Contribution
I, too, was pleased to sit on the Public Bill Committee, but sadly I cannot spare the time to review everyone’s performance, so I will get straight to the point.
My amendments for new combined authorities in parts 1 and 2 of the Bill include amendments 91 to 93, which add action on poverty and socioeconomic inequality to the areas of competence of new mayors in clause 2. The Government have promised again and again to enact part 1 of the Equality Act 2010 in respect of a socioeconomic duty for England. If that were done, these duties would need to be created in the Bill. To leave them out for brand new authorities is such a gap, and I find it hard to understand why the Government are resisting. I hope that either this will be taken up in the other place and debated again or the section will be enacted for England imminently, such that it has to be done through Government amendments there. I would like to hear that promised by Ministers today.
I mainly want to focus on and propose my new clause 29. This would help every new mayor support the principles in the Climate Change Act 2008 in a fair way. The Climate Change Committee has noted the yawning gap between national ambition and local action, and the Local Government Association has called for that gap to be closed through the Bill. We need every mayor agreeing on the action they will take—their fair contribution to national targets—and being empowered to deliver for our crucial carbon budgets and lifesaving climate resilience.
My new clause would also help every new mayor to support the principles in the Environment Act 2021 for nature protection and restoration, and action on pollution, wildlife and the ecosystem that is our only home. It would also help every new mayor to support the principles in Ella’s law, the Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill. The Bill awaits Second Reading and comes from cross-party work with campaigners from the Healthy Air Coalition and Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the mother of Ella, whose death from asthma was the first to be recorded as due to air pollution.
New clause 29 is supported by the UK100 group of local authorities, the Climate Emergency campaign, the Better Planning Coalition, Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Healthy Air Coalition, Friends of the Earth and a host of others. An open letter has been signed by over 450 local councillors from all parties and by council leaders. Hundreds of businesses have written in more than once to Ministers and many of our constituents have been contacting MPs, too. I am very grateful to every hon. Member, cross party, who has signed it. The case is clear. I intend to press new clause 29 to a Division, so that we can, on all sides of the House, vote for the climate, nature and clean air duties that are so vital. I hope that the Government will pledge clearly today to introduce them all as full duties at the next stage in the other place.
In Committee, I also worked with campaigners to fill a big gap in health determinants set out in the Bill, to which new mayors would have to plan action under clause 43, the health improvement and health inequalities duty. The Government left out of the Bill any environmental impacts on health. I argued strongly for that in Committee and have again tabled amendments 87 to 90 to fix that. I am pleased and grateful to see that Ministers have listened to the evidence and added their own Government amendments 116 to 118 naming environmental factors, including air quality and access to green space and bodies of water as the health determinants they are.
However, my original amendments have not been withdrawn, as they spelled out that environmental factors should also specifically include water pollution and land pollution. This would have brought the goals of Zane’s law into the work done by new mayors to document and plan strategically to avoid horrific problems with contaminated land of the kind that led to the sudden death of Zane Gbangbola, when floods brought poisoned gas from contaminated landfill into his home in Chertsey in Surrey. I would like to hear explicitly from the Minister today that the phrase “environmental factors” in the new Government amendments includes that kind of contamination, and that the amendments therefore bring parts of Zane’s law into the Bill.
Finally, I want the Minister—and the Lords in the other place—to look seriously at the need for amendments 159 and 160, which aim to ensure that the local growth plans from new mayors will help protect culture in a strategic way. I have worked with the Music Venue Trust on the amendments, and its annual report each year makes awful reading, as our grassroots music venues suffer and close due to business pressures, unfair business rates valuations and planning and licensing issues. Those issues could be tackled effectively using the new strategies and powers of combined authorities and mayors.
The amendments cover not just music but cultural and community spaces of all kinds, including theatres and other performance venues. I believe that all areas of the country will benefit from the amendments being added at a future stage of the Bill.