Lord Shipley (LD)

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for signing my amendment. When I spoke earlier this afternoon, I said that there was a need to ensure that we do not encourage upwards mission creep in this Bill. This amendment seeks to provide statutory help to prevent that happening and to deliver greater empowerment for local communities. I accept at the outset that there is an inherent tension in devolution policy between scale and geography. Strategic authorities will be large and will have to cover large areas, yet community empowerment will be on a much smaller scale. I submit that the Government’s commitment to empowering local communities will need some statutory backing, so I propose that we embed the principle of subsidiarity in the Bill. I propose that we embed a legal duty of subsidiarity across the whole of devolved English local government, including town and parish councils. Further, I suggest that we need to legislate to give local and combined authorities the legal powers that they need to devolve their own responsibilities further. They would also need a statutory duty to collaborate on and publish community empowerment plans setting out how they plan to fulfil their duty; local communities and local councils should have the right to challenge both the content and implementation of these plans. My amendment says: “A strategic authority may devolve to any local authority within its area any power which it holds”. This may sound quite revolutionary to some but, actually, it is at the heart of devolving power and this Bill is about devolution. Secondly, the amendment says that the strategic authority must act in a way to enable such devolution to take place. Each local authority in a strategic authority area would, in turn, have to “consider whether any of its powers may be exercised at a more local level, and … where it considers that to be the case, act so as to enable such devolution”. I then propose: “Within the period of one year beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, a strategic authority must publish a plan setting out how the strategic authority and its member local authorities intend to carry out their duties under” the community empowerment plan. I also propose that that plan “must set out how the strategic authority and local authorities … will consult … on the exercise of those powers which are not devolved to lower-tier bodies”. Further, my amendment states: “A strategic authority must review a Community Empowerment Plan at least once during the period of four years beginning with the day on which the Plan is published… In carrying out any function under this section, a strategic authority must ensure effective collaboration with any local authority or other body to which it has devolved powers”. Then there is the issue of what the regulations should contain to ensure that this measure works well, but I hope the Minister understands that there is a major issue of principle here in terms of devolution. If this Bill is truly about devolution, as the Minister told us earlier today it was, in what way are we going to make sure that strategic authorities do not suck powers upwards but, rather, pass down powers to local authorities, which will, in turn, devolve powers to town and parish councils? I hope the Minister will be open to thinking about how this must be done. There are so many statements in the Bill and Explanatory Notes about the importance of community empowerment, yet I do not see the means of that actually being delivered in the Bill, hence my proposal on how this might be done. It also requires that the Government just have to make sure that it happens. I beg to move.