English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Siân Berry and Sam Carling

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th October 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Siân Berry]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to move the new clause in the name of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is a well-known enthusiast for allotments. I am a keen gardener in a space similar to an allotment, and my colleague Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb in the House of Lords is also a huge enthusiast. I hope that this issue and this kind of provision will continue to be discussed in the other place, whatever happens in the Commons. The Bill quite rightly puts health and wellbeing at the heart of a lot of the strategic functions of the new authorities. Sadly, however, it neglects the role that access to allotments and green spaces can play in boosting public health. The new clause would rectify that with some specific proposals for allotments.

Across England, demand for allotments is huge. People have really embraced the health and social benefits that they can provide. There is much more awareness of the environmental benefits that they can deliver, supporting pollinators much better than other kinds of managed land. They can be part of green corridors, linking together nature-rich spaces. The demand has led to long waiting lists, while allotments are being taken away. In 1950, there were 1.5 million allotment plots, but we have only around 250,000 today. The biggest losses have been in urban areas, where people need them the most. There are now 108,000 people on waiting lists. For example, in Portsmouth, one in every 25 adults is waiting. That is one person on every bus sitting waiting for an allotment.

At the moment we do not have many legal tools for councils to fix that. There are no reporting requirements on councils and there are no waiting time limits for councils to drive forward ambition on providing allotments, but the Bill provides an opportunity to fix that.

The new clause would create a duty to increase allotment provision and boost public health, to report on allotment and nature-rich provision in areas, and to fund community organisers to widen public access to those resources. It would also require action if allotment provision falls below a certain threshold. The new clause takes inspiration from Scotland—we have not just invented it for England here. Under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, the Scottish Government have mandated a 50% or less waiting-list-to-allotment ratio, a maximum wait of five years or less, as well as annual reports. That has not been an insupportable burden on local authorities there; indeed, they have taken it up with some enthusiasm. It would be brilliant to have that in England. It would provide legal direction, but also practical levers for councils and real imperatives for them to act.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

When I was a council cabinet member, I had responsibility for allotments. We are talking about strategic authorities, and the hon. Lady is talking about powers for them. I can see a duty in the new clause; I cannot see how it would help councillors who have responsibility for allotments to improve the situation, and I fear that having a combined authority stick its nose in could create extra bureaucracy and undermine the hon. Lady’s aims.

[Siân Berry]

Putting this duty on to individual smaller councils might be burdensome, but at a strategic authority level, collecting this information would seem to be really positive. As we have been discussing throughout the Committee, on many issues—land use, planning and support for community right to buy—there are levers for them to act. At a strategic authority level, it would be great to have some co-ordination—people from different councils getting together to find out how each of them is acting on this issue.

Let us not forget our aim here. We are talking about putting this issue within the health duty somewhat, and we know that time spent on allotments and other green spaces will reduce cardiovascular risk, improve mental health and lower people’s stress. We know that in areas where green space provision is better, men live three years longer and women nearly two years. We need to extend those benefits to the 20 million people who currently lack access to green space within a 15-minute walk, and allotments are some of the healthiest and most rewarding green spaces we can provide. The new clause is a path to more nature, more access to that nature, and improved public health.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Siân Berry and Sam Carling

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd October 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Vaz.

I rise to speak against clause 57; I believe it is extreme control freakery and overreach from the Government and in no way essential to this Bill. Why impose a leader and cabinet model on all councils, even against their will, along with all these other changes? The Government can see only the benefits and, like a poorly run council, they ignore the critical risks.

Good governance benefits in many places from a deeply involved voice for principled opposition councillors to vote on policy, check the numbers, put forward good ideas and raise mission-critical questions about issues such as fire safety, service quality or big projects and contracts, even when that is uncomfortable for the administration. Places need the right to choose, democratically, a new model of governance when appropriate—especially when councils face problems and need a fresh start.

Changes of this sort are sometimes made after a crisis or a period of problems; I will talk in the next debate about changes made by referendums. I hear the claims of stagnation and indecision often levelled at committee systems, but I point out that under the current system people who see that happening have the right to change the model and try something else. A new administration can vote to switch to a leader and cabinet for a period, or to a mayor, if it wishes, or the people can make the change themselves by calling a referendum. The Government want to take away all that choice. That is very wrong and this clause is overreaching in the extreme.

Given the exceptions being made for mayors in the mandate for leader and cabinet, it seems that the committee system is the one most under attack from the Government in this Bill, so I want to provide some words and examples from cross-party local councillors about its benefits for their areas. In July 2025, Sheffield city council voted unanimously for a motion defending its democratically chosen model, stating that

“the benefits of the Committee System demonstrated in Sheffield include: greater collaboration across political groups in policy formulation and in decision making; overcoming party political tribalism and focussing on areas of agreement, not antagonism; improving the culture of the Council, with officers and Councillors focusing on what is best for the city; all Councillors being involved in the decision-making of the Council, and greater accountability to the electorate; and improved outcomes for the residents of Sheffield”.

That is a cross-party view.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

I ran a constitution review for Cambridge city council while I was a councillor there, and we spent a lot of time talking about the committee system versus the cabinet system. Does the hon. Member not agree that what she has just described is an example of really positive culture in a council, which can be had regardless of the governance system? Does she also agree that the key thing about the committee system is that it is slow, inefficient and leads to much worse scrutiny? Under a leader and cabinet system we have scrutiny committees, and we end up with much more detailed questioning of evidence in those than in a committee system.

[Siân Berry]

I implore the hon. Member to listen to the rest of my speech and further points I shall make on other amendments. In Sheffield, at the same time, the council resolved unanimously that

“Sheffield benefits from fairer, more representative governance arrangements, and that people expect the Councillors they elect to have a vote on the decisions that affect them”.

Bristol also has a committee system, and Bristol Green councillors have told me how their cross-party committees have had a series of task and finish groups, where policy is developed with the input of councillors from all parties. They say that, while everyone does not always agree, this process allows for much more rounded development of policy ahead of implementation, not just scrutiny afterwards or divisive call-ins. There is rich debate, with more voices taking part in it.

Those councillors also say that the committee system also allows for back benchers to have more influence and input, with a positive effective on equalities as well, so that more councillors with a variety of different characteristics have space to input, and that, in turn, has a positive effect on policy development. New councillors also have more of a chance to develop their skills and interests than under a cabinet model, where only a handful of councillors have proper influence and are hand-picked by the leader or mayor in many cases. Sheffield councillors also say:

“The critical budget-setting process has worked better in Sheffield since the committee system was introduced, avoiding last minute wrangling and hasty deals between the parties. This is because the detail of the budget process is worked through each Committee in the months leading up to the budget, so all councillors are involved. This contrasts with the last budget brought under our Cabinet system where the budget proposal was voted down as the council meeting descended into chaos.”

I also urge the Committee to note that none of the councils that have issued section 114 notices in recent years have been run under a committee system. Worcestershire city council has had a committee system since 2017, implemented after a council motion that was proposed by Conservatives and seconded by Greens. Councillors there tell me that they see scrutiny within the committee system working really well to improve policy before any decisions are made, and it has improved cross-party working relationships and helped to build consensus.

The council has also been independently praised for its collaborative approach, and was commended in the Local Government Association’s corporate peer challenge in April, which said:

“The peer team found evidence of good governance across the organisation. The peer team found there was positive Member collaboration across political groups which makes the most of the opportunities in this type of governance and there was comprehensive coverage of council business at Policy Committees”.

I can speak on cabinet governance from my previous experience as a councillor in a Labour council, as it is currently the choice of the Labour administration in Brighton and Hove, where my constituency sits. Cabinets can obviously be quicker to act through a rapid decision-making process, but that has risks too. For good reason, the saying is not “Measure once, cut once”. I have noticed a disturbing trend of scrutiny committee time being squeezed by leaders and cabinets, with some councils having just one broad scrutiny committee—I did not experience that and I honestly cannot even imagine it working in agenda terms.

A single scrutiny committee has, by definition, only a limited time to examine a wide range of upcoming decisions in any detail, and surely has no space on the agenda for the kind of through pre-decision scrutiny or issue-based evidence gathering to generate ideas or feedback on services that good scrutiny committees also do, and which I have seen. There are further risks; along with maintaining first past the post, the leader and cabinet model preferred by the Government is a recipe for seeing purely one-party decision making in more places, overriding all opposition voices when key decisions have to be made. One-party states are not more efficient or effective.