English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Pack Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group, Amendments 120A to 120C. They are part of a theme that has been talked about before: the degree of devolution and centralisation of existing powers. In general, the Bill is a welcome move towards greater devolution, and my amendments were tabled in that spirit.

Amendment 120A relates to the approval of workplace parking levies by mayors. Back in 2000, the Transport Act was passed, which allowed mayors to implement workplace parking levies but left the final approval with the Secretary of State. The only occasion on which this appears to have been used was in Nottingham some 10 years ago. In the spirit of devolution, my argument is quite simple: we should try to remove barriers wherever possible and consider them where there is an appropriate level of democratic oversight. For example, Leeds City Council is apparently considering using the powers in the Transport Act 2000 in its city centre to support the funding of the West Yorkshire tram. The proposal in my amendment would give established mayors the power to approve a workplace parking levy in their area as part of genuine devolution. I do not understand why those powers require such a senior political level of clearance. That does not seem to be within the spirit of a greater devolved system of governance.

My Amendments 120B and 120C are in the same vein and would allow mayors to approve Transport and Works Act orders in their area. Transport and Works Act orders are the major planning approvals for schemes, such as new trams. All these must be centrally approved by the Secretary of State, whether it is a multimillion or multibillion-pound cross-country scheme such as the trans-Pennine route upgrade or a local tram service extension, and the requirement to go to the Secretary of State can add significant time to projects. It took over three years for the one-mile Birmingham Eastside extension to get sign-off from the department.

If we think about this and put it in perspective, other European countries can go from initiating a project to completion in around four to five years. We must do all that we can to speed these processes up. Clearly, there has to be some further oversight, but letting local areas get on with building and liberating central government from having to approve lots of different things seems a very sensible move.

Mayors are increasingly going to take powers away from the centre and will be running and responsible for large geographic areas, particularly the new county combined mayoral authorities—some, like Sussex, are going to be almost 100 miles long and 50 miles wide, which is a very large slice of the countryside. It seems to me that, if we believe in devolution, we should let them get on with the job and approve schemes in their area, as is the case in other countries. The change to Transport and Works Act orders would simply allow that, which will enable us as a country to grow, and grow our economy.

I think most of us in this room would agree that the economic benefits that flow from expanding and improving the quality of our transport connections are enormous. From the beginning of the development of rail networks, we have seen extensive benefits come about from expanding the network and moving into other areas, and I am sure that doing that quicker and faster will speed up improvements in our economy and economic growth.

I argue that we should have greater devolution for these sorts of decisions and not leave mayors having to scramble around and make sure they catch the wind with the Secretary of State at the right time to get final approval and sign-off for schemes that really do not need to have that degree of centralised control. I beg to move.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 236 in this group is on perhaps a slightly more niche issue than the others raised so far in this group, but it is a detail of relevance which raises some important wider issues. The crux of it is the centralised control over the installation of cattle grids due to the powers reserved to the Secretary of State. The powers are primarily derived from Sections 82 to 90 and Schedule 10 to the Highways Act 1980, although there are other powers, such as those under the New Forest Act 1964.

Sticking to the Highways Act as the principal issue, it rightly requires local councils to consult appropriately before making decisions about the installation of new cattle grids, but it also gives very significant powers to the Secretary of State to have the final decision on such things. It is a legitimate question to ask: what is it about decisions over cattle grids that requires the special attention of the Secretary of State to make a decision on them? I think it is hard to argue that there are great strategic issues at play when making decisions over cattle grids, and indeed the expertise and knowledge that is necessary to decide whether on, say, a particular road, it would be appropriate, dangerous or necessary is very much local expertise and local knowledge. No matter how impressive a Minister may be in their depth of geographic knowledge of the byways of the roads around the country, that expertise will always best sit locally.

The Government’s White Paper was very promising on this topic. I quote it approvingly:

“It is costly, inefficient and patronising that the Secretary of State for Transport has to agree to a new cattle grid”.


I could not have put it better myself. In fact, I think I probably would have been slightly more timid in my choice of language, but, alas, despite that pungent language, the issue then somewhat disappeared. It has not been followed through in the Bill. Listening carefully to the Minister’s comments at Second Reading, it is pretty unclear why this issue has disappeared. I feel there is a slight degree of shadow-boxing on my part, hence the breadth of the amendment that I have submitted, because it would be helpful to tease out what has changed the Government’s mind from that pungent language in the White Paper to the silence in the legislation.

Although in a way it is undoubtedly not the most important of issues when it comes to devolution or transport, it is one of those issues that has wider relevance. Sometimes, improvements in government or public services come from big, grand, sweeping, important measures, but often, the improvements come from relentless incrementalism, the accumulation of small steps. This amendment certainly would be one of those small steps, but a useful small step in properly decentralising power, empowering local councils, acting as highway authorities, to take responsibility and, perhaps, also rather usefully, reducing the workload on central government a little. After all, one of the most common comments that Ministers and civil servants make is how overloaded and overworked so much of Whitehall and Westminster is. Cattle grids on their own are not enough to crack those problems, but devolving power over cattle grids would be a helpful step forward. I look forward to the Minister telling us how the spirit of the White Paper is going to be restored to the Bill on this topic.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Although his amendment does not say so, I assume the noble Lord is talking about cattle grids on highways. The majority of cattle grids are on people’s private land. I think the amendment would be better if it was clearer that it relates to highways, if it does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pack (LD)]

The answer is largely yes, although the provisions under the Highways Act get into the use of adjoining land and the circumstances in which adjoining land might be used, particularly for bypasses related to cattle grids. However, the intent of the amendment is absolutely to tease out where the Government are on cattle grids on highways.

[Baroness Pidgeon (LD)]

My Lords, there are a number of amendments in this group, and I shall speak to just a few of them. The last two speakers have outlined that if this Bill is truly about devolution, it should be empowering local authorities to make decisions for their area without having to apply to Whitehall. From Amendment 236 from my noble friend Lord Pack about the decision to install a cattle grid in an area to the speeches we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, about workplace parking levies or applying for a Transport and Works Act order, what is the best level for this? In many ways, these are small amendments, but they go to the heart of the Bill. Is this about genuine devolution and empowerment, or is it a little bit of decentralisation from Whitehall but still with the reins attached? That was one of the criticisms we made at Second Reading.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has had to leave, but I shall speak on his behalf on Amendments 120D and 120E. He apologises to noble Lords for not having taken part before, due to working on other Bills at the same time that have been clashing. Noble Lords will remember the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, now the Bus Services Act. These amendments were tabled by the noble Lord at that time, and we were told:

“The Government will look to utilise these principles in their delivery of the forthcoming road safety strategy. This strategy will lay the foundation for government leadership while providing flexibility for local authorities to determine the most appropriate approach for their local circumstances”.—[Official Report, 13/10/25; col. 90.]


However, according to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, the long-awaited road safety strategy is rather coy on bus safety, mentioning the Act and what TfL is doing and then saying:

“Safety measures could then be specified as part of franchising contracts”.


The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is concerned that it seems as though local authorities might move forward in this safety area in some way only if they are minded to do so, whereas, in London, we see that TfL has the Vision Zero strategy, which aims to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from the transport network by 2041 and to have no one killed on or by a bus by 2030. Surely these things should be baked into all future transport contracts nationwide. The noble Lord is right to flag up this issue. The road safety strategy is an excellent document in so many areas, but in this area of bus safety it has fallen short of what we all hoped for from the bus services Bill. I hope that the Minister can address our points about devolution and bus safety, as well as about making sure that we are tackling these issues.