English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill: Government motion to disagree to Lords Amendment 98

**What happened:** On 21 April 2026, the House of Commons voted to reject Lords Amendment 98 to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, restoring the Bill to its pre-amendment form. The motion passed by 287 votes to 150. Lords Amendment 98 had been introduced by the House of Lords to address concerns about the imposition of changes to local governance without local consent, and the Commons voted, on the government's recommendation, to overturn it. **Why it matters:** Lords Amendment 98 was directed at one of the central points of controversy in the Bill: whether Ministers could impose changes to local governance structures without the agreement of the communities affected. By rejecting the amendment, the Commons preserved the government's power to drive devolution arrangements from the centre, including the potential establishment or expansion of combined authorities and the introduction of elected mayors. Supporters of the government's position argue this is necessary to deliver a nationwide devolution programme at scale; opponents argue it undermines the principle that devolution must be locally led and consented to. The vote is part of a broader pattern from the same day, in which the government successfully overturned a series of Lords amendments on related issues including brownfield land protections, local authority governance, and the powers of mayoral commissioners. **The politics:** The vote divided almost entirely along government-versus-opposition lines. All 286 Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs who voted supported the government, with no Labour defections. All 83 voting Conservatives and all 57 voting Liberal Democrats opposed the government, as did the five Green MPs and a small number of independents. Reform UK MPs were entirely absent. This was one of several votes on the same evening in which the government prevailed by similar margins, consistently in the range of 287 to 297 ayes against 144 to 155 noes. The Conservative opposition framed the Bill throughout as a centralising measure dressed up as devolution, while the government insisted it represented the largest transfer of power from Whitehall to communities in a generation.