Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 20 January 2026

Debate

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Contribution

For most local authorities—I have spoken to a great number of them over the past few months—the attraction of taking your unitary authority and going into a combined authority is the ability to have the greater powers that that level of devolution will accrue to the area and the communities for which you are responsible. I think that it will be the exception rather than the rule that people will want to be a single foundation authority, but they may be more comfortable with using that as a first step then working it out for themselves. This has happened to a certain extent through the whole devolution programme. Where people are in a unitary authority, they will look around them to see which of the surrounding authorities work best in terms of their economy and public services, as well as which model makes more sense to their local community, before they decide which way to go; if they wish to take some time to do that, the Bill makes provision for that.

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