Contribution
My Lords, I acknowledge the constructive intention behind Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne. The desire to ensure that strategic authorities are properly equipped, financially sustainable and governed with integrity is entirely understandable. We have all seen, all too often, the consequences when structures are created without sufficient capacity or clarity of purpose. We do not want that to happen here, and this amendment seeks to guard against it. However—the noble Lord’s heart sinks—while I appreciate that instinct, we cannot support the amendment as drafted.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and I have different perspectives as we come from different backgrounds—him from No. 10 and me from more than 25 years in local government, 16 of them as a directly elected mayor. To us, the amendment seems to reintroduce a centralising veto at precisely the moment when the Bill is meant to be shifting power away from Whitehall. The Secretary of State would become the arbiter of whether an area is “capable”—a term left undefined, and thus open to subjective interpretation. What one Minister might judge as prudent due diligence, another might use as a brake on local ambition. That uncertainty does not sit comfortably with our belief in consent-based, locally driven governance.
We also have to be alive to the practical effects on the ground in the places about which we have spent many long hard hours talking—those most in need of levelling up. They are often those with a much weaker starting capacity. They could find themselves locked out by criteria that they are not yet able to meet, precisely because they have not been granted the devolution tools that would help them grow that capacity. We risk creating a circular trap: you cannot have the powers until you have the capacity, but you cannot build the capacity until you have the powers.
However, we recognise that strong oversight will be necessary with changes of this magnitude. Several amendments in the names of other noble Lords show a strong appetite across the Committee for rigorous oversight, but it must be oversight that does not stray into overprescription or paternalism. I understand why there may be concerns; the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, expressed them well. My spectacles are not rose-coloured—I acknowledge that local government has not always got it right and that there have been failures, some of them cataclysmic—but, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I think that we could also say this about past Governments, Prime Ministers and initiatives.
That said, the amendment springs from a very real concern: the public must have confidence that new strategic authorities will function effectively from day one. On that point, I entirely agree with the noble Lord. There is space—and, indeed, a need—for transparency in how readiness is assessed in order to ensure that governance arrangements are fit for purpose and to avoid the creation of authorities that are destined to struggle. However, in our view, the answer is not to place broad, undefined tests solely in the gift of the Secretary of State. Instead, we might look to more balanced alternatives, such as clear statutory criteria developed with the sector rather than imposed on it. I am sure that the Local Government Association will be keen to work collaboratively on this; we could even look at greater parliamentary scrutiny rather than ministerial discretion. There is room for a serious discussion on this matter—I hope that we can hold that with the Minister.
The amendment addresses a genuine risk but, in our view, the mechanism it proposes risks undermining the very local autonomy that the Bill is meant to strengthen. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good by setting hurdles that, in some areas, those who would benefit the most will struggle to clear. I genuinely look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.