English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Vikki Slade and Paul Holmes

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Vikki Slade]

Apologies for having a second go, but my husband is also a sitting councillor and I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

In case we do not get to it this afternoon, Donna Jones, one of the witnesses, is a personal friend of mine.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Vikki Slade and Paul Holmes

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

I thought you might say that—thank you.

Donna Jones: I have represented my two counties, with 2.2 million people, for four and a bit years now. It is tough, because I have two large geographical counties; it would take me three and a half hours to travel from north to south of my patch, and I know colleagues have the same issue. If you are doing your job well and you are delivering, the press—the media, radio and TV—is your best friend. The power of being able to work with the press to get out the good news of what you are doing is very impactful. For mayors who have police under them, if the police are delivering and helping, that is another way of getting messaging out there.

On parish and town councils, I think that in my area, the rub will come with local government reorganisation, which thankfully is a year or two behind devolution—or planned to be one year behind it. I am trying to very clearly separate the two: this is about spending and more power to our elbow in Hampshire and the Solent, and that is about how we save money through local government reorganisation.

If I was still a unitary authority leader, facing the prospect of moving from 15 councils in my area to perhaps four or five, I would be consulting on parish and town councils, if we did not have them in the area that I represented. When you have four very large unitary authorities across a county such as Hampshire, which has 1.8 million people, the nucleus of your council becomes much further away from the village or town that you live in. Therefore, from a democratic perspective, getting things at that lower level to give real buy-in will be key.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Q I am really concerned about the movement of powers from police and crime commissioners to mayors, but more so about the moving of the fire and rescue services, which are given almost a passing mention in the Bill. I am fascinated to hear how you see this, as mayors who are already in place. Strategic authorities will cover multiple counties, multiple fire authorities and multiple police authorities, and all that will be vested in a single person. That feels like a real democratic deficit.

How do you understand those different areas? In my area, Wessex, there will be four counties, with two different police authorities and two different fire authorities, and the authority itself. It will all have to line up eventually. I am really concerned about how you can improve services for your residents, because that is what this is all about. It feels very remote when services such as police and fire might be very different in the New Forest compared with the centre of Portsmouth, the North York Moors or one of the cities.

Tracy Brabin: If I could just make the case for mayors and police and crime commissioners, we have had so many amazing opportunities because of those two responsibilities—the teaming and ladling of responsibilities and moneys, and being able to have a strategic police and crime plan. Crime does not just come from bad people; it comes from poor housing, a lack of skills and opportunity, and a lack of transport to get to jobs and training. The ability to bring together those responsibilities in a Venn diagram gives us really great outcomes.

One example is using money from the apprenticeship levy share scheme that would have gone back to Whitehall. We have kept some of that money in the region, including £1 million from Morrisons, to train up 15 PCSOs to go on my bus network and in bus stations, so that we can target my safety of women and girls plan. That opportunity is a gift. I know that the Mayor of South Yorkshire called an early election in order to get those powers, because he saw the opportunity. I also know that Kim McGuinness, who has been a PCC and is now a mayor, is desperate for PCC responsibilities, because she knows the benefit.

To your point, the challenge is coterminosity. I know that the previous Home Secretary was very focused on trying to identify how to get not just savings, but efficiencies, in coterminosity. Bringing fire into that makes a fair bit of sense. In West Yorkshire, we already have a really decent relationship between fire and police, so I am not sure whether having additional powers would make a substantive difference, but I will say to the Committee that mayors need to be in local resilience forums. Following the horrendous attack in Southport, the public, the Government and the press went to the mayor, but the mayor is not privy to all the information in the first instance. The resilience piece is really important, and I know the Bill is going to address that.