Delegated Legislation Committee

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: Martin Vickers

† Al Hassan, Sadik (North Somerset) (Lab)

† Anderson, Stuart (South Shropshire) (Con)

† Brackenridge, Sureena (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)

† Charalambous, Bambos (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)

† Cocking, Lewis (Broxbourne) (Con)

† Costigan, Deirdre (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty’s Treasury)

Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)

† Franklin, Zöe (Guildford) (LD)

† Jopp, Lincoln (Spelthorne) (Con)

† Khan, Naushabah (Gillingham and Rainham) (Lab)

† Law, Noah (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)

† McGovern, Alison (Minister for Local Government and Homelessness)

† Ribeiro Addy, Bell (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)

† Simmonds, David (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)

† Uppal, Harpreet (Huddersfield) (Lab)

† Wheeler, Michael (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)

† Witherden, Steve (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)

Jim Davey, Stella Maria Gabriel, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee

Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee

Wednesday 24 June 2026

[Martin Vickers in the Chair]

Draft Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026.

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. This statutory instrument was laid before the House on 14 May 2026.

The order makes a small but important change to existing arrangements that govern significant financial decisions made by councils during local government reorganisation, including those on land disposals and contracts. The Government’s programme of reform, as set out in the English devolution White Paper, will move power out of Westminster and strengthen the foundations of local government. A key part of that programme is local government reorganisation, replacing two tier councils with single tier councils that are simpler, clearer and more accountable to the communities that they serve.

The Government’s long term aim is to create local government structures that make it easier for residents to understand what group is responsible for local services and decisions, while enabling more strategic choices that support growth and improve public services. To meet that ambition, the transition must be orderly and legally sound, and must properly protect the public interest. Existing councils must continue to discharge their functions while new councils are being established, and decisions taken during that period should not undermine the position of the successor councils.

For that reason, the framework includes safeguards, which are set out in section 24 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. Those provisions allow the Secretary of State to issue directions that control certain land disposals and significant contractual commitments. Where a decision could have implications for the successor council, councils may, in certain situations, be required to secure consent before proceeding. In practice, that consent will usually come from the relevant shadow council. Those controls ensure that major financial decisions taken during the transition will not adversely affect successor councils. Specific consent will be required for larger decisions, while general consent can be used to enable day to day activity to continue.

The order, made under section 29 of the 2007 Act, makes a targeted change to the way that those safeguards apply. As the framework currently operates, councils may need to take account of previous land disposals and contractual dealings when assessing whether the relevant financial thresholds have been reached. The starting point of that aggregation period has remained fixed at 31 December 2006, which could require authorities to examine almost 20 years of historical activity. That was not the intention of the policy. The controls were intended to focus on recent and relevant activity in the period leading up to reorganisation, rather than to create unnecessary retrospective burdens.

The order updates the beginning of the aggregation period to 31 March 2025, to ensure that the framework captures relevant activity without requiring unnecessarily extensive historical analysis, while leaving the underlying safeguards on disposals of land and contractual dealings unchanged. The Committee should note that the order does not represent a change of policy, and does not alter the underlying safeguards.

I am a little unclear on the implications of what the Minister just said. If, for example, Barratt Redrow and the Jockey Club submitted a planning application, under the new national planning policy framework, to flatten Kempton Park racecourse to build 2,000 homes on that land, would no one be able to consider what had happened in retrospect? Would they be allowed to consider only what happened under this Government’s current NPPF?

The hon. Gentleman asked about a specific example, which sounds like it relates to a specific concern.

indicated assent.

He is nodding, which is helpful. In that case, I will write directly to him about that important local issue. I am not overly concerned that the example the hon. Gentleman raised is engaged by this change, but I will write to him to confirm that, because it sounds like an important issue in his constituency.

The clarification in the order is designed to make sure that the existing safeguards operate as intended and can be applied with greater consistency across councils. The order preserves the balance between enabling councils that are due to be abolished to continue to operate effectively, and protecting successor councils, residents and taxpayers’ money.

Although the amendment in the order was first identified through engagement with Surrey, it has been tested more widely with local government representatives, including engagement with the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and the Department’s local government reorganisation advisory group, which brings together senior officers and experts from across local government. It is therefore not a measure designed only for Surrey, but an update that will apply across the local government reorganisation programme.

This statutory instrument supports a legally robust transition by reducing uncertainty in the operation of the framework and promoting consistent application across the reorganisation programme. It makes a small but necessary technical change to ensure that the safeguards that govern significant financial decisions during transition work as intended, thereby supporting the whole local government reorganisation programme.

Will the Minister give way?

I am afraid I am finishing.

The SI reflects engagement with councils and wider consideration with local government representatives, and will help to support the safe, orderly and effective delivery of our programme of reorganisation. I commend the draft order to the Committee.

Before I call the shadow Minister, may I suggest that Members should not be tempted into a wider debate about the merits of any particular boundary changes or council abolitions?

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.

As the Minister set out, the order makes a relatively straightforward technical change, but I have a couple of questions arising from it that relate to the specific circumstances in which the legislation is coming forward. Historically, the policy has been that local government reorganisation would take place where there was unambiguous local consent for that to happen. We are all conscious that, as part of the devolution priority programme, some disputes are already arising—which I think the legislation is designed to address—between the new authorities that are coming into being and the prior authorities that are being abolished.

Local authorities operate to a specific financial process that is quite tightly controlled in legislation, and that is where my questions for the Minister arise from. First, the provisions in this legislation set out that the Secretary of State will designate a person who will be required to give consent, or will have the opportunity to give or withhold consent, when transactions covered by the legislation are envisaged. It would be helpful to understand what process will be followed when there is a dispute. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne gave an example of where the disposal of an asset might be seen by one authority as hugely beneficial because of a capital receipt, and by another as hugely controversial because it pledged to protect it from excessive development. We need, then, clarity about how disputes of that nature will be resolved.

The process is significant because many of the capital sales that will be caught by the provisions are also determined by other processes. Will the Minister set it out for the Committee, in particular regrading authorities that are subject to exceptional financial support rules? If a local authority in Surrey—such as Spelthorne or Woking, which have very significant capital debts—has entered into an agreement with the Government to undertake a programme of disposal of assets, and the disposal of those assets is opposed by the successor authority, how will a decision come to be made, given that the outgoing authority is effectively obliged to undertake those asset sales but the new authority may not wish to do that?

A good example of where the nature of the assets may be material to the dispute is car parks, which are an asset to the parking revenue account of a local authority, so are ringfenced from its general fund. One authority may see a car park as an opportunity to raise revenue, whereas another authority may see it as a capital asset to be disposed of to secure a capital receipt. Especially where there is a capital programme over many years with, in some cases, the capital expenditure having already taken place, to be funded from future asset disposals, there will need to be a process to ensure that the budgets can be balanced. We will all be aware of local authorities in our own areas that have borrowed to build new leisure centres or new schools, or to invest in public transport hubs, parking or whatever it may be—important public assets to be funded from the future sale of those sites for disposal. We therefore need that sense of clarity.

Can the Minister tell the Committee how the provisions will be dealt with when the assets in question arise within an arm’s length management organisation for housing that is owned by a local authority trading company—such as Brick by Brick, the housing development company in Croydon, of which there are a number of alike organisations across the country—to which assets have been transferred for development or disposal? There is no explicit clarity, certainly not within this legislation, about how that will be managed.

What about asset disposals within a programme relevant to the Department for Education? These may be school sites or non school sites whose asset value is designed to support the development of school sites and which sit within the dedicated schools grant. Would the decision to determine who gives consent to that process be a matter for the Department for Education, rather than the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government? I think especially of situations in which a school has been transferred under the standard 99-year academy lease. Who will be the decision maker if the academy trust wishes to dispose of all or part of that site?

I would like to put the question about how overage clauses, which will exist in many of these agreements, will be treated. Clearly, the upside of some of these disposals, which are often controlled both through the planning process and through the original transaction, will say that, in the event that the acquirer of the site returns to gain planning permission for a higher density development, or something that yields a higher amount, they have to pay a proportion of the increase in the value of the site to the local authority that disposed of it. That is designed to avoid a situation in which a site is sold for 20 houses and ends up with 150 flats on it, and the developer basically cleans up. That is a common clause contained within site disposals by local authorities. To whom would the benefit of that overage clause accrue? Especially in circumstances where the benefit was intended to be taken into account as part of that prior capital programme, what provisions will there be to resolve those disputes in the event that they arise?

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I support this technical but important correction. Section 27’s anti avoidance provisions exist to prevent authorities facing dissolution from disposing of assets to avoid scrutiny, but their value depends on the reference date staying current.

My constituency of North Somerset is a useful illustration of why this matters in the long term. It has been a unitary authority since 1996 and, even 30 years on, legacy questions around assets, contracts and historical boundary decisions can resurface. Updating the baseline in section 27 from December 2006 to 31 March 2025 is sensible housekeeping, which ensures that the consent regime keeps pace with present day restructuring, rather than the baseline being tied to the 2008-09 wave of unitarisation. It is the kind of provision that must be kept under continual review so that it does not drift out of date in the same way a second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. The Government are bringing forward logical proposals to deal with new councils, but my concern is that I am not sure that this measure goes far enough. It talks about protecting new councils from existing councils’ decisions about their finances, but what we do not talk about in this—and what I think the Government need to consider—are existing councils that are going to be forced to merge.

That is important because, if we look at my constituency, I have a council with money in the bank and a council without money in the bank. This legislation talks about protecting the new authority from financial decisions that the existing authorities have made—I completely support that, and I think the Government are taking a logical approach—but we need to explore whether it is fair for all the money to go into the same pot. Is it fair for people who have had good councils, with money in the bank, to see their taxpayers’ money spent elsewhere in the authority, where they will not see a benefit?

We should explore what financial information, constraints or regulations we can give to new councils when they are created, rather than just putting all the money into the pot. The councils to be merged will not have the same financial footing. They will not have the same services or the same money in the bank. If we think that it is important to protect the new council from decisions that the existing authority has made, it is right that we look at protecting specific areas within new councils that have had good financial management over the short to medium term.

As I said, there is an example in my constituency: Broxbourne council has about £50 million in the bank but East Herts council has none. What I do not want to see if we have to go through local government reorganisation is all that money going into the pot and then being spent on paying someone else’s debt. It is right for constituents that I represent in the borough of Broxbourne to say that there should be some guidance outlining that that money should at least be spent within the existing boundaries of that authority, even if it is under the new council.

Order. The Member is straying a little from the scope of the proposal. Will he conclude, please?

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Vickers.

This is an important piece of legislation that the Government are bringing forward. I wonder whether the Minister could explore some of the points that I have raised in this debate.

I thank members of the Committee for their contributions to this debate. Before concluding, I want to address some of the points raised.

The shadow Minister asked about disputes between councils. I want to be explicit that councils remain responsible for their decisions during the transition and must act in line with their legal duties. We expect councils to act transparently and have regard to their fiduciary duties and wider public responsibilities when taking such decisions as local authorities do week in, week out—and local authority officers know that. Decisions regarding ongoing service delivery and the medium term financial strategies of existing councils should not compromise the future sustainability of new councils—I say that just for clarity.

We have published an explanatory note to councils undergoing reorganisation about financial decisions before reorganisation and we continue to work with councils to support orderly and effective transitions. However, decisions on individual assets are the responsibility of local authorities. I will happily circulate the explanatory note to members of the Committee if that would aid them. The officials in my Department are in touch with councils on a regular basis. This framework tries to create safeguards to make sure that significant actions taken during transition do not adversely affect successor authorities.

Will the Minister give way on that point?

I will do so in a moment.

The shadow Minister makes a very reasonable point on councils in receipt of exceptional financial support and the disposal of assets. He knows that the number of councils in EFS is a great concern of mine. We liaise with those local authorities week in, week out to do all we can to support them. It serves none of us to have exceptional financial support become normalised, and we are in touch with them.

Will the Minister give way?

I will give way to the hon. Member for Spelthorne and the hon. Lady in a moment once I finish responding to the shadow Minister.

On arm’s length management organisations and academies, this depends on the specifics of the contract and the transfer that has taken place. Again, we are working actively with councils. On the value of sites and the issue that the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner mentioned with developers being able to garner extra value from their sites, we have provided councils with checklists and much information about things that they should be wary of. Nevertheless, I thank him for raising it. I will double check that it is on the checklist.

I am so grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am also conscious of the Chair’s prohibition on stretching the envelope and referring only to the Minister’s own words. She said that the purpose of this whole procedure today was to make local government reorganisation easier for residents to understand and for a safe, orderly and effective transition. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne for his expertise in this area.

The Minister and I have privately discussed the powers of shadow unitary authorities and their ability to propose name changes: in my case to the “West Surrey”, and if I had my way, “and South Middlesex”, unitary authority. Would she like to put on record the fact that, if the newly elected shadow unitary authority makes a proposal with a majority for the renaming of that unitary authority, she would be bound to accept it?

Order. That is way beyond the scope of the order before the Committee, but if the Minister wants to comment on it, I will allow her to do so.

You are very generous, Mr Vickers. The hon. Member knows that I am sympathetic; it is a matter for the authorities themselves, of course, but he makes a good case.

The Minister spoke about exceptional financial support. I was interested to hear her say that we do not wish EFS to be normalised. I suggest that we are in circumstances in which it is normalised, given that so many councils require it and so many of them expect to have to use it. A lot of councils are struggling to balance their annual budgets on that basis.

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that important point. I will happily come to this House and spend hours talking about local government finance any time anybody wants—

But not today.

I fear that it would test your patience, Mr Vickers.

Let me make a final point to the hon. Member for Broxbourne. He makes a reasonable point, but the issue is that local government finances are in such a state—I am thinking particularly about the situation in Woking. All of us, up and down the country, will pay the price for that, so there is a sense in which responsibility is always collectively shared. I will say nothing further, Mr Vickers, in case you tell me off.

In conclusion, the draft order will make a small but necessary technical amendment to ensure that existing safeguards on disposals operate effectively during local government reorganisation. I hope that the Committee will join me in supporting it.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee rose.

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: † Wera Hobhouse

† Akehurst, Luke (North Durham) (Lab)

† Anderson, Callum (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)

† Bedford, Mr Peter (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)

Cooper, Daisy (St Albans) (LD)

Duncan Smith, Sir Iain (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)

Olney, Sarah (Richmond Park) (LD)

† Pinto Duschinsky, David (Hendon) (Lab)

† Ranger, Andrew (Wrexham) (Lab)

† Roca, Tim (Macclesfield) (Lab)

† Ryan, Oliver (Burnley) (Lab/Co op)

† Siddiq, Tulip (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)

† Smith, Rebecca (South West Devon) (Con)

† Stewart, Elaine (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)

† Timms, Sir Stephen (Minister for Social Security and Disability)

† Walker, Imogen (Hamilton and Clyde Valley) (Lab)

† Wood, Mike (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)

† Woodcock, Sean (Banbury) (Lab)

Rob Cope, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

The following also attended (Standing Order No. 118(2)):

Milne, John (Horsham) (LD)

Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee

Wednesday 24 June 2026

[Wera Hobhouse in the Chair]

Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (S.I., 2026, No. 457).

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I appreciate that it is incredibly warm in here, but bear with me, because this is an important debate. I want to sound the alarm about the statutory instrument: it hands the Government sweeping discretionary powers, with too few safeguards and too little scrutiny, by allowing the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to extend the length of fixed term personal independent payments.

The measure is intended to tackle the backlog of award reviews following covid-19, but we believe it takes us backwards, not forwards. Under the previous approach, people’s awards were regularly reviewed to ensure that they received support that reflected their actual circumstances, yet under the new approach, most claimants will get only two checks in 10 years—one review period will last four years, with subsequent reviews lasting six years. That is just not good enough. Taxpayers deserve confidence that support is being targeted correctly. Previously, 77% of PIP awards were for up to two years, according to the Department for Work and Pensions, so many people will experience substantial extensions to their review periods.

We must acknowledge the serious problems with PIP caseloads, which shot up after covid. At best, however, this secondary legislation is a blunt tool to fix a difficult situation; at worst, it grants the Secretary of State discretionary powers that are wide open to future misuse. It moves us away from proper oversight towards a system where awards can continue for ever longer periods without appropriate checks—in simple terms, more benefits, less scrutiny.

The Government’s answer to that objection appears to be little more than a reminder letter. If reviews are pushed further apart, Ministers will rely more heavily on claimants to self report changes in their circumstances, but given the longer timeframes, will people have a genuine incentive to report changes that could lead to their award being reduced or withdrawn? It is easy to loosen the system, but far harder to tighten it. Once rules have been relaxed, people adjust their expectations—the horse has bolted.

One day, the backlog may be cleared—we hope—and the Department may seek to increase the frequency of reviews again, but if that happens, I worry that claimants will quite understandably resent the return of more frequent checks. There has been no public consultation on this secondary legislation, because it is supposedly a mere administrative tweak to support the delivery of PIP. Labour is in effect using this opportunity to extend assessment periods by the back door.

Responsible welfare reform means building a system that works as best it can for those who need it most. For many, PIP is a lifeline; it helps them to live independently, to stay connected and, for some, to remain in work. In many cases, people with the most severe and lifelong disabilities already receive longer awards, where appropriate—the system already contains that provision.

To maintain confidence in the system, PIP and other welfare entitlements must be accurate and fair. People’s health situations change, circumstances evolve and some conditions naturally worsen, but others improve. For those with less serious needs, this measure will reduce the opportunities to review whether the support being offered is still appropriate. That is not reform; it is retreat—a retreat to the la la land of ever more state handouts and ever less oversight.

I know that some will say that regular reviews create anxiety, and I understand that. Of course, no one wants unnecessary stress, but we must remember what reviews are for—they are there not to catch people out, but to ensure that support is going to the right people, at the right level and for the right reasons. In fact, for people who continue to have genuine needs, reviews can provide certainty by extending existing rewards. In cases where someone’s condition has deteriorated, they can also lead to higher levels of support.

We believe that this statutory instrument is merely a symptom of a wider problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) has said, we are becoming far too quick to sign people on to welfare and far too slow to help them into work. We are seeing a passive and permissive approach from this Government when what this country needs is an active and ambitious one.

The reassessment changes that we are introducing through this statutory instrument and other measures will save something like £2 billion by the end of the Parliament. I am sure we all agree that would be welcome, given the increasing size of the welfare bill. Why is the hon. Member opposing that saving, and how would she fill the gap instead?

Of course we want to save money, but we do not think that this statutory instrument is the right way to do it. We think that it will just reduce the opportunities for people to have those reviews—the assessments that need to take place. Arguably, more money can perhaps be saved if those reviews happen within a quicker timeframe, because there are many people who, if the right things happen, can be moved off benefits much more quickly than we believe the statutory instrument allows for.

Over 4 million people of working age are now on sickness and incapacity benefits, nearly half a million of whom are under 25. One in four people in the UK now report as disabled. At the same time, the Secretary of State has made it clear that the Timms review of personal independence payment is not designed to deliver welfare savings, something that I find extraordinary. How can that possibly be an effective review if it refuses to tackle the elephant in the room—our ballooning benefits bill?

Real compassion means not abandoning people to a life on benefits. State support must act as a springboard, not a destination. As the official Opposition, we believe in supporting the vulnerable, but we also believe in fairness to taxpayers—fairness to those who get up every morning, go to work and expect the welfare system to be properly managed.

The Government’s own rationale regarding work disincentives is also deeply inconsistent. PIP awards will be extended only for claimants aged 25 and over. The Department argues that unemployment can have “long term scarring effects” on younger people. Therefore, those whose health has improved should not remain on PIP any longer than necessary. Of course, younger claimants are more likely than older claimants to see improvements in their functional capacity, which helps explain why they are exempt from these longer review periods, but the logic just does not hold up, because unemployment can have scarring effects at any age. If regular reviews are important for younger claimants because circumstances can change, why should that principle suddenly cease to apply when someone reaches 25? Either regular reviews matter or they do not. The Government cannot have it both ways.

Speaking of work incentives, Members are being asked to trust the Government with a significant new power under the statutory instrument, but why should we place that trust in Ministers when they cannot even tell us the scale of the backlog in Access to Work? I have been told by the Department that it does not hold information about average waiting times between the approval of an Access to Work application and when support actually starts, because—so it says—it would require a painstaking manual review of individual records. If the Government cannot easily access that kind of basic data, is it any wonder that they have been so reluctant to grasp the nettle on other areas of welfare reform?

I encourage hon. Members to bob if they wish to speak. Hon. Members can still decide to contribute, even if they had not already been considering it— a good debate is a good debate.

We hear lots of talk in politics and the media right now about the need to cut benefits. Of course, control of spending is always a priority, but the first question that we should ask about any benefit is whether it is doing the job it is supposed to. A PIP is a lifeline, not a luxury. It is designed to support disabled people with the extra costs of daily living resulting from their disability. It is not specifically an in work benefit, but in practice it does help many people keep their jobs, which is, of course, what we want. That is why, as Liberal Democrats, we believe that any change to how PIP awards are managed must put the needs of the claimant first, not the administrative convenience of the Department.

We are deeply concerned by the DWP’s admission that it has been extending PIP awards on an ad hoc basis without clear statutory cover—that was potentially unlawful. Disabled people deserve a system that operates within the law with proper safeguards, not one that has been quietly patched up in a Heath Robinson fashion, and which is only now being regularised through secondary legislation.

The regulations were introduced without a vote in Parliament and without referral to the Social Security Advisory Committee. Yet changes of such significance, which affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people, deserve proper parliamentary scrutiny, not secondary legislation slipped through without a vote. We welcome Government assurances that the regulations cannot be used to shorten existing awards or to cut the rates paid, and we welcome the retention of appeal rights, but the fact that the regulations are necessary at all is not positive. If we had the proper capacity to carry out PIP reviews on schedule when they were required, there would never be a need for extensions.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the types of assessment and the way in which the assessment is done, and he is right to talk about capacity. Just before the election, the previous Government signed new contracts that said 80% of new assessments would be done virtually. The changes to reassessment in these regulations will save money and move more of those assessments from being virtual to face to face, which will better serve people on PIP. Does the hon. Gentleman not support the introduction of more face to face assessments?

I agree with the hon. Member and entirely accept that the issue is not of this Government’s making, although as ever it is this Government’s obligation to sort it out. The regulations are a positive move in the right direction, but I am lamenting the state of affairs in general, not necessarily blaming it on Labour Members.

The SSAC has rightly raised concerns about the impact on claimants who have worsening conditions. Such claimants may now go longer without a reassessment and could therefore miss out on a justified increased award. That is why simply taking no action is not a satisfactory position; we have to do something.

We have consistently called for PIP assessments to be made more transparent and for unnecessary reassessments to be stopped. Properly implemented, longer award periods could reduce claimants’ anxiety and the bureaucratic burden on them, but only if there is a clear and accessible route for people whose needs have changed to request a reassessment without potentially having to wait years for it.

In conclusion, we support the measure, as a matter of legal necessity if nothing else. It will put PIP extensions on a legal basis, although we regret that that was not already the case years ago.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. Thank you for permitting us to take our jackets off. I thank hon. Members who have spoken in the debate.

As we have heard—my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley made the point absolutely correctly—this statutory instrument amends regulations to enable the best use of the assessment resources that we have available. It will help us to repair the broken system that we inherited, which needs to be repaired, and provides a much needed safeguard against potential future challenges, in order to protect payments to vulnerable people.

As mentioned by my hon. Friend, under the contracts with assessment providers that were negotiated by the last Government, we can call on only a finite volume of assessment capacity. We could, as the last Government did, use a large chunk of that capacity for frequent reassessments of PIP claimants whose circumstances most likely have not changed at all, or we can use that resource in a more productive way. That is what we have chosen to do.

We want to do two new things. First, we want to recommence, properly, reassessments for the work capability assessment, which provides a gateway to the health premium in universal credit. The situation we inherited is that work capability assessments are carried out when somebody makes a new application, and after a period that person is due a reassessment. The number of reassessments that it has been possible to carry out has been lamentably low. The hon. Member for South West Devon commended PIP reassessments—if only the Conservatives had carried out the work capability reassessments. We want to switch some of the assessment capacity that was being used ineffectively by the last Government, so that it will be used effectively in future.

The second thing we want to do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley referred to, is to increase substantially the proportion of assessments that are carried out face to face. Almost all of them used to be face to face, then came the pandemic, and for reasons that we all understand, they switched to being phone based or occasionally video based assessments instead. But once the needs of the pandemic had passed, face to face assessments were never properly switched back on. Telephony was retained as the main channel, with just a small number of face to face assessments restarting in 2021. In our view, that is not good enough.

As the Minister knows, I sit on the Work and Pensions Committee. About a year ago, we heard evidence that in fact there was little statistical difference between the approval rates for face to face interviews and for remote interviews. The figures may have been updated since, but that is the evidence we heard then. I am in favour of face to face interviews—they seem intuitively better—but there may not be quite the difference that everyone might reasonably expect; that is what the figures show.

There certainly has been data along those lines; I think it was data along those lines that made the previous Government think that they need not start face to face assessments again. I agree with the hon. Gentleman: to build confidence in the system, not least on the part of the people being assessed—I was speaking to somebody yesterday who said, “I wish that I’d had a face to face assessment”—and to make sure that the correct decisions are being made, we do need face to face assessments.

By the time of the general election, only about 7% of work capability assessments and PIP assessments were being carried out face to face. We want to do a great deal better than that. It was not just that the resources for face to face assessments were not provided in the assessment contracts, although that was certainly part of the issue; the other factor was that the previous Government walked away from large amounts of the assessment estate so there were no longer enough places where face to face assessments could be carried out. That is a pretty fundamental problem. The hon. Member for South West Devon spoke about la la land, but frankly, that is where the Government who she supported left us.

We are therefore mounting a major rebuilding task to regain the capacity for face to face assessments that the last Government threw away, because our view is that these assessments should be done properly. We have started to rebuild the capacity that the previous Government threw away. We have increased the proportion of work capability assessments and PIP assessments carried out face to face, and we are on our way to achieving our target that at least 30% of both will be face to face. To achieve that, we need additional assessment resource; this measure is a key step in enabling us to obtain that.

As the Minister is reading out his list of achievements, may I add to it? Does he think it is a good thing that we have put nearly £1 billion into support for the sick and disabled? That will partly come from savings from this and other measures, which we hope will save £1.9 billion by the end of the Parliament. As he says, the act of government is about making these difficult decisions and trade offs in order to provide people with more support in the long run.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have not yet got to that bit in my list, but I am coming to it—I am looking forward to that part of my speech.

The Conservative party is telling us that it would maintain its failed approach, with hardly any assessments being carried out face to face. That does at least have the benefit of consistency, I suppose, but we do not think it is good enough, and we will make the changes necessary to do far better. As my hon. Friend correctly highlighted, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, this change that we have announced will reduce benefits spending by almost £2 billion—£1.9 billion—over five years.

We inherited an assessment system that was not equipped to do the job. The previous Government agreed contractual limits that meant at most 20% of assessments would be face to face. That was written into the contracts they signed, but there was not nearly enough capacity even to meet that level. We are having to fix a broken system, and we are making good progress, with the measure we are debating being an important step.

The purpose of this straightforward change is to provide the Secretary of State the power to extend personal independence payment awards in a limited set of circumstances, where it is deemed necessary to do so to safeguard the efficient administration of benefits. Before the amendment, a decision to extend an award of PIP required either a new claim for PIP, evidence of an error or mistake in the first decision, evidence that the claimant’s circumstances had changed, or the completion of a report by a healthcare professional appointed by the Secretary of State. In many cases, that would involve a claimant undergoing an assessment. Where such a decision could not be taken before an award expired, claimants would cease to be entitled to PIP until a further decision was completed. They would remain so until a further decision on entitlement could be made.

The amendment grants a specific discretion, making it possible to extend only the length of an award, and only where doing so is necessary for the administration of the benefit. As well as allowing the more efficient use of assessment resources, the discretion protects vulnerable claimants who would risk losing entitlement to PIP if, as in the pandemic, circumstances threatened to limit the state’s capacity to administer it. We are ensuring that the Department can lawfully maintain benefits payments to the most vulnerable people.

The new power will be used initially to increase the length of existing awards in line with the policy on award lengths for new awards, for which the Secretary of State already has the power. Existing claimants’ awards will be extended so that most first time awards for those over 25 will be reviewed after three years, and most subsequent awards will be reviewed after five. Only awards deemed to be appropriate for those durations will be extended. The Committee may well be interested to know that the average annual increase in the PIP caseload has slowed under this Government: it fell from an increase of about 13% a year in 2019-20 to 2024-25, to a forecast average of about 7% a year over the subsequent five years.

The hon. Member for Horsham made a point about the Social Security Advisory Committee. I think he said that the committee had not looked at this; that is not correct—the committee has looked at it. It looks at all the regulatory changes that we propose, and it does a very good job. It plays an important role, and we welcome its scrutiny. As the hon. Gentleman said, the committee asked questions, and we were happy to set out the purpose of the regulations and the reasons for them. The committee accepted the information that we provided, and it chose to take the regulations on formal reference. I think the hon. Gentleman can be reassured about the committee’s view of this change.

I am grateful for the points that have been made and the opportunity for scrutiny that the debate has provided. The changes we are making enable the Department to make more efficient use of limited assessment capacity, to reduce assessments where they are not needed in order to focus on where they are needed, and to allow PIP awards to be extended in an emergency or crisis, as emerged during the pandemic, thereby protecting some vulnerable people from unnecessary hardship.

This is a measured amendment to ensure the effective administration of the benefits system. I hope that the hon. Member for South West Devon will not press the motion to a Division, but I fear she probably will—her party issued a press release before this Committee to say that Conservative Members would vote to annul the amendment, possibly before they realised what exactly was going on. If that is the case, I urge the Committee not to vote against the amendment.

I assure the Minister that we did know what was going to happen. We will not change our minds on the position that has already been set out.

We believe that this instrument moves us in the wrong direction. I appreciate the points that were made by the Minister and, indeed, by the hon. Member for Horsham, who highlighted that there was apparently little difference between in person and online reviews. That highlights that the issues that we have raised have not really been addressed—the Minister certainly has not.

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Will she clarify her party’s position? Does the Conservative party think that more than 7% of assessments ought to be carried out face to face, or is it not really bothered about whether they are carried out face to face or over the phone?

Clearly, face to face is good, where possible. The 7% figure that you commented on was from the pandemic and from when you picked up. We know that we had a huge backlog to deal with—

Order. Please remember to address the Chair.

Did I say “you”? I am sorry, Mrs Hobhouse.

Obviously, where possible, face to face is good, but we are not convinced that it is the right trade off—that it makes it acceptable not to see people as regularly as there should be an ambition to see them. As I highlighted, and the Minister has not addressed this, certain people will no longer need any support from PIP within that three year period, and some might need more. If this instrument is purely about administrative convenience and enabling the backlog to come down, rather than having proper oversight, we feel that that is watering down the system and weakening the public’s confidence in it.

It is also true to say that the regulations lack real ambition, because they have no end date; they just give the Secretary of State completely discretionary powers with no finish point. There is no ambition to say, “By x date, we want to have dealt with this backlog and then we will refresh.” Indeed, they give powers for a future emergency, when we seemed to manage perfectly well in the previous emergency, so we think it is not right to use that as a reason for these unending powers.

We also believe that the measure risks locking more people into welfare, when we should be helping more people into work. I know that the Minister thinks the same, so I am surprised that this is the tool being used. For those reasons, we urge the Government to think again and we urge Members to reject this statutory instrument.

Question put.

1|0|11|3|The Committee divided:|Question accordingly agreed to.||0|0

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (S.I., 2026, No. 457).

Committee rose.

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: Graham Stringer

† Bloore, Chris (Redditch) (Lab)

† Buckley, Julia (Shrewsbury) (Lab)

† Dewhirst, Charlie (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)

† Dickson, Jim (Dartford) (Lab)

† Evans, Chris (Caerphilly) (Lab/Co op)

† Foody, Emma (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co op)

† Fox, Sir Ashley (Bridgwater) (Con)

† Hinds, Damian (East Hampshire) (Con)

† MacAlister, Josh (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education)

Martin, Amanda (Portsmouth North) (Lab)

† Onn, Melanie (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)

† Rankin, Jack (Windsor) (Con)

† Sabine, Anna (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)

† Sollom, Ian (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)

† Stone, Will (Swindon North) (Lab)

† Strickland, Alan (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)

† Yang, Yuan (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)

Emma Elson, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee

Wednesday 24 June 2026

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

Draft Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026

Before I call the Minister to move the motion, any hon. Member or official who wishes to take off their jacket has my permission to do so.

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 18 May. This statutory instrument is the first of three pieces of secondary legislation needed to implement the lifelong learning entitlement, or LLE, which establishes a new system of tuition fee limits for higher education courses and modules that begin on or after 1 January 2027.

The LLE is a major reform to student finance, creating a single flexible funding system for levels 4 to 6 across further and higher education. It will support people to learn, upskill and retrain throughout their working lives, and will deliver one of the core commitments in our post-16 education and skills White Paper, underpinning the growth and skills missions. The concept of a lifelong learning entitlement stems from the recommendations made by Sir Philip Augar’s independent panel to the post-18 education and funding review back in 2019. Primary legislation enacted in 2022 and 2023 by the previous Government established the framework, and these regulations are the next step in delivering it—this is a true cross party effort.

The regulations set out how tuition fee limits will apply under the LLE. A tuition fee limit is the maximum amount that a provider can charge per year if it is subject to a fee cap. Currently, that limit is £9,790 for standard full time courses. Those fixed annual fee limits suit traditional degrees, regardless of the volume of study undertaken, but do not work for shorter courses or modules. The regulations introduce a credit based system to change that.

Credits are a widely recognised measure of learning, with one credit typically equivalent to around 10 hours of learning. To illustrate that, the standard fee limit for a typical higher education course in the 2026-27 academic year is £9,790, and a full year of study usually comprises 120 credits. Dividing £9,790 by 120 produces a per credit fee limit of around £82. The regulations mean that tuition fee limits can be apportioned in line with the credit size of any given course. That does not change overall fee caps—most students will not see any difference in what they pay—but applies them more fairly across full courses and shorter study, linking fees to learning volume.

Subject to Parliament’s approval of the regulations, we intend to lay two further instruments needed to establish the LLE. Those instruments, on student support and repayments, have been published in draft to give the House full visibility and to help the sector prepare. Both will be subject to the negative procedure. As they depend on the regulations before the Committee, they will be made only if these regulations are approved.

The regulations mark an important step in delivering the LLE and transforming our skills system. They put in place the new approach to applying fee limits, which is needed to support a more flexible approach to student finance that better serves young people and adult learners. That will allow people to study in ways that fit around their lives, support providers to respond to evolving skills needs, and help individuals across the country to access the education and training that they need to succeed.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the Minister for introducing the debate. His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition will support the regulations.

Giving people the chance to access education and training flexibly throughout their working lives supports social mobility and personal aspiration, and helps employers to secure the skills that they need. That is why we Conservatives are proud that the previous Government supported the independent Augar review recommendations and introduced the primary legislation necessary to create a single lifelong learning loan allowance that learners can use to upskill and retrain flexibly over their working lives. We therefore support the principle behind the lifelong learning entitlement and the move to a credit based system for calculating tuition fee limits.

I would like to press the Minister on the importance of face to face teaching time. If we want to tackle low quality provision and ensure that the lifelong learning entitlement lives up to our hopes, we must ensure that learners receive the highest quality teaching possible. Too often, students receive limited face to face teaching time, limited supervision and a higher education experience that falls short of what they were promised. Learners who enrol in the modular courses and training that will become available from January next year will reasonably expect to be able to ask their teacher a question, and to interact with their fellow students, in person.

Just as we must stop unnecessarily pushing young people into courses that offer minimal face to face teaching, in return for huge debt and little prospect of employment at the end, we must ensure that new modular courses and training opportunities deliver the highest quality provision possible. I would therefore be grateful to hear what the Minister is doing to encourage and raise the bar for face to face teaching time across the higher education sector, whether for degree courses, modules or training.

I have two brief questions for the Minister. First, how does the Department intend to monitor the impact of the new credit based tuition fee limit system on providers and on learners? Secondly, given that providers will occur familiarisation and administrative costs as the changes are implemented, and in the light of the wider financial pressures facing the higher education sector, what support will be available to help minimise those burdens?

The Opposition support the regulations. We all hope that introducing tuition fee limits for modular learning will encourage more people to pursue higher quality training and upskilling opportunities throughout their working lives. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. The Lib Dems have long supported the principle of a flexible credit based system that lets people study in smaller chunks across their working lives, rather than in one fixed block at 18 years old. We are glad to see that direction reflected here today. I am afraid we cannot endorse the instrument, however, for reasons that I will put on the record.

The first reason is substantive. The instrument, and the package that it leads, relies entirely on a loan based model to drive take up among exactly the cohort it claims to serve—adults who are already in work, with mortgages, dependants and a shorter working life over which to repay any loan. A loan that looks like a reasonable proposition for an 18-year old starting a three year degree looks very different to a 45-year old weighing up retraining against existing financial commitments.

When that issue was raised directly in the other place during the passage of the enabling legislation in 2023, the Government’s response was essentially to defer the question to the detail. The instrument is that detail, but the question has not really been answered. The Department’s 2021 pilot of loan funded short courses, run jointly with the Office for Students, planned for more than 100 courses and 2,000 students, but only 17 courses launched and 125 students enrolled, of whom just 41 took out a loan. That direct, real world test of the model that this instrument now extends across the entire post-18 system did not generate demand. Will the Minister tell us what assessment has been made of whether the LLE risks repeating that outcome at scale? Has a grant based supplement, of the kind that the Liberal Democrats have proposed, been costed and considered?

The second reason is procedural. This instrument is subject to the affirmative procedure, but the two remaining SIs in the package—the student support regulations and the repayment regulations—will be laid under the negative procedure, meaning that they will become law without a vote and without the parliamentary scrutiny warranted by a package of this complexity and long term consequence.

The student support and repayment arrangements are not peripheral details. They are the mechanisms that will determine whether the Government have addressed that loan aversion issue, whether maintenance support is adequate and whether repayment terms are fair. What if the fee system fails to generate the take up that the Government are predicting or hoping for? The review is not planned until 2031-32, five years after launch. I suggest that those two instruments should be upgraded to the affirmative procedure so that we can properly scrutinise what follows.

I have a number of more specific questions for the Minister. First, the instrument carries forward the £5,760 lower fee cap for foundation years in subjects such as humanities, business, law and social sciences. That cap was set in 2023 and is unchanged since. Every other major fee category in the instrument receives an uplift in the second tranche, from August 2027. The lower fee foundation year rate does not. For many people without a traditional academic pathway, foundation years are the entry point into higher education. That route runs disproportionally through colleges and lower tariff institutions, serving the students whom the Government say they most want to reach. Can the Minister confirm that this is simply a continuation of the 2023 cap with no independent review for the instrument, and that, unlike every other fee category mentioned, it does not rise in August 2027?

If the policy rationale for that is to keep fees down to protect access, which is reasonable, is there any compensating mechanism—direct institutional funding, for example—to ensure that providers can keep delivering that provision as costs rise around a frozen fee? The risk is that we are quietly trusting institutions to absorb an indefinite real terms cut in exactly the provision that is most likely to serve disadvantaged learners.

Regulation 9 requires providers to notify in advance the Secretary of State of the number of credits attached to a course year, and to repeat that notification whenever activities change mid year. Has the Department made any assessment of the cumulative administrative burden that that will place on smaller providers and FE based higher education providers, which, again, are precisely the institutions best placed to deliver the flexible, bite sized provision that the LLE is meant to enable?

The two tier higher and basic fee structure in the instrument imports the existing access and participation plan mechanism from full time undergraduate study. APPs were not designed with part time modular or older learners in mind. Has the Office for Students been asked to assess whether APP commitments, as currently framed, are fit for purpose in a credit based lifelong learning context?

Regulation 19 ensures that courses designated for lifelong learning purposes are not treated as designated under the pre existing Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 regime. Can the Minister confirm that no student currently part way through a course will risk falling between those two designation regimes and losing eligibility for support as a result?

On a minor point that is still worth highlighting, the explanatory memorandum states that the per credit rate is £81.58, but dividing the £9,790 headline figure by 120 credits gives a recurring decimal, meaning that, at the stated rounding, 120 credits produces £9,789.60, rather than £9,790.

We all knew that!

Well, I am a mathematician by trade. It is a small point, but every fee limit in the system is derived from that per credit calculation, so will the Minister confirm the correct rounding convention, and that the providers and the Student Loans Company are working from the same figure?

We support the direction of this reform, and will not stand in its way today, but the loan only design and the inadequate scrutiny afforded to the two follow on instruments are real concerns. I hope that the Minister will address them.

Like everyone who has spoken, I support the principle of the lifelong learning entitlement. I welcomed it in Sir Philip Augar’s review, which reported while I was at the Department for Education. I was pleased that it was brought in by my erstwhile right hon. Friends for Chichester and Harlow. It is true that higher education in this country has been too rigid for too long. The lifelong learning entitlement eliminates the “do it now or do it never” problem. It makes the most of talent, and it means that people can move into growing sectors in the economy, or just new areas of interest, and learn what they need to learn. For all those reasons, it is also good for productivity.

This statutory instrument is not about the existence of the lifelong learning entitlement, nor is it about the existence—or the level—of the fee; it is just about the modularisation of that fee. I have a couple of short questions to put to the Minister. The first touches on what the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire was just saying: there is a question of debt aversion. That did not happen, as was widely predicted, after the Vince Cable reforms in the early 2010s—the great risk of debt aversion among young people did not turn out to be true. However, this is mostly about an older demographic, with different sets of responsibilities, at a different life stage. What research has been done about that?

I wonder whether the Minister might say a word about the levels of enrolment in the pilots that the Department for Education undertook, and what we have learned. Is there a risk of people being reluctant? There is a psychological barrier if there is a fixed lifetime maximum. What do we know about people’s possible reluctance to eat into that at a certain level, rather than leaving it intact? Has there been any research on that? Conversely, is there a risk of overselling the modules, given the terms of the loan and what may seem to many people—low earners in particular—quite low risk in taking one out? Are there specific risks of gaming from moving to a system in which providers will be paid according to a number of credits? As my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor rightly said, there are particular questions around that for online courses.

Credits and modules have long existed in this country, but breaking up a course or stretch of study, or moving from one institution to another, has not been nearly as prevalent in this country as in others, whether in Europe through the Bologna system or indeed the United States. What will the Government do to ensure that the amounts that are involved in this statutory instrument will represent value for individuals, with comparability of the modules, full recognition when that module is taken somewhere else, and a culture change in our higher education system?

I thank Committee members for their contributions to the debate. I will endeavour to answer as many questions as I can.

The first set of questions came from the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Windsor, about face to face teaching. The system allows for credit funding flexibility, which is down to providers, but I recognise the importance of face to face teaching. That is one of the reasons why, earlier this week, my noble Friend the Minister for Skills set out the intention to link the outcomes of the teaching excellence framework scores to future access to fee increases. That is why, over different Governments, we have built a system that allows competition so that students can pick and select from a range of providers and, in essence, shop around for the best option. Greater visibility of the quality is important, and that should come from the teaching excellence framework.

A number of Members asked about the various impacts of the changes. Impact assessments have been published as part of this process. I will ask for copies of them to be sent to Members in the coming days. I hope that they will answer a number of questions.

The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire and I have had several exchanges about student finance and student funding. I have a great deal of affection for the Liberal Democrats, but it is a system that was partly designed by them in office. His Majesty’s Opposition had affection for the Liberal Democrats at a certain point in time as well, so perhaps that is something that we can share.

The changes described are cultural for the country, affecting how adult learners look to access lifelong learning and do courses that will be shorter or compressed. The regulations allow for that. I think they will take some time to bed in, so it seems reasonable to give a five year time horizon, but of course there will be a great deal of scrutiny from Parliament and elsewhere on their implementation.

I am happy to come back to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire on foundation degree fees and our plans for them. The question on credit fee amounts was very detailed, and I thank him for his scrutiny of the rounding convention that we are using—there may well be a future dormant asset fund to be raided by a Government in 20 or 30 years’ time as a result of it. Again, I will write to him about why we are using a different figure from the one that he mentioned.

Finally, the former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire, was heavily involved in the inception of this measure and the review that led to its recommendation. Again, I am happy to share the Department’s assessments of behavioural impacts.

The Committee will know that this SI is a critical step towards delivering the lifelong learning entitlement. It will bring further and higher education closer together and support the growth of more flexible modular study. It sets tuition fee limits for LLE funded courses and modules, marking a transformation of our higher and further education systems that will start this January. The changes aim not to overhaul the entire system but to tackle a key weakness in the current model, which is too rigid and focused on the traditional three year degree, limiting opportunities for adults to retrain or upskill across their working lives. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee rose.