English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill: Government motion to disagree to Lords Amendment 26

**What happened:** On 21 April 2026, MPs voted 287 to 149 to reject Lords Amendment 26 to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. The amendment, grouped with Lords Amendment 89, would have required mayors, combined authorities and combined county authorities to demonstrate that no suitable brownfield land exists before designating greenfield land for development. The government brought a motion to disagree with this Lords change, and the Commons passed that motion by a majority of 138. **Why it matters:** The practical effect of the vote is that the Bill will not include a statutory requirement to prioritise brownfield land over greenfield land when combined authorities designate sites for development. The government argued that a brownfield-first approach is already embedded in the revised National Planning Policy Framework, updated in December 2024, and that placing such a requirement on the face of primary legislation would be too rigid. Those who backed the Lords amendment argued that statutory language is the only way to give real legal force to that principle, and that communities in areas facing large housing targets would lose a meaningful safeguard against development on green fields and green belt. **The politics:** The vote fell almost entirely along party lines. Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs provided all 287 votes in favour, with no defections recorded. The 149 votes against came from Conservatives (79), Liberal Democrats (57), the Greens (5), the Democratic Unionist Party (3), and a handful of others. This was one of at least five divisions on the same date in which the government moved to disagree with Lords amendments to the Bill, each passing by similar margins of roughly 140 to 150. The pattern reflects the Lords' sustained attempt to constrain or qualify devolution and planning powers in the Bill, and the Commons government majority's consistent refusal to accept those constraints.