English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I chair a seafront development and regeneration board on behalf of Brighton & Hove City Council.

I am delighted to speak in this debate for a number of reasons. First, I enjoy a discussion about local government almost as much as I enjoy watching Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club. Secondly, it is a genuine pleasure to speak on a Bill being fronted by my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, whom I think we all admire and respect—we enjoy her passion for all things local government. Thirdly, I am a big supporter in principle of both devolution and unitary councils. Indeed, I have been arguing for these probably for the better part of the last 40 years. Like others in your Lordships’ House, I have served on district and unitary councils and was privileged to be successful in arguing for Brighton and Hove to become a unitary back in the 1990s. My experience from back then informs my comments and words of advice to the Government today.

Brighton and Hove was carved out of East Sussex, with the Brighton element, previously an old county borough, and the Hove district. My task as leader was to merge two organisations with different cultures and approaches, and to blend in county services of highways, education, social services, transport, et cetera—no easy task. We got most of the reorganisation right largely because we were well led in our officer core, because we settled the big decisions early and because we established a cabinet-style authority with clear lines of accountability. We also developed a vision for the city and a radical programme of change and service modernisation, behind the mantra of “M&S quality and First Direct banking service enthusiasm”.

Getting it right meant setting effective working structures early in the process. This gave us two and a half years before the authority was set up—the first in a sort of pre-shadow year and the second as a shadow authority. So on 1 April 1997 we hit the ground running. The lesson I took from this was to give authorities time. Do not try to do everything at once. To make unitaries successful, roll them out; do not just impose them. If I were to be critical of the Government’s approach to the combined mayoral authorities and unitaries, it would be on this point.

For understandable reasons, the Government want to crack on with change—they should not. They should pause and think about it, and do as their predecessors did. They should do it gradually and sensitively. Why? So much of a Government’s programme relies on getting councils to deliver, whether it is social care, new housing, stronger environmental programmes, the growth mission, nursery schools, getting people into work, retraining or meeting the challenges of the digital age. We cannot expect councils to do that and more while they are being set up from scratch. Councils that are unfamiliar with each other, having different systems and offering different organisational structures, will need time. We need to make sure that they are well resourced to do it, and we should not expect savings. In my experience, local government reviews rarely ever achieve a net saving.

For me, the Government made a wise decision last week in delaying the creation of the combined mayoral authorities for Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, Hampshire, and Sussex. The reason why the mayoral model has worked in the mets in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and so on is that they were built on a sound unitary council base. The councils need a strategic body for the bigger issues to be resolved. Sadly, that went in the 1980s and had to be reinvented in the last decade or so, and in London back in 1999. Additionally, the issues in Manchester, Merseyside and so on are very different from those in the south and East Anglia. Will the same structure work for Sussex and Hampshire as for South Yorkshire or Greater Manchester? A one-size-fits-all approach may not be best. The Government should use the time that has been provided to pause and think through some of the issues and some of the structures.

Finally, the Bill is strong on empowerment, which I approve of—I think we probably all do. The UK is far too centralised, with some of the biggest regional disparities and inequalities in Europe. We need to do more to help communities, so we should use and develop parish and town councils, let strong neighbourhoods emerge and ensure that they have the resource to run things close to people and places. On place-making, which I know a bit about, we should not create local government structures that people cannot identify with. We should not make the unitaries so big and disparate, with big divides between rural and urban. Place-making will be harder because it will get lost, which I think would be a great shame. The Bill provides us with an opportunity. If we want bottom-up governance with citizens in control, let us use neighbourhood funding as a way of empowering people in their communities.

To finish, I applaud the Government’s commitment, but they should not rush this, otherwise the objectives will get lost amid structures that are dysfunctional. They should not expect big savings, but should place an emphasis on creating renewed local government that is about responsive services based on quality and excellence. That is what the public want; they do not want more cuts and austerity. They want the improvement of the public realm and the higher quality of local service. If this reorganisation and the development of strategic combined mayoral authorities do one thing, they should focus on delivering that.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I said Bristol.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to speak to the amendment from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I became leader of Brighton council in 1987. One of the first things that we did was triple our spending on the Brighton Festival. At the time it seemed like a fairly minor thing, but it triggered a lot of inward investment through leverage. It demonstrated to me the importance and the value of public sector investment in the arts. Since then, the Brighton Festival has grown; it is now one of the largest arts festivals in the country. But you have to make that important statement to attract extra funding and inward investment.

I currently chair a seafront regeneration board for Brighton and Hove City Council. One of the things I am quite determined to do is to bring a new major art gallery to our city, because it is one of the missing elements. Those things have a long-term strategic benefit and that is why I think adding this as an area of competence to strategic authorities is very important.

After all, it is one of the Government’s missions. We often talk about the £128 billion value to the UK economy of the arts. If we can embed that statutorily, we can grow and develop our reputation. We are one of the arts growth leaders in the world economy. It would greatly help our growth mission and our economic and industrial mission if we were to place this as an important strategic responsibility.

Without that, as others have said, it is not there—it is voluntary and it is very much up to the localities to determine, as they rightly should, what their priorities are. But it is an encouragement, and that long-term commitment and encouragement will make a very significant difference to the development of arts and cultural services across the UK.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to add a small voice to the chorus of support for these amendments. I do so from the perspective of my role as the owner of a cultural institution in Devon and my work on the Exeter place partnership, which has been particularly successful in encouraging arts and heritage activities within the city over recent years, such as Radio 1’s Big Weekend, the Rugby World Cup and the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It has been a tremendous success for the city.

I do not want to repeat what has been so excellently stated by many noble Lords. It does not need repeating. But there is one area to consider that maybe has not been emphasised: the importance for the strategic authorities created under this Bill of having competency over the arts and creative industries within their region. If they do not have the competency over these areas within their region, obviously someone else is going to, and that will be a central authority. That is going to homogenise and fail to develop the cultural identity of the strategic authority region. If we can bestow that core competency on the strategic authority, we will see the identity of that strategic authority grow and improve. It will better sustain the health and vibrancy of the strategic authority itself—not just the region but the strategic authority—and we should think of that.

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady McIntosh, to all of which I have added my name.

First, I must declare my interest in that I still have a family farming interest in Somerset, although I am now retired and live in Cornwall. I must also declare an interest—it is more of a perspective, really—as having been the Prime Minister’s rural advocate under a previous Labour Government. I was charged with representing rural interests in the Blair Government and often reported directly to the Prime Minister himself, especially during the foot and mouth disease outbreak at that time, which caused major problems—both social and economic—for rural areas. At that time, I was also charged with producing an annual rural-proofing report for the Government. Believe me, it was badly needed—and still is, in my view. The Social Mobility Commission recently reported that inter- generational poverty in rural England is now as bad, if not worse, than in our most deprived urban slums.

I might add, just to prove my Cross-Bench credentials, that I was also asked to produce a one-off rural-proofing report for the Conservative Government some 10 years ago. I should say that I had more difficulty with the latter role than the former. No sooner had I produced my 2015 report outlining the important job that the rural affairs section of Defra had to play in the agenda than the department, under Liz Truss—she of sound judgmental fame—virtually closed down the rural affairs section, so the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ceased to be Defra and became just Def.

I am glad to say that those times are now over and the voice of the countryside is once again being heard. Defra still seems to be a slightly shy promoter of the rural voice in MHCLG, the Department for Transport, the Department of Health, the Department for Education and, above all, the Treasury. It needs to be saying again and again, “Hey, what about our agenda? What about those who live in the countryside?” In the same way, such a voice is needed, or is going to be needed, in the new strategic authorities. Mainstreaming rural issues into policy-making and decision-taking is fundamental to enabling all strata of rural society to engage fully with modern life; and to ensuring that rural businesses, which are the lifeblood of these communities, can thrive in even the remotest parts of England. Of course, having a rural voice at the top table—or, at the very least, a duty to consider rural needs in each and every region—is absolutely key to this agenda.

There are more VAT-able businesses per head of population in rural England than in urban England. There are more manufacturing businesses in the countryside than in the towns—per se, not just per head. The percentage of self-employed people in the countryside is also more than in the towns, especially—this is why I am particularly proud of my fellow country folk—among those who are below the poverty line. This proves to me that we country folk desperately want to stand on our own two feet, but we need help to do so; we need help to release that entrepreneurial spirit.

As was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Best, housing problems in most rural areas are worse than in towns. There are few affordable houses left. The houses are more expensive and wages are lower. The houses tend to be less well insulated and heating costs are higher; mains gas, for instance, is rare in rural areas. Of course, the solutions are different there than in the towns, but I will not go into that here.

Training and skills problems are also different. How does a young person get to their class in their college 15 miles away when there is no bus? There might be one at 11 am or once a week on a Tuesday, for instance, but that is of no use to anyone. After college, how do you then get your first job? It is probably 10 miles away or more. It is a rural Catch-22 situation: you cannot get a job without a set of wheels, and you cannot get a set of wheels without income from a job.

Again, there are solutions to these problems, such as Wheels to Work, but the solutions need knowledge and need thinking about, along with a drive to push them through. For that, you need someone at the top table to tell it as it is—someone who is perpetually thinking about rural issues to ensure that the right policies are put in place. We need to try to create local jobs in as many communities as possible. That means improving connectivity, broadband and mobile services, as well as enabling planning policies; again, both of those are large subjects that I will not go into here.

The point is that ordinary life in rural England—shopping, doctors’ visits or even sports for the kids—is immensely hard when the only, but vital, family car has gone to work with the breadwinner. This lack of a car also means that kids at many schools miss out on all the extracurricular activities—football, sports, drama, music, et cetera—because they have to be on that school bus which takes them back to their rural village immediately after lessons are finished.

Also, rural households in poverty experience what academics call a rural premium, with living costs some 14% higher than for their urban counterparts, according to the academics. There is no cheap mains gas, which I have already mentioned, but only Calor gas or electricity; there is only older housing stock with poor insulation; food, clothing and transport costs are consistently higher; and there is limited access to childcare, healthcare and other basic services. All this compounds financial vulnerability. Thus, I say again that you need someone who understands all this, and who can speak up for rural interests when decisions are being taken at the top table.

Another factor which underlines the need for rural focus or a rural commission in these strategic authorities is the desperate shortage of government funding for rural areas. Although it is quite obvious to anyone who thinks about it that it costs more to deliver services to remote and sparse populations, central government funding for rural councils is on average 40% less per head of the population than for urban authorities—yes, 40% less per head. This differential is about to get worse under the so-called fair funding review. Therefore, a rural commissioner, or at the very least a duty to consider rural communities, is desperately needed to find ways of minimising the harm that such urban prejudice imposes on rural people.

This prejudice already results in rural council tax payers, for instance, having to pay on average 20% more per head than their urban cousins. For too long, I have been knocking my head against this concrete wall of prejudice against rural areas—too long to think that there is any chance of actually changing the financial situation. That is why I believe it will require a real rural understanding and focus to come up with the imaginative solutions which are so desperately needed to correct this long-standing imbalance.

It is crucial that mayors should have to appoint a commissioner for rural affairs whenever there is a rural element in their bailiwick. It has to be someone who can promote new jobs and make the necessary links. As I say, I know from experience that such a person can make a big difference to the quality of life for many people, whether it be in business, sport, transport, education, health or housing; or whether it be for the young, old or those in between. The countryside deserves a voice at the top table, and I believe these amendments will provide it.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. I am absolutely fascinated by this debate. For most of my life I have lived in a city, and most of my friends think I am a city slicker. The truth is, however, that I was brought up in a rural community in a fairly remote part of north-east Essex in a rather lovely village called Great Bentley. In the time that has elapsed since I was brought up there over 50 years ago, the village has grown but it has also changed. Over that period, there has been a gradual removal—or a gradual eradication—of local services. There is a doctor and a primary school, but we used to have a very regular bus service, a whole range of small retailers, a chip shop, access to a bank and all the rest of it. Now, however, they have been in retreat and have disappeared.

A few years ago, I chaired a Co-op Party commission on restoring rural services and what we needed to do to reimagine what modern reality would look like, because you cannot just reflect on the past and say that was a glorious time; you have to look to the future in planning services. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made a really powerful argument about rural housing. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a council house in my village, and now very few people in that village have access to social housing. The percentage of the population that has is much reduced, probably 4% or 5%, and there are many people who are excluded from the jobs market because of that fact. We need to address that imbalance.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

50A: Clause 9, page 11, line 4, leave out “not more than 7”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove the statutory cap on the number of commissioners that may be appointed by a mayoral authority.

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[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, this group has a number of amendments in my name: Amendments 50A and 51B; Amendment 53A to Schedule 3; and Amendment 196A. There are two separate issues involved in these amendments; I will speak first to those that relate to the restrictions on the number and roles of commissioners.

Last week, we had a really useful debate on the areas of competence. In a sense, this debate shadows that because the commissioners are supposed to shadow the areas of competence. Those of us who were thinking about other areas of competence—in particular, the arts, culture and so on—were looking for some flexibility. These amendments seek similar flexibility in the related roles of commissioners.

New Section 29A, to be inserted by Clause 9, says that mayors may appoint up to seven people and that their functions align with the competence areas. This is potentially an unnecessary example of central control. I would argue that mayors should be free to appoint people to roles determined by them. Why do I think this? Because every area is very different and every area will have different priorities.

Broadly speaking, the areas of competence are wide-ranging. We were arguing that the arts and culture should be an additional area, but they could be within one of the areas of competence; this may mean that a mayor will wish to appoint an additional commissioner. I use this as an example because it is what we were debating last week. This issue is important because you need to bring in the right people for the right jobs, covering those areas of competence and where mayors will make a particular and special emphasis.

It also makes the devolution framework very rigid for the future, which is bad for two reasons. First, it would require primary legislation to enable a change in responsibilities and job titles, or to add more commissioners. Over time, I suspect there will be new priorities in different areas. Secondly, the restrictions would also prevent mayors appointing people to roles which they might want to fill, inhibiting the innovation we want to see from the devolution model—which, in general terms, I think we all applaud. For example, some already appoint active travel commissioners, who would either be out of scope in terms of the legislation or be prevented from continuing in their roles. The amendment, therefore, deals with this by getting rid of the restrictions.

Fewer restrictions would allow mayors to make commissioner appointments to different roles, depending on the needs of their own area, region, county or counties. For example, instead of a single transport and local infrastructure commissioner, we could see some areas appointing a bus commissioner or an active travel commissioner under these provisions; such appointments would still be subject to other scrutiny provisions on commissions contained in Schedule 3 to the Bill.

Overall, this change would create the right kind of flexibility in the mayoral model, while keeping mayors responsible for keeping a lid on costs through transparency and scrutiny. I anticipate that the Minister will argue that we have to have restraints on costs, and I do not disagree with that.

My second area of interest in this group is the restrictions on mayoral political advisers; Amendment 196A deals with that issue and argues for mayoral special advisers. Currently, the central government model of transparency and flexibility on special adviser appointments has, I think we could fairly argue, been a success in balancing value for money for the taxpayer with the ability of Ministers to bring in the right level of expertise.

I recently read a really interesting book called Every Journey Matters, which looks at the history of the first 25 years of Transport for London. The thing that emerges very strongly from that account of TfL’s first 25 years is the quality of advice that TfL was able to tap about commissioners, support staff and, effectively, special advisers—though I do not think they were called that back in the day. All the mayors have drawn on that and, I think, benefitted from it. One could fairly argue that TfL is one of the most successful metropolitan transportation networks and systems in the world, and the quality of advice has made that difference.

Therefore, the model from the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 should be applied to mayors, given their increasingly broad role and responsibility. There are three issues relating to the current system of appointments of political advisers by mayors. First, mayors are able to appoint political advisers only if it is covered in the relevant secondary legislation; in other words, they are governed by secondary legislation. Most mayors are allowed only one political adviser under relevant statutory instruments, which also cap the pay at the level of local government political assistance, which is something like £45,000. This opens the potential for differences which are unfair and need to be standardised. Secondly, there are no requirements for transparency on mayoral political adviser appointments or pay, unlike for government special advisers under the 2010 Act. Thirdly, there is no code of conduct for mayoral advisers, unlike for government special advisers, though the code of conduct is not required under primary legislation.

The amendment applies the central government model of special advisers to mayors; it would deal with these issues by allowing mayors to appoint mayoral special advisers, subject to an annual transparency requirement, and by their being paid in line with the relevant commissioner allowances, which the Bill already specifies should be determined by remuneration committees. It also moves away from the political adviser designation, so that mayors may be able to appoint special advisers to fulfil a variety of roles, just as Ministers are able to. Mayors can then bring in the people they need as they wish, subject to local oversight on pay and public scrutiny of the total cost, as we do with national government.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I did confirm that the commissioners will be subject to the Nolan principles. I will go back over Hansard—I always do after these debates—and if I have missed anything, I will certainly write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an absolutely fascinating debate. It has made me think a lot about the history of local government and how it has changed over 150 or 160 years. There was a time when we had aldermen, but they were abolished. We have had two-tier government, county boroughs and so on, but things have changed there too. The introduction of commissioners is a very progressive move, so I cannot agree with the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Jamieson, on that point. I can see that the accountability framework for commissioners is very important; they will have a powerful job.

If we think about it, some of those combined mayoral authorities will cover large geographical areas. My own likely combined mayoral authority involves East and West Sussex, which is about 100 miles from one end to the other and about 50 miles wide—and East Anglia covers a similarly large geographical area. It is right that we have these commissioners appointed and can hold them to account, because they will have a very important job to do. That is one reason why I thought that introducing some flexibility in terms of the patch or territory they cover, or the policies, was so important. However, I have heard what the Minister has said about that, and I hope we can reflect on some of those issues before Report.

On the points I made about political advisers and special advisers, I simply say this: again, it relates to the size of the task in front of mayors and commissioners. The salary is some £45,000 a year, which is generous but not pitched at a level one would necessarily expect to attract the very best. We need to have good quality political advisers involved in these strategic mayoral authorities. In my time as a local government leader, I did not see fit to have a political adviser—I got more than enough political advice from the Labour group, daily, and sometimes beyond that. But political advisers and special advisers are of immense value. When I first became a Minister back in 1999, what the civil servants used to say to me that was of value was that they had access to a special adviser who understood the thinking of the Secretary of State and their Ministers. That is really important, and that is why I thought it worth having a discussion about introducing special advisers into these very large strategic mayoral authorities. However, I have heard what the Minister said about that, and I shall reflect on it some more. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 50A withdrawn.

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As has been said—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, who said it—accountability is absolutely essential in a devolved system. It is critical if the system is to work effectively. I believe that committees such as this could provide that accountability; I do not believe that, at the moment, we have sufficiently transparent, strong and comprehensible accountability built into the Bill as drafted.

[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.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

97: Schedule 4, page 137, line 33, at end insert—
“(2A) In the definition of “local authority”—(a) in paragraph (f), for “an eligible” substitute “a”, and(b) omit subsection (2).”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would include all parish councils in the definition of a local authority which has a power of general competence and remove the eligibility conditions prescribed by the Secretary of State by order for the purposes of section 8 of the Localism Act 2011.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here a bit earlier and hearing more of the earlier debate and discussion about parish councils. My amendment seeks to include all parish councils in the definition of a local authority which has a power of general competence. It would remove the eligibility conditions prescribed by the Secretary of State for the purposes of Section 8 of the Localism Act 2011. My rationale for this has, in part, already been mentioned in this Committee by a number of colleagues opposite.

My first experience of local government was the local parish council for the village I grew up in, in Great Bentley in Essex. My mother was not actually a parish councillor, but she was a regular attender, and she was a pain in the neck—a very good and positive one. Part of her thing was trying to persuade the local parish to release part of the village green—it was 40-odd acres, so very large—to have a village hall built on it. They decided in, I think 1970, to conduct a local referendum. She was on one side of the argument, and I was on the green side of the argument; I did not believe they should use common land for a village hall. My side won and my mother held this against me for a number of years afterwards. But it demonstrated to me, at quite a young age, the power and importance of local communities and local community representation.

I borrowed and took some of that thinking into my broader politics over time. I was very pleased when, back in the 1990s as the leader of my local authority in Brighton and Hove, I was able to push ahead with the parishing of one part of our local authority area, Rottingdean, because it enabled the local community there to develop local services. By removing this shackle on parish and town councils, we could enable them to deliver much more. I am one of those people who believes in devolving powers and responsibilities to the lowest possible sustainable level. I think parish councils and town councils are capable of producing services and developing new, useful and valuable close-to-community facilities.

To that end, when I was chair of the Co-op Party commission, I argued that when Labour came into government we should empower parish and town councils, because they are close to the communities that they serve. At the moment, they cannot access funds in the same way as higher tiers of local authority. Back then, I reflected that they could not access the community renewal fund, the levelling-up fund, the towns fund or the UK shared prosperity fund. The same is the story now, of course, while Labour reviews its position on parishes.

In our report back in 2022-23, we made a number of recommendations: we should invest more in that lowest level of governance; parish and town councils should be able to develop amenities and be given the opportunity to develop capital sums; with the development of super-unitary authorities, which we envisaged in our devolution model, the emergence of parish and town councils would be essential to genuinely empower people and communities; and we should invest in training and better servicing of those parishes. That is why I am very attracted to this amendment, which has been valuably drafted by the National Association of Local Councils. With the larger unitaries, we will inevitably lose a sense of place if we are not very careful. That is why helping parish and town councils is so important.

I pick on one particular authority, not because I have anything for or against it—but who knows what Kirklees covers? Local government anoraks might, but people living in Kirklees possibly do not. That is because it is made up of composite urban areas glued together for the convenience of a local authority map. Some of that will inevitably happen when we increase the size of councils to fit into a unitary model. If we are serious about place-making, we need to do all that we can to stimulate more interest in town and parish councils, because the larger the authority, the more remote it is from the citizen and the community.

My tilt at this is contained partly in this amendment. Many of the urban areas that will be brought together in the new unitaries deserve a powerful voice. They deserve to be better integrated into the network of local authorities and to be seen as a powerful partner. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, on the Conservative Benches, made that point the other day when he was talking about the inevitability of large authorities, and it was a very important point. The comments from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, earlier touched on some of the issues that arose. If we want to be good localist, to value the importance of place-making, and to put more emphasis on that—as we on the Labour side certainly do—we should look again at what local town and parish councils should do and give them the powers and tools to do the job, which they were set up to do many years ago. I beg to move.

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[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who took part in this debate. My noble friend Lord Bassam’s Amendment 97 would amend Section 8 of the Localism Act 2011 so that all parish councils could make full use of the general power of competence. That is a broad enabling power which empowers an authority to do anything that individuals generally may do unless specifically prohibited. Authorities have used the general power of competence in a wide variety of ways. For example, Hertfordshire County Council has used the power to provide the basis for its participation in the local authority mortgage scheme, which supports the local housing market by supporting first-time buyers.

Given the breadth of the general power of competence, it is important that any authority exercising it has appropriate arrangements in place for effective oversight and scrutiny. In particular, where a parish council is to be conferred the general power of competence, it must have the means and capacity to oversee its use responsibly. This is one of the reasons why Section 8 of the Localism Act 2011 empowers the Secretary of State to set conditions that must be present before the general power of competence can be conferred on a parish council. I pay tribute to the work of parish and town councils. Coming from a shire county in the north-east of England, I understand the importance of what they do. But, as I said earlier—my noble friend Lord Bassam might not have been here at the time—21% of seats are left vacant on parish and town councils. We have to be careful, if the capacity is not there, about giving the general power of competence over to a parish council. The capacity has to be there for them to use it.

Amendment 241C from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, would place a duty on national park authorities to consult neighbouring communities when taking decisions to use their general power of competence. This Bill is providing national park authorities with the general power of competence to ensure that our national parks are able to operate more effectively and deliver our national priorities in our most iconic landscapes. Providing national park authorities with the general power of competence brings national parks in line with local authorities. It is not a requirement for local authorities to consult on their use of powers with neighbouring communities, although they may choose to consult on certain decisions if they want to. Imposing such a duty on national park authorities could introduce unnecessary bureaucracy for national parks. The general power of competence is well established and widely understood across the sector, and reduces the need for the Government to issue legal clarifications on new legislative instruments. The national park authorities will remain subject to these same constraints and we see no reason for any divergence from the arrangements already in place for local authorities. I hope that, after these explanations and comments, my noble friend Lord Bassam and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will withdraw my amendment. I think the noble Lord’s primary argument was about a potential lack of capacity at local level and the need to have proper oversight and regulation. I entirely accept that. That is a reasonable point to make, but I do not see why we cannot pursue it further, because those measures can fairly easily be put in place, not least through the more senior level of local government at a unitary or strategic authority level.

I was always very impressed by what town councils deliver. Some deliver quite big services; others get involved in the business of markets and so on. They are not just about park benches and streetlights. They are much more than that. Noble Lords from all parties have made the case that they are at a level of government which is very close to the people. That has great value and they deliver a lot. We should now look, with this larger tier of local governance across the country, including unitaries and so on, to further empower them. This would be a very sensible and practical way of doing it.

In response to the noble Lord’s point about there being vacancies on parish councils, a lot of people who would like to get involved simply think: “Well, what’s the point? It’s just a talking shop”. If we encourage and enable them to develop further, people will come forward. I have always been pretty impressed by the calibre of people who operate on parish and town councils.

I am happy to withdraw my amendment, but we should have some more debate on this and try to dream up a framework that would enable them to thrive and develop. If we do not do so now, we will need to come back to this tier of governance in the future, to make local government genuinely local.

Amendment 97 withdrawn.