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English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendment. For me, it is a little too revolutionary, but I think the idea behind it—to enable strategic authorities to further devolve any powers that they are given—is correct. I do not think they need any more powers to do that,

but they do need encouragement. I believe the amendment is well intentioned, particularly in response to the Bill that seems to be doing the opposite, as the noble Lord said: it is moving all the powers up. I do, however, have concerns about the amendment and how it would work in practice.

7.45 pm

As somebody who has been through a unitary and who devolved many powers to both town and parish councils, and set up a parish council in the great city of Salisbury, I know it takes time and that lower-tier authorities have differing capabilities. Some of them just do not want the powers and I worry about imposing anything on those who either do not have the capability or do not want to do it. I encourage the Government to look at those local services being delivered by the town and parish councils that are there. As a unitary authority, I did not want to run parks and gardens: that was not what our authority was built to do. I think that local people should be running those very local services. Who puts up the flower baskets in the summer? Who looks after all the street furniture? All that sort of thing is important for local people to be involved in and have responsibility for. Most unitary authorities I know of are very happy that those things are done locally but with financing from the local authority. I worry about it being in statute that it has to happen, as I have said.

The second thing I urge on the back of this, and this will come up in further groups, is that the Government should seriously look at the creation of further town and parish councils, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned. As we get more unitary authorities, the importance of towns and parishes becomes increasingly necessary. I know that the Bill talks about neighbourhood groups and committees and so on, but they are not elected. When you are devolving these sorts of powers and the finances to go with them, it is much clearer and better if you have an elected group of people. We have fantastic towns and parishes across this country and I urge the Government to go further with them and encourage the unitary authorities in the future to use them. There is very little about the role of towns and parishes in this Bill. I think that is wrong and as we go through the Bill, we will be putting much more emphasis on that and much more pressure on the Government to look at it again.

However, from the point of view of this Bill, I agree with the principle of devolving those services that should be for local people to organise, but the revolutionary idea of putting in law that it has to happen is a bit too far for us.