English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to Amendment 93 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. As we have heard, this Bill aims to put English devolution on to a stronger footing so that local leaders can drive economic growth and close the persistent and deep gaps between regions. But at the same time as we legislate to empower those places, the Government have decided to withdraw core support from the pan-regional partnerships that operate at the real economic scale of labour markets, transport corridors and investment decisions.

In my own region of the south-west, we saw partnerships such as the Western Gateway and Great South West show what can be done when local leaders come together across traditional boundaries. For example, Great South West set out a vision which would lift the region’s GVA by as much as £45 billion and create 190,000 additional jobs, if fully realised. The Government have chosen to end core funding for those pan-regional partnerships, and are offering only a short, time-limited extension in the case of the south-west, despite the scale of the prize. That risks hollowing out the strategic capacity that has been built up with relatively modest sums of public money but considerable voluntary effort from councils, businesses and universities across the peninsula.

As we have heard, this amendment does not seek to create a new tier of government or impose any kind of uniform model from the centre. It seeks simply to ensure that, where there is a clear economic geography, there is an enabling framework in statute so that collaboration can be sustained over the long term and is not vulnerable to short-term funding decisions or changes of ministerial fashion and that we at least have a fighting chance of delivering those tens of billions in extra output and hundreds and thousands of better jobs. I know that Ministers have said that they remain committed to pan-regional collaboration, they want it to be flexible and locally led, and that scarce resources must be concentrated on mayoral institutions. I agree absolutely with the Government that collaboration should be bottom up, and I recognise the fiscal pressures, but the sums involved in supporting these pan-regional partnerships are tiny compared with the potential returns of unlocking major investment in areas with so much underemployment.

As Jim O’Neill, the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and others have argued in their work on regional growth, those returns depend critically on raising education and skills and giving every young person and adult access to training that matches the needs of the local economy. Pan-regional frameworks are precisely the scale at which universities, colleges, employers and mayors can align skills, from apprenticeships to advanced manufacturing to reskilling programmes in digital and creative industries and others, so the projected jobs in these fields become real opportunities for local people. If we are serious, as all of us in this House want, about spreading high-quality jobs beyond London and the south-east, our regions need both the strong leadership and the ability to act together at scale.

Our amendment is modest and permissive and is entirely consistent with the Government’s stated aims, but it would help to turn those headline ambitions into tangible outcomes for jobs and growth and for people across our country to benefit from.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 119 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. As he said, this has its genesis in the Select Committee which we both sat on—the Social Mobility Policy Committee. The noble Lord referred to the fact that we reported on 18 November. I just say in passing that the Government are meant to reply to Select Committee reports within two months; in other words, by 18 January, we should have had a response. It is not the responsibility of the Minister—it is another department—but when I tabled a Question about this, I discovered that on 29 occasions the Government have failed to reply to Select Committee reports on time. I just put on record what I think is a discourtesy to the House.