayors. The key thing about a mayoralty is that the mayors can develop their own local, independent mandate, rather than being overshadowed by national party politics. They are very different and distinct and they could be in direct conflict with each other. That is why we absolutely believe in that separation of powers.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Thornhill]

91: Clause 18, page 22, line 7, at end insert—
“(3A) After subsection (13) insert—“(14) When making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to identify and minimise any conflict, overlap, or duplication between the functions of the Mayor and the functions of other authorities or public bodies.”” Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State, when making regulations under section 30 of LURA 2023, to consider and minimise any potential conflict, overlap, or duplication between the Mayor’s functions and those of other authorities or public bodies.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 91, I will speak also to Amendment 92. These amendments are the only ones in the group and concern mayoral powers and functions. Interestingly, I note that some of the wise and pertinent comments made by the noble Lords who are now not in their place regarding issues with London boroughs and the mayor, born of hard-lived experience, will apply in the new structures. So there are real lessons to be learned. I am hoping that my amendments might help avoid some of the issues raised in group 1.

The Bill, as we know, gives mayors significant new powers, and none of us underestimates what that means; hence our collective concerns. The Government clearly support mayoral ambitions as a means of fulfilling their political objectives, many of which we might all agree with. But power alone does not equal good devolution or good governance. Both depend on clarity about who does what, who decides what and who is ultimately accountable. The last thing mayors need are fuzzy boundaries if they are to do the job effectively, as I know from bitter experience. These amendments simply require the Secretary of State—let us not forget that a lot is going to be left to the Secretary of State—when making regulations or orders about mayoral functions to

“have regard to the need to identify and minimise any conflict, overlap, or duplication between the functions of the Mayor and the functions of other authorities or public bodies”.

Let us be clear, the new mayors will be involved in all of this and will, quite rightly, have their fingers in every pie. If they are to make a significant difference to the regions that need them most, and to the country as a whole, they will need to be doing that. But these powers, as we know, come with a new complex structure and therefore these amendments are necessary. They simply make sure that at some point when new powers are designed, someone asks a basic question: how is this going to work alongside what already exists?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for her amendments on the role of mayors. Before I respond to these amendments, I want to clarify the rationale for Clause 18. The clause will extend an existing power of the Secretary of State to provide that certain general functions may be exercised solely by a mayor. The power currently exists in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said, in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. This clause will ensure that it can also apply to general functions conferred under any other regulation or Act of Parliament. The extension of this existing power reflects the broader range of routes through which functions may be conferred on strategic authorities and their mayors, once the current Bill becomes law.

Amendments 91 and 92 seek to amend this clause and prevent the potential for conflict, overlap or duplication between a mayor’s functions and those of other authorities or public bodies. As your Lordships will know, mayors of combined authorities or combined county authorities are not corporate entities in themselves. For that reason, all functions must be conferred on the underlying authority rather than directly on to the mayor. However, some functions may be designated as mayoral functions, as they are to be exercised only by the mayor. Where functions have been made mayoral, they typically relate to the management of day-to-day activities.

Key strategic decisions still require approval by the strategic authority constituent members. To give an example, all members will vote on which roads form part of a key route network, after which the mayor will be responsible for managing it. This will allow for swifter decision-making and more effective governance on day-to-day matters.

It will be important that all tiers of local government work together to benefit their communities. This is why principal local authorities will be embedded within the decision-making structures of strategic authorities as full constituent members. This will ensure that they play a central role in drawing up specific strategies and plans, such as local growth plans. Furthermore, before any new function is conferred on a strategic authority by regulations, the Secretary of State will be required to consult the constituent councils of any affected strategic authorities and any other person who exercises the function concerned. This will ensure that the views of those affected are properly considered.

I hope that, with these explanations, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I absolutely accept that the new structures are complex and complicated. It is very easy to be seduced by the noble Baroness’s fluent explanation. My amendment was coming more from the perspective of practicalities, which was also borne out by the comments earlier that, in reality, there is overlap, with weakened scrutiny, unclear accountability and eroded public trust. I would like to feel that a lot of work was being done into what those are. We know it is probably happening, but it is all going to come later through SIs and secondary legislation. I wanted to make it absolutely clear, up front, that those overlaps and duplications will be considered, because they will be a source of conflict and friction going forward. It was interesting that the leaders of boroughs are saying that that is happening even 20 or however many years later. But, for the moment, I will withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 91 withdrawn.