English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Gordon]

I rise to speak to new clause 28. I thank my Liberal Democrat colleagues who tabled a similar amendment in Committee.

New clause 28 would effectively allow a new form of regional governance. One thing that frustrates me at the moment—it is quite bonkers from a fairness perspective—is that Yorkshire has almost the population of Scotland, the economy of Wales, and a strong sense of identity, but unlike those countries, we do not have anywhere near the level of power. For too long, Westminster has handed Yorkshire crumbs and called it a settlement. There has been lots of talk this evening about regional mayors and powers, but Yorkshire was technically chopped into four different constituent components. Westminster has taken our ability to build across the region and be the real powerhouse that we could be.

My new clause would allow the creation of a Yorkshire regional body, on a par with Scotland and Wales, and empower it with provision of health, education and transport. That would stop holding Yorkshire back and give us Yorkshire folk the tools to do what we know we need to do for our areas. Put simply, it would give Yorkshire solutions to Yorkshire problems.

Currently, the mayoral arrangements across the area are disparate and vary wildly. The Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, has been elected twice on the promise of delivering a franchising of buses, which is yet to happen. We recently got a new mayor for York and North Yorkshire, but we are yet to see any meaningful investment on the ground for local people. I do not want mayors who are empowered to be glorified lobbyists in Westminster and Whitehall; I want to see real regional forms of government that empower people on the ground. Compared with other European countries that have meaningful forms of devolution and regional governance, we have a democratic deficit, so why not think big?

On transport, we need to integrate across the entirety of Yorkshire—a transport for Yorkshire that does not simply stop at the borders of West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. Investment in mass transit for Leeds, for example, involves the West Yorkshire area. People who live in my Harrogate and Knaresborough constituency commute, work and learn there, so giving a new regional body that power over transport would make sense. If Yorkshire had those powers and funding already, and people on the ground were in the driving seat and had a stake in the project, a Leeds mass transit system might have actually happened, rather than being endlessly promised, kiboshed, re-promised and then knocked on the head again.

Devolving health powers to a local region such as Yorkshire makes massive sense. Yorkshire Cancer Research, which is based in my constituency, talks endlessly about the poor life outcomes of our region compared with places in the south of England. Why not have people who know best make the key decisions about what health interventions would make sense for our area?

All those points about transport and health seek to fix something that has gone wrong in our system: Whitehall brings us to this place when we would be better off empowering people in our communities to take them forward. The naysayers will say, “It’s just a new form. There’d be more elections and more people involved.” We have seen that in the creation of combined authorities and mayoral authorities. What worries me is the fact that we have ended up with endless strategic directives and chief executives of new organisations. They often kowtow to diktats from Whitehall anyway, so where is the devolution?

I want Yorkshire answers to Yorkshire problems. I hope that other people support that too.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I will focus my attention on my amendment 174, which would ensure that rural, remote and coastal areas are properly considered when preparing a local growth plan. As it stands, rurality is not mentioned once in the Bill, and the concerns that I raised on Second Reading remain.

The Bill’s overly centralised approach to devolution will once again neglect rural communities. It remains unclear how the specific needs of rural communities will be highlighted and addressed. Eighty-five per cent of England’s land area is classified as rural, but only 17% of the country’s population lives in those areas, and unfortunately that often means that rural areas can sometimes be ignored and left behind.

But these areas have specific needs and challenges, and they require strategic support and investment to ensure that they thrive. Rural areas are the grassroots drivers of economic growth, the home of farming, food and drink production and tourism. My constituency of Glastonbury and Somerton is home to over 800 family farms, and much of the wider local industry is intertwined with food production. Therefore, there needs to be a strategic focus on rural growth to identify what enabling infrastructure is needed to support rural communities with the recent and incoming planning reforms. But this Bill will fail to capture the huge growth opportunity these areas offer unless the Government change track and pay them due regard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

In Somerset, we were set back enormously by six years of council tax freeze during the early 2010s, under the Conservative-led council—[Interruption.] Council tax was frozen for six years, way in excess of what the Government had anticipated, leaving council finances in Somerset in dire straits.

[Sarah Dyke]

My hon. Friend will know that Somerset county council was near bankrupt in 2018. Indeed, we suffered a lot under the previous Conservative-led county council’s tenure because of its financial neglect. The rising costs and demand for essential services have put budgets under severe pressure, despite the significant transformation and savings now being delivered by the Liberal Democrat-led unitary council.

The lack of funding for local government is not unique to Somerset. It is a national problem that requires a national solution, with councils still waiting for the delayed details of the local government finance settlement. The current funding model is broken and it needs fundamental change. That has not been achieved in this Bill, but amendments 61 and 62, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, would ensure that councils designated as a single foundation strategic authority receive appropriate funding to facilitate their transition, and combined authorities receive adequate funding to facilitate their establishment. I urge all right hon. and hon. Members to support such amendments to the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Minister to wind up.