Successes from work on the Devolution Bill – my letter to ministers on the remaining need for duties for new Mayors

My work on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill won some success. The Government made changes based on my amendments during committee stage that added access to clean air and green spaces to the work new Mayors must do on health, and also helped save councils that use more collaborative committee systems of governance from having to change to top-down leader and cabinet models.

I am very pleased to have won these changes and my letter thanks minister Miatta Fahnbulleh for listening to the evidence and to the campaigners and local councillors I worked with on these issues.

However, my biggest amendment – put together with a wide coalition of climate, nature and clean air campaigners, and supported by over 500 cross-party local councillors and many MPs – was voted down by the Government at report stage in the Commons. It would have put firm duties for climate, nature and clean air action into the remit of new Mayors and local councils across all their work.

My letter asks ministers to think again and to put these duties into the Bill at the next stage in the House of Lords. Read or download it here: