English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill: Reasoned Amendment

Parliament voted on 2 September 2025 to reject a Conservative reasoned amendment that would have blocked the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill at Second Reading (the stage at which the Commons debates a bill's general principles). The amendment was defeated by 367 votes to 167, allowing the Bill to proceed to its next parliamentary stage. The Bill, introduced by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, restructures how devolution works in England. It creates a new framework of "strategic authorities" at three tiers, standardises the powers devolved to each level, gives ministers the ability to impose mayors and combined authority structures where local agreement cannot be reached, requires English councils to adopt cabinet-style governance, restores the supplementary vote system for mayoral elections, creates a community right to buy assets of community value, establishes a Local Audit Office, and bans upwards-only rent review clauses in commercial leases. The Conservative amendment argued that the Bill lacked sufficient local accountability and risked imposing centralising structures without genuine local consent; supporters of the Bill argued it would deepen devolution and empower communities after what they described as years of excessive centralisation. Opposition parties united behind the blocking amendment while the government commanded a comfortable majority. All 322 Labour MPs and 37 Labour and Co-operative MPs voted against the amendment, with 39 and 5 no votes recorded respectively. All 88 voting Conservatives and all 71 voting Liberal Democrats backed the amendment, as did three Democratic Unionist Party MPs, two Reform UK MPs, and one each from Traditional Unionist Voice, Ulster Unionist Party, and one independent. The Bill's passage at Second Reading set the stage for further contested votes at Report Stage in November 2025, where amendments on related provisions were also defeated before the Bill passed Third Reading 322 votes to 179.