English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 241B is in my name, and I strongly support Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

The devolution Bill creates these large, powerful strategic authorities whose decisions on planning, housing, transport and infrastructure will shape England’s carbon emissions, climate resilience and natural environment for decades to come. Once they are in place, these six new mayoral districts and combined authorities will be responsible for the strategic oversight of 75% of England’s landscape, so huge swathes of the landscape will be under these authorities. Despite this, as it currently stands, the Bill contains no clear mechanism to ensure that these authorities will contribute to the UK’s legally binding climate and nature targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. Both have clear, unambiguous delivery targets to which we have agreed—they are in our law.

These targets are spatially constrained and require both strategic oversight and the consideration of competing land uses. Currently, however, they sit under the Secretary of State only. Without even a mention of a duty to deliver on these targets in the devolution Bill, I believe that there is a high degree of risk that they will be undeployed, or at least deployed unevenly. This is a real risk; it is particularly important given the shifting political priorities and how they can deprioritise action. As the system stands, the Secretary of State-level duty for our Climate Change Act and Environment Act targets does not automatically filter down, be it to a local government, a regulator or a non-departmental public body.

I am sure that the Minister will say that local authorities have a “duty to conserve biodiversity”, under Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, which was strengthened by the Environment Act 2021 and requires an authority to consider what it can do to conserve and enhance biodiversity. This is of course correct, but it is rooted in guidance—that lovely word to which I keep coming back—that can, and I am sure will, be changed. That then leaves it up to the individual authority as to whether it will or will not further the objective. What happens if we have an elected mayor who does not agree with net-zero policies or is someone who sees nature as a luxury that we can no longer afford? What will be their guidance on these strategic decisions to their commissioners, if we even have commissioners appointed for climate and nature, since this is far from guaranteed under the Bill as it is currently constructed?

My Amendment 241B would require strategic, mayoral or local authorities to take all reasonable steps to contribute to our net-zero target and the targets under Sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act, and to adapt to the risks set out in the climate change risk assessment report. It is hardly as if we are starting from a good place. We have only to look at the papers or the reports coming through from the Office for Environmental Protection and the Climate Change Committee, which are loudly ringing the alarm bells to say that we are nowhere near delivering on our targets in the Climate Change Act or the Environment Act. Without any firm duty on mayoral authorities to deliver, I fear that we will move further and further away from these targets.

I put it to the Committee and the Minister that we cannot rely on whatever provisions we currently have or the fact that we have national targets. We need to embed the targets in everyday decision-making—in local decision-making on the ground by council officials and elected members, as much as anyone. We can say that councils already do this. That may be the case, but it is too little and not quickly enough. If we look at the climate scorecards produced by Climate Emergency UK, which has assessed councils’ progress on a variety of climate and nature issues, they demonstrate this clearly: we are not moving quickly enough and we are seeing the consequences of this day in, day out. Species numbers are going down, landscapes are being lost and we are seeing flooding as a result of a lack of joined-up thinking on nature-based solutions.

At worst, without a duty such as this one, we could have authorities pulling in a completely direction from what Ministers or the Secretary of State expect or desire. I would hope that, from a legal standpoint, Ministers would want to be seen to be doing everything within their power to meet those targets by empowering the new strategic authorities with a responsibility to contribute. Just because an individual council decides that it does not want to progress further towards these targets—or, worse, that it actively wants to make them harder, if particular mayors come in with that role—it does not mean that we should just roll over and accept it. These issues absolutely transcend borders and affect us all. They are not within these mayoral authorities; they are much broader than that.

We have been happy to give local authorities other statutory duties; social care is the obvious big one but there are many others. It is welcome to see the new health improvement and health inequalities duties coming through. My amendment asks that the same statutory duties be given on the environment and climate change. On this critical matter, we must align local government with national government. This point was made succinctly in Dan Corry’s review for the Government last year, which covered Defra’s regulatory landscape for driving both economic growth and nature recovery. In it he said:

“A stronger and clearer link is needed between targets and plans set nationally and the activity being carried out to protect the environment and support development locally”.


That is exactly what this amendment tries to do.

With the biggest shake-up of local government in generations, if we fail to give a duty to do what we can to address two of our most critical threats—nature loss and climate change—what are we doing, really? I see this as very important.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 241B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have added my name. I also support Amendment 192 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, which was moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. In fact, I think she probably has the slightly better amendment, if truth be told; I may go into that later.

I am sure that the Minister is detecting a pattern here. A number of public authorities have already had similar duties for the achievement of various legally binding environmental targets laid on them either in legislation or by agreement with Ministers in subsequent guidance. Recent examples include Great British Energy, Skills England, the Crown Estate, Ofwat and the GLA. This is particularly important for these strategic authorities because they have key functions in housing, strategic spatial planning, economic development, regeneration and health improvement. If you think about it, the achievement of these environmental targets is part of the fundamental underpinning of the delivery of growth, economic development, regeneration and health improvement. Conversely, the achievement of the national environmental targets will be possible only if there is effective local and regional action. Without explicit provisions in the Bill, there will be a structural gap between national environmental commitments and these important, new, local decision-making bodies.

Having this duty would ensure clarity, consistency and legal certainty, which would certainly benefit not only authorities themselves but business and investors. So it is not surprising that the proposed duty is supported by businesses across relevant sectors, the LGA, the District Councils’ Network, London Councils, ADEPT, the majority of UK100’s members and a number of council leaders and Cabinet members. There is widespread support for this duty being applied.

Another point is that, as has been said already, the national environment and climate change targets are pretty stretching; the Office for Environmental Protection and the Climate Change Committee are already expressing concern that the Government are not on track to meet them. If the Government are to have any chance at all of achieving the statutory targets, all relevant public bodies need to do their bit—especially strategic authorities. Simply listing the areas of competence for the strategic authorities is not enough. These bodies need a duty; it has to be something that they must do, not a competence that they may carry out in a variety of ways.

Amendment 192, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is particularly elegant. It would apply a sort of triple lock, if I can use that expression. Apart from the duty, it would introduce a requirement that the authority must not only exercise the duty in carrying out its functions but think about how all the decisions it makes fit in with the duty; that is the genuine spirit of the integration of environment and climate change requirements into all decision-making, which has long been talked about as a principle but, alas, is not really happening as yet.

The most cunning thing about Amendment 192 is that it goes on to say that each authority will have guidance from the Secretary of State, and that the guidance will be “clear” and “measurable”. That is a pretty neat combination; it is better than our amendment, I think, and therefore I would endorse it beyond ours.

In both amendments, the duties would apply not only to strategic authorities but to mayors and local authorities. It is important that all these local decision-making bodies are singing from the same hymn sheet. Since the GLA was set up with climate and biodiversity duties from the very beginning, I ask the Minister whether the Government will agree to do the same for strategic authorities, mayors and the reformed local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses and the noble Lord for their comments on this group. It places me in a bit of a dilemma, because I have a lot of sympathy for the objects of these amendments: we agree that the environment is important, and we like community wealth building and so forth.

I refer back to my comments on the previous group. I have a big issue with placing duties on a local or strategic authority without the means and resources for them. This is very much a half-amendment, because it would place the duty without the means to deliver it. I think the noble Baroness commented that the LGA backs this, but the LGA actually said

“local authorities need statutory duties and powers, sufficient funding, and robust support to lead on climate action”,

which is a lot more than just having the duty. So, to progress on these, we need to recognise that you cannot just place a duty. I say that quite seriously because, when I was running my council, around 85% of our expenditure was on statutory duties and we had very little room for manoeuvre on any choice-based things. Given the pressures on adult social care, SEND and so forth, I am sure that if I redid the numbers now, that figure would be way over 90%, and we end up compromising on statutory duties. So I am very wary of placing lots of statutory duties without providing the means to deliver them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about support. I am 100% behind providing support to do something, but that is not quite the same as saying, “You must have a duty as well as support”.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Quite a lot of local authorities are doing well on this. Many of the things that they are delivering do not require additional funding but are about making the right decisions on their day-to-day routine responsibilities for planning, regeneration, growth, urban development and all sorts of things. They are making these decisions in a way that is good for the environment, climate change, biodiversity, air quality, people and sustainability, rather than making them without thinking about these things. So a duty is not a huge imposition; it is about a mindset, not a set of expenses.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I beg to disagree. Once you place a duty on an authority, all its decision-making needs to have that in mind. The authority can be challenged for not doing X, and X could involve significant expenditure, or it could be something that it has very little power over. To take a local example, my local council has a statutory duty on pollution in certain areas, such as Ampthill, which is just down the road from me, but it does not have the ability to stop cars going into Ampthill, and they are the cause of the pollution. So you end up with these dilemmas, and that needs thinking through. That is why I am wary. I do not disagree with the thrust of what the noble Baroness is trying to do, but we need to do it in a practical and deliverable way. All good councils will try to seek to do the right thing wherever they can.

As certain Peers have alluded to, in the future there may be somebody who might not be as keen as some of us are on the environment, well-being or anything else. That brings me to my second point: I am a huge believer in democracy. We have a very serious question to ask ourselves: do we believe in democracy? That means local decision-making and devolution, and, at times, it may mean that people do not do what we would choose to be our priority. That is a dilemma that we face and have to accept. If you believe in democracy and devolution, you cannot always seek to bind the hand of people to do what you want, because that is not devolution and democracy but centralisation and state control, which may be the right thing—